Along the Grand Western Canal

Yesterday morning, while walking along the canal near where I live, I saw this beautiful wild plant for the first time.

Flowering Rush

My Book says it’s Flowering Rush, rather uncommon, flowering from July – and there we were, Ellie and I, on our nearby canal in June, and it was dotted all along the bank.

Well, My Book is over 60 years old and it gets a lot of things wrong because so much of both countryside and climate has changed, but I love it because it was given to me by my parents on my eleventh birthday and it’s full of my annotations and observations over the years.

Needless to say, it’s falling apart now, and if you know of a good bookbinder who could repair it for me, do tell.

My ancient and  battered Oxford Book of Wildflowers

Next I saw this tall scruffy plant which I find rather menacing as it grows in gangs and looks like a Triffid (as in the 1981 TV adaptation of John Wyndham’s book). It’s called Hemp Agrimony, but is no relation to Cannabis (sadly) or Agrimony  - which is a small yellow spike of a flower, and one I also saw yesterday along the canal.

Hemp Agrimony

Hemp Agrimony

Agrimony

The next plant to catch my attention was this Meadow-sweet, so-called I presume for its scent – a weird almondy one. I like its confidence and its scatty prettiness and am trying to grow it round the pond in my garden.

Meadow-sweet

Sunny St John’s Wort was in flower for the first time this year. As you probably know, the word ‘wort’ means any plant that was used medicinally and St John’s Wort is still used to cure depression (but take advice as it can also be harmful or interact with conventional drugs).

St John's Wort

Lovely Scabious, which actually prefers dry places, was in evidence from time to time, well attended by insects like all flowers of the Daisy family to which it belongs.

Scabious and Hoverfly

Yesterday was a good day.

 

The Grand Western Canal near Tiverton in Devon is a Local Nature Reserve and well worth a visit at any time of year. Yesterday it was full of birdsong as well as wildflowers, and when I find out how to transfer audio and video clips from my phone to my computer I’ll share some of that with you as well.

The lonely duck

Since Frog died just over a year ago, my life has been non-stop. A few days ago, however, I decided that I just had to step off the treadmill. I was exhausted. I’d had back and leg pain since November which stopped me sleeping. I couldn’t go on any longer. I would take March off.

On Saturday, I awoke after a good night’s sleep and decided that the dog and I would go out for the day, even though I had no one to go out with. Like rest, being on my own was part of the process, part of my experiment.

We arrived early. It was cloudy and still. There was hardly anyone else about.

Our first encounter was this cat, who taunted Ellie from the other side of the canal. She knew Ellie couldn’t get at her, and Ellie knew that too, but it didn’t stop barking at it for a good five minutes – as if that would encourage the cat to cross the canal and let Ellie attack it. (She does that with squirrels too, standing at the bottom of trees, and with rabbits, sticking her nose down the entrances to their warrens.)

 

Then we saw this duck. I think it’s a Muscovy, perhaps a young one as the pictures on Google showed black and white feathers not the grey and white ones here. The red cheek is very distinctive however, as are the flat flappy feet, the colour and texture of autumn leaves.

 

I felt sorry for it. It wasn’t frightened of me when I took a photograph and it seemed to be looking for company.

We passed this sign and I wondered if I should have one in my garden. It’s such a good excuse.

 

I walked on and because my mind was empty, because I’d ‘taken March off’, because this was a day out, not only did I notice things but ideas – mainly about writing – flooded in.

That’s the lovely thing about a canal. It’s hypnotic and soothing. You don’t have to negotiate ups and downs. You don’t have to worry about where you’re going. The path stretches out in front of you, unmistakable, as does the water.

After an hour so, we turned back and, with sun and wind now behind us, everything was different. A lovely view confronted me, a medley of soft greens, blues and pinks. For a moment, I thought I was in the Mediterranean.

 

Spot the dog

This mallard pair, almost invisible on the opposite bank, stood motionless above their reflections as Ellie and I walked by. I’ve seen them there before, on their log.

 

We came across the duck again, further up the canal, trying to make friends with another mallard pair. It looked so sad. I really hoped for the best for it. Maybe next time I visited the canal it would have found others of its kind.

A spell in the Garden of England

When I’m with my brothers and sisters, my grief for Frog is not so bad. They seem to fill in the hole that his death has left in my life. Sadly, they all live in the South East, four hours’ journey (at least) from me here in the South West.
 
Ten days ago however, I was lucky enough to spend a week with my brother J and sister-in-law K in K’s family house which happens to be in the same Kentish village as the houses of my two sisters.
 
Actually, it’s not happenstance at all. We were all brought up in that village. K’s house is separated from the house my family grew up in by only a couple of fields and a river, and K attended the same local school as me and my sisters. My brother therefore married the girl next door (and I hope J and K won’t mind me saying that).
 
Whereas Devon is wide open and rolling, cosy in parts and dramatic in others, Kent is unbelievably pretty, more like a garden than working countryside.

Not for nothing is Kent known as the Garden of England.
You can hardly see the village here for its thick cover of trees

K’s house is a mill house dating from the sixteenth century, with uneven wooden floors and a warren of rooms, easy to get lost in. It lives on an island enclosed by three arms of a river. Greenery abounds – both exotic and native, nature rules, and the whole place is full of magic.

The Mill House

The river and the Mill House garden

The village nestles in the chalky North Downs, where we walked most days. We spent nearly four hours in this nearby valley and didn’t see another person, even though from the hilltop the towers of London’s Canary Wharf are visible on the horizon.

A walk in a nearby valley

Parts of the valley are being rewilded.

Shrubs and trees are racing to re-cover what was once agricultural land and then a golf course

The swards were full of orchids and other wildflowers.

Pyramid orchid and Bacon and eggs (Birdsfoot-trefoil),
one of nature's stunning colour combinations

Another sort of orchid. (My sister A would know its name.)

On Friday, the hottest day of the year so far, we took refuge in the Mill House’s shady garden.

Drinks and lunch in the Mill House garden

Another day we walked along the river, past these hop fields, for which Kent is famous,

Hop field

and these lavender fields, which take advantage of Kent’s hot, dry summers as well as the rise in overall temperatures.

 

Lavender field, planted to flower in succession

The scent as we walked past was delicious.

Nearby the council has created a country park with a glorious wildflower meadow . . .

The wildflower meadow with neat paths and signboards (and my brother)

The wildflower meadow with rows of lavender just visible behind trees in the distance

The meadow's wildflowers, including more orchids

Imaginative seats (from handmadeplaces.co.uk*) are placed appropriately: a dragonfly by the river, a grasshopper here by the meadow.

The wooden seat in the shape of a grasshopper
(which has, inconveniently for the photo, placed itself half in and half out of shade)

It was a good place to sit and rest.

Brother J on the grasshopper

Heartfelt thanks to my family for giving me such a wonderful time.

*Blogger not creating links at the moment. Will try and rectify in due course

Rewilding update

The tree people arrived in the middle of January: lovely Irish Ken Hogan (www.kenhogantreeservices.co.uk ) bringing with him a cake for me from his lovely wife ‘Mole’ together with an assortment of young lads.

They chainsawed the dreaded Leylandii which were blocking all the light at the bottom of our garden. They were able to leave stumps some four foot high as conifers don’t resprout like broadleaved trees do. These stumps will become covered in ivy, which provides food and cover for birds and insects in the winter.

A Leylandii stump (and my neighbour's house)

With a powered winch, they hauled out the remains of the field maples which had been taking up more and more space and obscuring our lovely views. They left these rooted stumps upside-down in piles as habitat for creatures of all shapes and sizes. These piles I discovered are called, unsurprisingly, ‘stumperies’.

Stumperies

They sliced the tops off the willows and elder that had grown unbelievably tall and spindly in order to compensate for the Leylandii. Although all looks bare now, these should bush out and give us much better screening than before while restoring our sight of the horizon and sunsets.

A once-leggy tree, ready to bush out

I called this ‘coppicing’ but Ken called it ‘pollarding’. Google says that ‘coppicing’ involves cutting trees back down to ground level, while pollarding means leaving them a few feet high, so Ken is right.

With a mammoth machine they shredded most of the piles of cuttings that Frog and I had made in the autumn when we started trimming everything, as well as all but the largest of what they had produced. This they chopped into logs for my neighbour who has a wood-burning stove (and has been supremely tolerant of all the work and told me to do what I liked).

They left some piles of wood around . . . 

A pile of wood (to the right) and my shadow

. . . as these host insects and fungi and rot down to nourish the soil, as well as making good hiding places for small mammals.

They also placed some of the cuttings in a line as a sort of hedge.

The row of cuttings. (The fence is there to stop Ellie racing into the road or into my neighbour's garden.)

This provides a structure for things to grow through and can be added to as cuttings become available. Again, it provides habitat for fauna and, I discovered, is called a ‘wind-row’, so I suppose it gives protection against wind (of which we get a lot).

They left the shreddings in a massive pile next to the house. Neighbours have been helping themselves to carloads of the stuff for use on muddy paths and I’ve been putting them in the deep holes left when the field-maple roots were pulled out as well as on my veg beds as feed and mulch. As you can see, however, there’s still quite a lot left.

A root-hole filled with shreddings

Shreddings mulching one of my veg beds

A beached whale of shreddings. As you can tell, this pile was once double in size and stretched out on to the grass. Thanks to my sister Anna who spent a long time scraping the chippings off the grass when she came to stay.

We’ve now discovered a whole new section of garden and have the makings of what I see as a ‘dappled dell’.

The dappled dell

Already snowdrops and other bulbs that I never knew existed are pushing their way through.

Snowdrops which have appeared by magic in a part of the garden once dark and dead.

In due course, I might plant one or two small trees with blossom and food for birds, such as crab-apple or hawthorn, but I’m not in any hurry. I shall see what happens naturally first.

Meanwhile, I’ve had to completely rearrange the sitting-room so that we can sit on the sofa and take in the glorious views. And when the weather’s better I might even manage to take a picture of what we can see.

Once, we cowered in the middle of a wood. Now, we live on a mountain-top.

Thanks once again to my lovely nieces and nephews who’ve shown such interest in my rewilding project, not least Mark who's just started a business https://www.aklimate.co.uk/   helping organisations to be carbon neutral. 

Rewilding the garden

As Exeter expands ever closer, as my walks are increasingly restricted by barbed wire, impenetrable fences and ‘Private’ signs, and as fields and hedges are tidied and tamed, I’ve decided to create my own patch of wild nature by doing everything I can, with Frog’s help, to encourage it into our garden. Here’s how we’re doing it.

During the summer, except for the bit near the house where we sit, we let the lawn grow. Ox-eye daisies and Meadow cranesbill, that once upon a time I planted in the flower-beds, escaped to bloom in profusion, and all the low plants like self-heal, that usually never got much of a chance, spread beneath them in a carpet of colour and bees. It all looked and sounded gorgeous and lifted my heart every day. (Unfortunately I wasn’t taking photographs at the time so can’t share it with you.) I was astonished how much could happen in such a short time

In September (I think), after the flowers had set seed, we cut and raked the area. (It’s important not to leave the cuttings as they fertilise the soil, and wildflowers do best on poor soil.)

In October, with professional help, we dug a pond and semi-planted it with appropriate wild flowers. I didn’t want to cram it with plants as I’m keen to see what arrives of its own accord. Apart from anything else, these plants are what will do best. Also, I need to see how much of the bank stays damp in the summer – ie how much the liner intrudes. 

The new pond
(The fence is there to stop us and The Dog churning up the mud.)

Already, birds are using the pond for paddling and drinking. A few weeks ago it froze over, but the middle is very deep (3-4 foot?) so creatures like dragonfly larvae will be able to survive.

The plants are in sacks of soil around the edge, not plastic pots.

The sacks of soil around the edge of the pond, with some planting

There is a good shallow area, as this is where the water is warmest and tadpoles thrive, and an extensive beach so that amphibians and other creatures can get out.

The pond's shallow margin and beach

To one side of the pond with some second-hand bricks we'd acquired, the pond people created a bug hotel. I’m not sure about it as our banks are full of holes anyway, with bees going in and out of them, and I prefer to keep things as natural as possible. Maybe its position next to the pond is the important factor. I shall monitor it.

The bug hotel

They also created this formal log-pile next to the pond as shelter for amphibians and small mammals, which again I’m not sure of as we already have plenty of untidy piles of logs. We shall see.

The tidy log-pile

With the pond, we viewed our garden in a whole new way. We saw how dense the trees at the bottom of the garden had become, how much they obscured our lovely views and how much shade they cast, particularly over the pond. We did a lot of clearing.

A cleared area

The stumps you can see in the picture above will be dug out. They are mostly Field maple which grows fast and big and can't be laid as it's too brittle. It was a bit of a nuisance actually.

We finally got round after 41 years to arranging for these Leylandii to be removed (in January before the nesting season) as they’re not native and everything around them was dark and dead.

The Leylandii (in the background)

As firs don’t re-sprout like broadleaved trees do, we’ll be able to leave a good stump. This should be colonised by ivy, valuable cover for wildlife and a source of nectar and berries in autumn and winter when there’s not much else around.

At the same time these Willow (I think) trees, grown tall and spindly in their efforts to reach the light, will be coppiced so that they bush out. That way they’ll provide thicker, safer places for birds to nest and roost, be a better screen between us and our neighbours, and return to us our view of the horizon.

Trees for coppicing

I envisage the area as a small dappled wood as it already has Holly, Elder, Blackthorn and Wild cherry. I’ll see how these trees change with the increased light and space and if necessary, after I’ve watched the spot for a year or so, I may plant one or two more trees. We had an enormous flock of fieldfares (refugees from the cold further north) scoping our garden for a week in November and I felt awful that we didn’t have any food for them as the few berries we do have were all gone. A hawthorn or a crab-apple might help.

Fired with enthusiasm and while the digger was on site, we cleared the shrub bed next to our terrace. Not only were the shrubs non-native, but they stopped us seeing our new wildflower meadow. We seeded it with a (native) wildflower-meadow mix which included a plant called Yellow rattle. This steals nutrition from grass, thus deterring the grass and allowing wildflowers to thrive, and is a vital ingredient of wildflower meadows. I’m hoping the Yellow rattle will spread to the bits that were once lawn.

The ex-shrubbery, soon to be a wildflower meadow.
(The pole is one of three that hold up our shade-sail in the summer.)

We also sowed wildflower-meadow seed on all the muddy patches around the pond and on the bald patches that had arisen in the rest of the garden because of the traffic to and fro.

Scrub (shrubs) is an important wildlife habitat so we’ve left our other shrubbery, even though it’s non-native and a bit of a disaster by conventional standards (overgrown with brambles and nettles, part dead, mis-shapen etc etc). I’ll work out what to do with it in due course.

The overgrown shrubbery (with cuttings in the foreground)

Because of all our efforts we now have piles of cuttings and logs all over the garden.

A cuttings pile, one of several around the garden 

We won't burn the cuttings and add to the world's greenhouse gases. Instead, some of them will be shredded by the tree surgeon, and the shreddings/wood chips then spread on my veg beds where they quickly break down and nourish the soil, or used to firm up muddy paths (of which we have many).

Incidentally, a couple of years ago I had a pile of shreddings which I covered with a tarpaulin so that they didn't rot too much before I got a chance to use them. When I came to lift the tarpaulin a few months later there was at least one grass snake and one toad living there - which just proves that, given the habitat, wildlife will arrive, and the more untidy you leave your garden the better.

The rest of the cuttings we plan to leave unshredded and lay inside one of our boundary hedges as extra cover for wildlife.

This hedge has a double layer of trees, with a gap down the middle which
The Dog loves running along. We plan to spoil her fun by filling the gap with cuttings.

Frog and I are in the process of laying this hedge in order to both thicken it and retrieve some more view. Frog is good at wielding a chainsaw and has some training in the Devon laying technique and I’m a keen dragger and piler of bits as I love being outside and having a simple physical task. Whether we manage to complete that job this winter is debatable and in any case it’s probably best not to upset the wildlife too much all at once.

And before I forget to mention it, we’ve also removed as much fencing as we can around the outside of the garden as this might deter larger animals like foxes and badgers. We had to put it up to stop The Dog squeezing through the hedges, racing out into the road and chasing vehicles, but now she’s a sensible (?) eleven and a half years old we hope she’ll content herself with barking instead. (So far so good.)

This is a very long post. I was going to tell you about The Novel as well, but maybe that will have to wait for another day.

And I realise now that none of the pictures here, being mostly of mud, is very inspiring. I’ll try and post some more in the spring and summer as my vision becomes a reality.

 

This post was inspired by my lovely niece Lucy who showed an interest in what we’re doing in the garden and asked me to send her some pictures. Thank you Lucy!