Wildlife Garden

Garlic, Bugs and Curses Galore

June 19, 2011
Garlic, Bugs and Curses Galore

What’s happening with the weather gods? The rain has come too late for a bounteous crop of spuds but is perfectly timed to ruin my garlic bulbs that are desperately in need of a good sun basking. I had a tricky decision to make this weekend. The ground was sodden and with no respite promised, [...]

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Stag Party

June 28, 2009
Stag Party

This monster flew into the path of our barbeque a couple of weekends ago. Here he is, positioning himself nicely to go on the spit roast. We were in an area of South West London where sightings of stag beetles aren’t that infrequent. Apparently there was a tract of ancient woodland nearby and as we [...]

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Maternal Pride

June 10, 2008
Maternal Pride

I was leaning over the pond this evening, trying to reach the juicy alpine strawberries, when I spotted a big adult frog eyeballing me from the comfort of the pool. I was swelled with pride, as this strange beast had accepted lodgings in my pond. Now my eye was in though, I spotted 3 tiny [...]

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Murder Most Horrid

March 30, 2008
Murder Most Horrid

Today it was time to face facts. The local frog population have obviously snubbed my pond and the slugs that I have been saving as amphibian delicacies have been having a whale of a time in my compost bin, procreating merrily and sniggering behind my back. Something clearly needs to be done if I ever [...]

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Cuppa Char Anyone?

January 6, 2008
Cuppa Char Anyone?

I woke this morning with plans of allotment pottering on a slightly more sophisticated level than I managed yesterday. I still wasn’t feeling on top form so my plans centred mostly around my new chair and dreams of a hot steaming mug of tea. My mug of choice was A Room of One’s Own – [...]

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Fungal Foray

January 1, 2008
Fungal Foray

For Christmas this year I got a couple of packs of mushroom “seed” or more accurately, packs of wooden dowells impregnated with mushroom mycelium. I went up to Yorkshire for a few days so I split them with my Dad and we had some fun trying to bash the little plugs into some freshly cut [...]

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Chard Nurturing

November 3, 2007
Chard Nurturing

I staggered across to my allotment today, laden with compostable materials. Not sure what the heck happened on the waste front last week but I’m going to blame the veg box. I could barely carry the bag of peelings, vacuum crud and shredded paper and by the time I added my friends sack of grass [...]

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Infinity Pool

October 20, 2007
Infinity Pool

I acquired a few off cuts of pond liner from the amazing freecycle group and after using them to suppress weeds for about 2 days, I decided I may as well get on and build a pond. I took a fairly haphazard approach to the design and was lucky that my sheet of rubber just [...]

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