AtWaG - (All the World's a Garden)

For the love of Ivy

There's a lot of information about how to get rid of Ivy, some people seem to have a mission to eradicate it and I accept it can be a problem especially when it invades from next door. I have an Ivy plant of almost tree-like proportions growing on the corner of a shed and I really enjoy watching it through the seasons. This Ivy tree is entirely made up of the adult foliage that's the type that is not lobed and is non clinging. It does however bear flowers and fruits in profusion. Just now the flowers are fully out and on warmish days it buzzes with insects, mostly bees but also hover flies and some fat old blue-bottles and flesh flies.
The spherical, almost black berries come in a couple of months time and are rapidly gobbled up by Blackbirds and Wood Pigeons. Berries like these at a time of generally scarcity are a blessing for wildlife as is the thick cover provided by the evergreen foliage. It offers protection from the wind and rain as well as hidey place away from the reaches of the Sparrowhawks.
To get a fruiting Ivy plant you need to allow it to grow vertically and to get it's head up into the sun. The adult foliage grows much less quickly than the juvenile that has spreading as it's main objective.
Make room for some Ivy to develop fully and your garden wildlife will be most appreciative.

Tying up Heather

When in the New Forest don't be surprised if you come across what looks like farming on the edge - bales of twiggy heather in remote areas well away from the nearest farm.It's hard to imagine any livestock making a meal out of twigs, stones, moss and Lichens. Thankfully no livestock, not even Reindeer have to eat the stuff. This baled material has a very specific use, its used for road building and water course management, much of it within the New Forest and other Forestry commission managed areas. When tightly packed and in anaerobic conditions heather rots very slowly so it's ideal for use in wet places.

The most evocative

Is it a smell, a fragrance, a perfume, or an aroma?

Lovely flowers have fragrance, stinky flowers smell, pungent flowers are aromatic but Elderflowers combine all those characteristics into one  - and I find it the most significant olfactory signpost of the whole year. This year the Elder is flowering early and so that wonderful concoction - home made Elderflower cordial will soon  be ready to drink. By some magic just the sweet, smell and taste come through from the flowers with any bitterness left behind in the stalks to go on the compostheap.

If you are lucky enough to be able to get good clean Elderflowers then you can make your own by following a simple recipe on Sue's Blog.

First Foal

Up on Stoney Cross I saw my first New forest foal of the year today - just a couple of days old. The Mare looks a bit lean but the youngster seemed healthy and full of energy. These ponies and their young will fend for themselves until the autumn when they will get caught up in the annual drift and checked over for health and well being. Any that show signs of being poorly are removed from the 'Forest' until they have been nurtured back to fitness.

The ponies are all owned by some one and the agisters keep an eye on them all year round to make sure they are OK. Brands identify them so that a wanderer or a road casualty can easily be indentified.

Greenhouse work goes slow

Our dilapidated old glass-house has Ivy invading through the broken panes and stacks of old but 'perhaps- useful-oneday' plastic pots and containers stacked in the corners. Usually just slugs, snails and variously  sized rodents occupy these inviting hidey-holes. This spring a rather tacky old plastic hanging basket has been occupied by a Blackbird who now has three youngsters. For the last three weeks or so we have been working in shifts of about 15 mins maximum to be sure that the bird didn't abandon her clutch of eggs.
The youngsters have grown quickly and should leave the nest in a week or so - then we can get back to normal activity.

A ropey rack

The New Forest is overpopulated with Fallow Deer. I've counted a gang of more than 70 in the valley where I live and they have become very bold with little fear of humans. This makes them a problem in gardens as there is no way to deter them - shouting, chasing and gesticulating seems to have little effect.

At this time of year the young bucks have time on their hands and they are always on the look out for mischief. This one clearly got too intimate with a rope left lying around and ended up wearing it.  I was impressed that he managed to maintain a a noble posture rather than crawling of into a corner out of embarrassment. I found the rope in our field a few days after taking the photo, I'm sure he's relieved to be rid of it!

Hazel appraisal

Corylus avellana the hedgerow Hazel is one of the few trees that most folks can recognise - I think the catkins have something to do with that, no other tree quite matches the dangliness of those precocious, yellow lambstails. Hazel was certainly the first tree I learned about; as kids we used it for making 'camps', dutch arrows, Bows, fishing rods, walking sticks, spears, the list is along one. It's a very friendly wood for youngsters armed only with a penknife and enthusiasm. It works easily, has no thorns, or staining sap and is both pliant and splitable...perfect for whittling

Have you noticed how often Hazel crops up in the Ray Mears wild food series? - our ancestors must have used it in much the way I did with my band of chums. It's fewer than a hundred years since Hazel was more-or-less abandoned as a useful material - as a consquence the Hazel woods where harvesting once took place still exist, there are thousands of acres now mostly in a sad state and in need of TLC. Hazel needs to be coppiced on a regular cycle for the material to be of a good quality, once it gets old and gnarly it has to be cut, cleared (or stacked) and then  allowed to re-grow for a dozen years or so by which time most of the new growth will be useable.

A proper Hampshire hedge

A few weeks a go I saw a woman poking around next doors little field - I took a sneaky look at the van she had arrived in and saw it had signwriting on it along the lines of fencing contractor....hmm, you don't see many female fence contractors. Anyways, I was happy that next door might eventually be mending their fences and thereby helping keep the New Forest animals out of my adjacent garden.

Some weeks later, as I was driving home in the December darkness some gleaming fresh-cut hazel stems caught my attention and I realised that work had begun on the hedge around Jack's Orchard. That weekend I made a daylight inspection and was surprised and almost taken aback to see that the job being done was a fine piece of traditional hedge laying - not the 'scalped within an inch of its life' Cotswold type of hedge laying but a sympathic, wobbly, rufty-tufty Hampshire hog's back effort.