Tree babies

Our ‘resident’ tawny owl has been hooting during the daytime! It hoots once between 11 am – 3 pm and then again the next day. It has been doing this every day for the past 2 weeks! Bit weird isn’t it?

We’ve also heard the cuckoo again (from around the 20th April onwards), but at the time of writing, there is still no sign of any swallows, which is also a bit strange, because they normally arrive before the cuckoo does.

And for the first time ever, our sweet woodruff is flowering before the 1st May! You can make really nice May Wine with this herb (dry the flowers in a coolish oven, add to a bottle of Riesling wine, let it infuse, then add a bottle of prosecco and enjoy!). This recipe is for multiple people of course and please remember - only pick what you can identify!

I seems as though nature is just as confused as we are at the moment.

We still only have one solitary chicken left - wee Tufty. We were supposed to pick up 5 more ex-battery hens last month, but of course, due to the current situation this has been put on hold. Shame, because I was really looking to introducing 5 new chickens to our garden! Tufty really is a character though; she can’t wait to flee her coop to join the neighbours’ chickens across the road. Even when I try to give her a nice titbit or two, she just ducks under my hand and runs away! How’s that for loyalty? She has also stopped laying eggs, or if she has been, she’s been doing it somewhere else! Who knows?

In October 2018 we planted chestnuts with my teenage nieces, in the hope that they would one day grow into trees. They came up right enough in 2019, produced a couple of leaves before going to ‘sleep’ for winter. I am so pleased to see and tell you that the 4 chestnuts have survived their first winter and are now opening their leaves again! It even looks as though they are growing a few extra leaves, too. Although we sowed them on exactly the same day, two are later in opening their leaves this year and two have thicker stems than the other two.

All my other ‘tree babies’ are growing well too. I’ve got a few rowan trees that are almost ready to be moved to their final location, and - thanks to our neighbours - we will plant them along the side of our communal road. The young beeches are slower, but I think they are still alive and the elders are coming along nicely too. I like watching young trees grow… a bit slow, but very interesting! To find out more on how to grow your own forest go to: Greener Gardening