Big Garden Birdwatch 2014

I've done the Big Garden Birdwatch for the last couple of years, with varying degress of success - why do all the birds vanish just as soon as you settle down to watch for them?!

This year's total:

Blackbird: 2
Great tit: 2
Robin: 2
Wood pigeon: 1
Magpie: 1
Long-tailed tit: 2

So, an improvement on 2012 in terms of bird numbers and varieties. But where are all the dunnocks which usually hang around in the garden?!

Garden at the beginning of November 2012

I started my new job today (it was fantastic!) so I thought I wouldn't be able to take a garden at the beginning of the month photo as I wasn't at home in daylight. But the OH is on leave still and very kindly took some garden photos for me today.

A lot of stuff has died down already. The echinacea flowers are over so I cut them back last weekend, and the rudbeckia won't be long now either. I even remembered to go and get some grease bands at the garden centre to put around the apple tree and its support (no point doing it to the espalier apple tree as any insects could just crawl up the wall and trellis to get to it).

We also have the most perverse garden birds ever seen. Initially they loved the ground feeder and ignored the hanging feeder. Then we discovered that the local pet shop does bird food by weight, so you can buy small quantities to see what the birds like. We discovered that they love sunflower hearts, so much so that they now have a kind of stacking system for the hanging birdfeeder, like planes coming into land at Heathrow! And they're totally ignoring the ground feeder, which currently has robin and tit mix in the hanging feeder and fat balls too. Now the weather has turned a little bit colder (we're down to about 10°C now) the birds are around a lot more.

I have also been doing a lot of work constructing raised beds and filling them with compost, but I'll post pictures of that once I've finished. ;-)

Garden at the beginning of May 2012

I took today off work, as I had loads of flexi-time owing, but then didn't wake until 11am! I had had big plans for lots of sewing activity. But I did get time to take my garden at the beginning of the month photos.

After a month of non-stop rain (which started as soon as the hosepipe ban started!), it's looking very lush and green. The plants are so much bigger than last year so they're covering more of the soil up, so less of a problem with weeds this year.

Probably the major difference this time is our new bird feeding thingy.

We had a lot of problems with squirrels and pigeons taking all of the food. It wouldn't have been a problem if they'd left some for the little birds, but they gobbled the lot and seemed to have insatiable appetites, as well as apparently not having read the pigeon/squirrel instruction manuals which state that they don't eat mealworms/birdfood covered in chilli. Er, our pigeons and squirrels do!

The idea behind this thing is that you set the apertures so that smaller birds can get through, but not squirrels and pigeons. So far it's working very well - although we found a squirrel in it once, and had to reduce the aperture size. A very frustrated pigeon keeps walking round and round it, but it's made a protected space for the little birds to eat, and they've been feeding a lot since we got it.

 The rhubarb we planted last year has grown a lot, especially with all of the rain.We'll be having lots of rhubarb crumble soon.

A close up of the raised bed with lots of growth evident.

This is our cold frame, stuffed full of plants, many of which are waiting to go into the garden as they're cuttings I took last year. I've given a few away to friends already but there's still quite a lot left.

Seedlings growing on on one of the windowsills. These are tomatoes, cosmos and amaranthus.

 And two different kinds of lettuce on another windowsill.

Treading water

I've reached a hiatus in knitting the Essential Cardigan. When I bought the yarn (from the Yarn Gathering in Coventry, since closed down after all the, ahem, problems of Knit Camp) there was one ball less than I needed in stock, and the owner convinced me that a ball of grey would work as a contrast. Now that I've knitted the fronts, back and collar I don't want a contrast colour in it, I want it to be all red. Of course, it then proved nearly impossible to find more balls of Grignasco Merino Gold DK, but I've eventually tracked some down in Wisconsin (!!) and arranged a yarn swop with a kind woman on Ravelry who wanted some sock yarn and British things. Thank God for Ravelry. So, progress has stopped on the cardigan for the time being, whilst I wait for a yarn parcel to arrive from the US. We'll ignore the niceties of dye lots...

So I've been treading water, getting on with some bits and bobs of other projects to fill the time. I did the 12th square of my blanket KAL, which is as big as I was planning to go. Now all I need to do is crochet all the squares together.

And I started some socks as I had a trip to Cambridge one afternoon for a masterclass at the University Library and wanted something to knit on the train. I was amused to spot this sign at King's Cross on the way:

These are Broadripple socks, from Knitty, a pattern I've made before, way back in 2005. The yarn is Opal Cotton sock, which Zeah gave me a while ago. I really like the cotton sock yarns - I like the muted colours and they wear really well. The 2005 Broadripple socks still look almost as good as when they were first finished, and they have been worn regularly ever since.

With the arrival of the snow last week we went and stocked up on bird food. We also bought a ground feeding tray and some mealworms as we have a robin who visits the garden regularly and we thought he'd like them. The mealworms look totally disgusting (I refused to touch them, so the OH had to do it!) but they seem to be doing the trick, as, a week later, we now have two robins, male and female blackbirds and more blue tits!

Look, aren't they gross?! I can just about handle cooking bacon these days (although a whole roast chicken was nearly my undoing) but I draw the line at mealworms.

And in other exciting news, Nicsknots, whose blog I linked to a couple of weeks ago has a new website - it's here, for groovy knitting bags and knitting needle rolls and cards.

That's all for now. I have a busy couple of weeks coming up so I'm not sure how much time I'll get to blog for the rest of February.

There seem to have been a few problems with the comment function on the blog, so I've adjusted the settings. Hopefully it now works...

Big garden birdwatch and some knitting and sewing

This weekend I took part in the big garden birdwatch, where you spend an hour writing down which birds you've seen in the garden, then submit the results online to the RSPB. I was out both mornings so had to do it in the afternoon, but I think I'd have seen more in the morning as that's when they're out and about more. My results were: 3 woodpigeons, 2 blue tits, 1 magpie and 1 robin. Not the greatest, considering we've seen quite a few blue tits and dunnocks in the garden in one go before now.

It was quite fun. You sit down with a mug of tea and watch the garden for an hour. Simple.

 This is the robin.

I had a sewing splurge last weekend, as I decided to use up the leftovers from the lining of the laptop case I made Mum for Christmas, to make a little bag. I used this pattern I found online, from Flossie Teacakes blog.

 As a first attempt and bearing in mind I've done very little sewing in the last few years, I'm rather pleased with it, although the pattern is meant to include a cover for the ends of the zip, which didn't really come out as I only had heavyweight interfacing stashed away to use up  which made the whole thing hard to turn the right way out!

I plan to make another one, just to get it right, as I want one to give as a present and I do want to do more sewing. I've been reading some sewing blogs over the last year, which I've found inspiring. The main problem is time - I made this bag on a Saturday afternoon, and for most of the year I'll be outside gardening on a weekend afternoon. I do all my knitting either in front of the TV, on the train or at knitting group, so actually getting the sewing machine out and doing nothing but sewing feels very indulgent.

I've put the locking stitch markers I got in the knitting group secret santa to good use to mark the edge of the cardigan along which I need to pick up stitches. It's much easier to pick them up evenly if you follow the instructions on knitty and divide the area up into small, equally sized, sections. 

That's it for now. I have a books read in January post scheduled for this week too, but I think I'll wait until daylight next weekend to do garden at the beginning of the month. Apparently we might actually have some cold weather forecast for later this week so the garden might change in appearance a bit.