Pea sticks and other animals

A few weeks back we planted winter pea plants, variety Twinkle, and with this warm weather recently, they have started growing well- so well in fact that they are twining themselves together. According to the label that came with the mini pea plants, they are self supporting if planted in a block together.
This certainly seems to be their habit from observation, but they are also pulling each other over, so we decided to put in pea sticks, which are tall twigs, to allow the peas to climb- they should reach 50cm in height when fully grown.

We were going to go to a local hedgerow and see what we could scavenge, but remembered that the hedge at the edge of the green, which was cut in such a way that the stems were bent over in an interwoven style, by being  partially cut through, and this allows side shoots to form and grow upwards.
Normally these shoots are trimmed back by the local authority to maintain a neat height, but not been done yet, so these became the source of our pea twigs.

Now we have a little forest of twigs sticking up from the raised bed, looking like they are ready to repel any invader. Hopefully the peas will begin to climb these instead of each other.

Whilst walking to the hedge, we had to stop and pick up more walnuts. The last few weeks or so has seen many of the walnuts falling off the trees (four of them) at different stages. Each tree has a different walnut size or shape. Currently we are finding mostly large walnuts, but another tree is dropping very small smooth shelled nuts, and another has medium sized nuts with an orangy tint to the shell.

We collect them  to use for cooking - to make cakes to raise money for the local church, but we especially collect them to prevent the squirrels burying them in our lawn and flower beds. We have had a squirrel invasion twice in our roof before now- but I have worked on plugging the gaps over the years to stop them getting in- seems to have worked in the last few years. They hang around our area precisely because of the plentiful supply of food.

The squirrels have poor memories, so often don't dig the buried walnuts up- some are found by rooks and crows, but many start to sprout and grow and if they get a toe-hold, can be very difficult to dig up as they throw out a long tap root which makes pulling them or digging them up a chore.

Rosie had a pleasant surprise this morning on her walk- a cat ran across her path, that always get her excited, followed closely by a monkjac deer- not sure if the two were connected, or just both spooked by an approaching dog. Luckily she was on her lead, as she pulled me along in an attempt to get to one or both. The deer must have jumped the gate to the cemetery as it was long gone, and the cat did what cats do and disappeared.

Also in the garden today, was covering the potato plants with fleece in an attempt to stop them getting frosted- they were supposed to grow and be ready for Christmas harvesting, but the warmer weather has made them grow rapidly and despite constant earthing up, the growth has exceeded the capacity to protect them with soil anymore.

And to round it out daffodil bulbs have gone in to the front garden beds ready to give a show of colour next year.

Hedgerow Bounty

I feel the touches of Autumn in the air today. This could be because it is damp and overcast, or it could be that nature is in advance of itself this year.

As part of the walk pattern for Rosie, one route takes us down Church lane which peters out in farmland and a bridleway which leads over to the next community.

Along the first part of the pathway is a mixed hedgerow that contains all sorts of fruits, flowers and trees.
Elder, which yields two bounties, the elderflower in late spring and just now, the elderberries.

There are stone fruits such as wild plum and most years a few hop vines have worked their way in amongst the trees and bushes but I have not seen any this year.

Blackberries/bramble berries are just ripening now and sloe berries are turning a purplish blush colour. These last two and maybe the elderberries will be used to make bramble jelly, sloe gin or sloe vodka and the elderberries may end up as juice, a flavouring for gin or vodka or fermented in to wine.

If we proceed a bit further up the path, there is an opening in the hedgerow that leads along a short path to the edge of the river Lark. (Rosie likes to splash in the shallows, but does not like to swim!)
Here, on a bend in the river, schoolchildren used to bathe in times past as part of the school day, and grain was transported upriver to be offloaded here to take to the Malting along the same dog walk path, which although over grown now, still shows traces of its former track width.

There are all sorts of wild creatures about this area, swans, ducks, moorhens on the river, lapwings, skylarks, swifts swallows and house martins and the usual more common birds flying about. A Red Kite was spotted a few months back, and Rosie and I bumped in to a Monkjac deer one day- they are small deer , usually timid, and have an unfortunate habit of dashing across the road without looking, which causes a few near accidents with cars- this one ran off at a rate of knots.

A few weeks ago I was visiting Cambridge and used the Newmarket road Park and Ride site to catch a bus in to the centre. Around the perimeter of the car park is what looks like an ancient hedgerow as it  contains a mixture of trees, shrubs and bushes, but this was planted when the car park was constructed not that long ago, and here there are sloes aplenty (blackthorn bushes) so I might foray there at some time for sloes as well.

Fan club of Rosie

As a break from hedge cutting  E and I decided this morning to go to the Heavy Horse and Country Show on Rede Farm near Bury St Edmunds raising money on behalf of the Millennium Farm Trust.

This was after waiting for a Bosch engineer to call (we were told anytime between 7am and 3pm) to look again at our dishwasher- it was part of a recall notice a few weeks ago, when it had a new control board fitted. Since then it got progressively worse at cleaning.
It turns out that some of the internal pipework was clogging up and the fault was probably unrelated to the original recall. However as a goodwill gesture Bosch did not charge us for the call ( and we got the blockages cleared as well).

The Millennium Farm trust was founded in the Autumn 1996. With the aim of providing adults with learning disabilities work and training opportunities in farming, conservation and rural skills within Suffolk. Initially the work was on farms in Suffolk, but since 2004 has been based on a section of Rede farm and also at Old Hall near East Bergholt from 2003 to 2008.

Wherever we go we come across members of the Fan Club of Rosie, and this was no exception. As she is a staffy/springer spaniel cross she has an attractive chestnut coloured coat which is short haired and gleams in the sun. She has a friendly face and attracts everybody's attention. Of course with the cross of staffy and springer, she is full of bounce and likes to jump up and lick everyone if allowed.

At the show were heavy horses (as per the title) who were mostly in their fields or in stables. One was pulling a cart to offer rides, and one was waiting patiently to have new shoes put on. He had one new shoe on, and when I asked the farrier, he said he would do the others as well, but a job that takes under an hour to do, had to last all through the show so that everybody had a chance to see it.

There were craft stalls and food stalls and guess the weight of the horse (several tonnes I would imaging) .
We spotted a candy floss and popcorn stall , and E cannot resist freshly made floss. Sadly it was pre-made in tubs, but they had a machine to make it - Hurrah. However both the teenage stall holders were unsure how to operate the machine, so a quick call to mother and an online tuition course materialised.

After some experimentation with the sugar amount, and then finding out the machine was not plugged in, some floss was duly made.

The teenage girl said it was her brothers stall really, but he wanted to go to the "V" festival near Chelmsford, so had pre-made the candy floss in the morning.

We had a good walk around the surrounding fields and met an ancient tractor also pulling a cart, wending its way around the boundaries.

Rosie found a snakes skin which had been shed at sometime, so a good time was had by all.

One down, one to go!

One cupressus hedge is scalped and the branches cut up and  transported to the recycling center. One of the bits of growth cut down was nearly 10 feet long, which meant in total the top was about 19ft from the ground before lopping off.

The green manure is now of a size that it can be dug in. Tried several techniques to dig in after first cutting the growth down with garden shears. We have four raised beds to dig. Firstly tried digging over with a small fork. That was OK, but took a lot of effort. The second experiment was with a small spade, and this was more successful as a "lump" of soil could be lifted and turned, burying most of the greenery.

I gave up after two raised beds, will return to that tomorrow- arms and back a bit weary from all the cutting and ferrying of the hedge remains to the recycling center. Took three runs and our poor trailer was complaining about the weight of stuff it had to carry!

Rosie has found a treasure. On her walk with E, she discovered a chew bone that another dog must have dropped. She proudly carried it home without once letting it go, and is now roaming the house, not sure what to do with it.

Not looking forward to dealing with the second hedge as it is in and around a shed, a greenhouse and a lean to off the garage.

Will probably have to adopt the technique that a professional tree surgeon did when it was last cut, which is to cut a flat ledge on top of the hedge, place a large flat board on this and use it as a platform to move forward. Apparently with an old hedge this is quite a stable way to operate as the trunks are at least four or five inches thick, it should support the weight.

Time will tell!

Find the root

Waiting for a new chainsaw chain, as I have worn the current one out. I could sharpen it myself but need the right files etc. to do it, and end result might be debatable.
To pass the time after the rain had stopped, I was digging around the remaining trunk of one of the cupressus trees that was cut down (see to cupress or not to cupress) with the aim of trying to remove the stump and all associated roots - in the course of doing this I found the end of the flower bed that had disappeared under the hedge and three buried breezeblocks as well. That makes five that I have dug up from this area - I'm not sure what they were there for, but they were deliberatly buried in a row.

This pm, E and I started to replant some of the perennial flowers that had to be moved during the extension build last year in to the newly dug flower beds in the back garden.

We are hoping that Rosie does not do her usual flying leap through the beds when she thinks it is time to chase away the pidgeons or other birds, or have a bark at next doors Alsations. We had to fence off parts of the front garden until quite recently as she wanted to use the new fledgling hedge as hurdle training in preparation for the doggie Olympics.

Rain again stopped us finishing this job, but 80% of the plants are now in- we managed to split some of the clumps in the hope of increasing the number of plants, and after nearly a year in temporary containers, the root systems of some of the them were quite extensive.

Once the chain for the chainsaw arrives, two more trees are coming down to open up the part buried flower bed and allow us an area where the trees were, to use as a cold frame space for hardening off plants and also overwintering any that might need it. We will have surplus paving slabs when we reshape the path- currently there are hexagonal "stepping stone" slabs, so once dug up, they will probably form a base for the cold frame area.