Survival Of The Fittest

This time of the year, especially if it is a dry day, sitting in my lounge with the sliding doors opened, I will often hear young birds chirping on the trees in the garden. Sometimes they will be also be seen "hiding" in the borders calling for the adult birds to continue feeding them if they have just flown their nest. They are of course particularly very vulnerable to the outside world as they are still learning to use their wing thus very prone to bigger birds preying on them.. One of the most common birds which nest in bird boxes fixed onto the fences of our houses are are normally what we would call blue tits in the UK . Unfortunately we didn't get any nesting in ours this year but our neighbour had some in theirs just over on the other side of our fence and we could hear them whenever we see one of the adults returning to feed them.



This picture was taken from our box last year. We had eight eggs, six hatched, lost two to the woodpeckers !! (I saw it being dragged out of their box !!) and when one finally flew out 2 months later (pic below) we found three little "skeletons" left in the nest!


They are very tiny when they leave the nest (probably 2 inches across) - just like in the picture above which we took it last year. After about a few days of flapping about learniong to fly and if they survive that long eventually they will hide in a bush with low branches as they are safer the higher they can go. This morning I noticed a few blue feathers on my lawn and a blue claw next to it which I suspect was one of the foxes' dinner last night!! The weaker ones are the unlucky ones !!

First Mission Accomplished!!

As it is meant to be 28 degrees today I have decided to be out in the garden only the first half of today as it gets really sweltering out there in the middle of the day in that heat and burned to a crisp!! So without much delay after a good breakfast of toast and honey washed down with a glass of orange juice I headed out to my compost bin with a spade to dig out some compost for my borders before any plants can go in. As they are young seedlings they need all the nutrition they can get.

Oh, before I forget, can I point out the lovely daisies in the picture on the left here - my father in law brought them for me yesterday evening - which he found growing wild in his garden. Aren't they pretty ? I think they are - just as well because they smell horrid ! I have seen a few bees on it but I don't think they were attracted to their smell but rather their colour.



After about an hour later, having dug out enough compost - known as "black gold" in the gardening world - I found my trowel which I thought I must have binned, in the compost bin amongst my compost material!! It must have been in there for at least a year !! I have missed it though ! Mind you I have found my spoons and forks in there before so no surprises there I think being the absent minded self as I normally am.

Vegetable peels, young cuttings from the garden and grassing cuttings are all thrown into these bins and left in there for about a year to rot down. It will smell a bit in there to start with when it is slowly rot down and that was why we invested in some proper compost bins with lids to keep the flies out and the smell in !! Slowly with the earth worms eating through all those peels and stuff what we get in the end is a non smelling crumbly, black and very rich compost for the garden (picture on the right) - all straight out of my garden with no extra costs - well, apart from buying those bins in the first place but those would outlast me I would think !

Now that I have laboriously forked in the compost (on top of the soil in the picture below) and dugged it over in the borde,r the sweet peas and my marigold seedlings were in its final place. Hopefully in a few weeks time they will reward me with an abundance of frangrant flowers!!

SUMMER IS HERE!!!

Summer is definitely here !!!! We have had a few days of rain last week. Although the garden do need it but living in a country with all the four seasons seems to make us think that it is our "right" to have some warm and dry weather - like we have earned it somehow by putting up with three to six months of freeziing and damp weather.

As this week the weather forecast is a bit better I have taken the opportunity to start planting out all my plants (which I have grown from seeds) on the border of my garden although this year they all looked like seedlings rather than plants. This is how Mother Nature works. She does these things and get your attention that life isn't always perfect - and it should be. I don't think I have did anything different to them as my father in law is having the same probelm. He should know as he has been my "teacher" and still is. Very reluctantly, 14 years ago - having moved to the UK and "inherited" a big garden from him - I have started gardening. I was reluctant because everything, every plant that I try to grow before then died on me. No matter what I do they just failed to survive. I even nurtured a weed happily thinking that I would have some lovely fragrant basil leaves over my pasta until a friend pointed it out one evening.

So now, 14 years later, at least I can differentiate a weed from a plant - great progress, for me. I have figured out the "art" of gardening. You see, if I stick to plants that won't die on me I have 100% success and don't seem like failure. I think that is a good way of self encouragement.

Well time wait for no one as they say. I am heading out there in the wild again in the hope that I will have a colourful and thriving garden to enjoy the summer breeze - when my jobs are finally done !!

FINALLY I AM HERE!!!

Way hey !! I am finally here "blogging" with my sister for the first time. Although the reason now I have managed to get here is all due to her very good and very percise instructions which she kindly emailed to me - and can I just stressed with pictures as well - or else I would be "lost in instructions" ! You see I do need all that as I am such a proficient computer user - not really - the only thing I am good at with computer is, basically, typing. And so I shall be, a lot in the near future as I will be contributing to this blog alongside her. I am sooo looking forward to all that.

Mi Favorito - Part I

Being a couch potato, there are a few things that I could do while sticking to my lovely sofa. Other than snacking, which I couldn't do much nowadays with diet plans coming up, I love to read, but what I do most would be watching tv, documentaries, movies, cartoons, and series is what I watch most for the past 3 months.

Kiddy Saturday TV Marathon
As a kid, I remember I would cry if mum didn't wake me up for smurf on Saturday. It was a treat for me, I would have tv marathon until 3 in the afternoon, that's why I love saturday, well, who doesn't.

Let's take a walk down memorylane.....

Smurf- My Childhood CompanionJem -My First Idea about Girl Power

Ducktales-My First Adventure with filthy rich Uncle Scrooge who swims in pool of gold coins Then I evolve to watching series.

The first series I watch should be "I dream of Jeannie"

I remember I loved the velvet seat in the bottle particularly, it just looks so elegant.

That's my favourite past time as a kid, I would just love to watch these again as it was really amusing.