[Anthony B]

WHAT - you modest???? hahahaha

Love the wildlife stories here.

Post WW2, the Belgian government decided that in order to supply more sites to build houses close to cities/towns, instead of re-zoning entire areas, they decreed that 1/8th acre plots along the edges of the farms, would be rezoned for housing. This allowed the farmers to continue, gave them income from the sales of the plots, and allowed new families to build houses. So in our neighbourhood, that is only 25 mins from centre of Brussels, we still have a lot of farms, which encourages a lot of wildlife. A lot of owls inhabit the area - although we dont see them often, birds, waterfowl, squirrels hedgehogs.

i walk the dogs every afternoon and feed some abandoned deer in a property down near a river near us. (Old owner rushed to hospital a few years ago) and now in old age home. We  tried to get them rehomed, but they fall into a group of animals that are classified as wild and thus are not covered in law in terms of anyone owning responsibility for their car - hence my wife and I stepping in.....

[Gordon Steadman]

Just watch it you...I'm Mr Modesty I am!


We are in the middle of farming country here too. Wildlife abounds. My favourites are the growing family of Hoopoes in the garden, there were seven of them digging this morning. The cats give them a wide berth, they can obviously see the shape of that bill!

Deer are everywhere here as are hares. Birds enough to make a twitcher happy, the sky is full of buzzards and kestrels. Just the one hedgehog though (that we have seen anyway) who sleeps under our potting shed.

G

[CMOTD]

Our abundant asparagus harvest.  
   

Grand total of eight spears - which is an increase of seven over previous years. One day I will get it right but they were absolutely delicious and I had to fight the other half for them. Looks like a bumper strawberry crop on the way soon though.

[Gordon Steadman]

Strange thing that! Ronnie has green fingers - pro gardener and all that - but we have given up on the asparagus. Our patch looked pretty much like yours. The soil on our plot is very thin and the entire area is basically chalk so maybe that is a factor.

Talking of chalk, one of the world's biggest lime producers is from round here. There was a vast sea here in the distant past and the deposits go down kilometers. We did a tour of the caves recently which have been dug out over the years. Thirty six kilometers of tunnels! The ceilings seem to go up for ever. Fascinating process once the chalk is heated up.

With so many old stone buildings here, lime (chaux) is the right thing to use for building not cement.

[Johnno]

I like Fluff actually enjoy mowing and will say I am pedantic about it... you must always do the edges first, then the lawn.

If there are bindi and other weeds, you don't need to spray with chemicals, put your mower on the highest cutting possible, let the lawn grow and grow and grow, let it go to seed, yes it will look crappy and shaggy, when it has turned to seed, get the mower and catcher and mow it (at the highest deck setting) basically just taking the top and seeds off.

Repeat for half dozen mows or until the bindi and weeds are gone. 

Here now is the trick... maintenance of the lawn must start slowly, drop the deck height by two, use the catcher and mow (remember to do the edges first). Inspect the mowed lawn for any bindi and weeds, if gone, drop the deck by one lower again. 

You don't need to use the grass catcher now, by letting the grass fall back you are essentially feeding your lawn. 

From here on out you do not want or need to mow your lawn to dirt  by mowing higher the bindi and weeds can not thrive, they require sunlight so with a higher and thicker lawn you have controlled the bindi and weeds.

done... there is nothing better than to sit back with a whiskey and dry looking over the freshly mowed lawn not to forget the smell of freshly mowed grass, yup satisfaction for a job well done.

[CMOTD]

Back on the wildlife front, our small garden never ceases to amaze me. We have had a resident grass snake for some time but it appears we actually had two because I noticed this tiny little fellow sunning him/herself on the parsley in the herb patch yesterday:
   
Judging by its size it probably hatched last July and there must be more about because they don't lay just one egg so it appears we have a family of them. Not good news for the newts in the pond which were decimated by our newt slaughtering blackbird last year. She went to meet her maker in the beak of a sparrowhawk recently but grass snakes live almost entirely on amphibians.

[JasonB]

About a week ago we sadly found a squashed hedgehog on the road at the bottom of our driveway.

Four days later we saw two tiny little baby hedgehogs wandering around at the top of the drive in broad daylight. This is obviously not normal behaviour as the're usually nocturnal. So it didn't take a genius to work out that the squashed hog was probably their mother. There is only one road any where near us, but it seems mum unfortunately chose to head down and try to cross it.

We followed the babies and found their nest under a bush, against a wall with our boiler on the inside. This obviously helped in keeping them all warm, but meant that foraging and food were a fair distance away, with our yard on one side, and the driveway on the other.

Anyway, it turns out that there were four little hogs in the nest, and they're now with a lady that specialises in looking after them.

I'm now building a hog hotel, further away from the road, so that when they're well enough to come back they'll have somewhere safer to live.

[Gordon Steadman]

We discovered a couple of wild plum trees in a secluded corner of the garden. Had no idea what they were until I noticed that they were absolutely covered in fruit. All the cultivated plums have been struggling like mad but these two are obviously very vigorous.

Cooked them and have eight litres of juice for making jelly! Did the first two litres and filled seven large pots - lovely colour.    


This means twenty eight which is rather too many. Our local Google group has provided a recipient for half, can't stand waste.

 Jam makers of the Charente unite.

[JasonB]

Your plums are very early.

[Gordon Steadman]

Your plums are very early.

The wild ones seem very different. They are already as big as they are going to get - or so my horticulturist expert tells me. Fourteen pots all done and cooling off.