Murder on Nelson Road!

Call the Miss Marple!- a murder has been committed with the purportrator left unknown!

Sorry if you were eating your tea when you read this but this is the second victim in 1 week! My poor goldfish are being picked off one by one! :(

The victim has its head and tail eaten with the body discarded on the gravel just next to the pond.

Any ideas on who decided to have sushi for lunch?

I have 2 cats but they have never shown any interest in the fish before- indeed ive never actually heard of cats catching a fish from a pond. We do have foxes and other cats that come into the garden- my money is on a male tabby cat who we often have to chase out of the garden as he menaces my cats- grrrr!

The murder scene.... (i put the ferns on the wood to the right since discovering the body to hopefully make it harder for anything to get at the fish.)

Sunny day so out in the garden!

Today spent the day in the garden, and really had a major tidy up- and i have to say the garden looks 100% better than it did before if i do say so myself! I planted a purple cordyline tat had been living in a pot for about a year, into the sunny bed to replace a Phyllostachys Shangahi 3 bamboo which did not seem to do very well there- probably lack of moisture (ie me watering!).

The photo above shows just part of the view that looks out over the new grass border and onto the butterfly border in front of the palms in the bed behind. The whole bed where the butterfly border will be was dug over and manure added, and 2 yuccas were taken out that didnt deserve their prime position! The Butia palm in the bed in the centre of the photo almost was dug up today as it has never settled in even in 3 years and its new leaves always came out browned- i assumed frost damage but it should easily have coped with the winters we have had. I have given it 1 more year to prove its place as this winter it has put up 2 new leaves but both seem damaged- there is just something that the plant doesnt like about its new home.

The Acacia is in full bloom and looks and smells beautiful! Will have to cut it back after flowering as it is a huge tree already about 20ft tall! And its only been in the ground 2 summers! I wonder if Acacias reshoot from bare branches after being cut back (pollarded) or does there have to be a bud/branch already there? Will have to do some research.

We are up to 4 lots of frogspawn in the wildlife pond! :) I wonder how many more we will get?- its only a small pond! I counted roughly 200 eggs in one lump of spawn. I managed to catch the white goldfish that is in the pond as he would definately look at the tadpoles as lunch! I left the Golden Minnow in the pond as I hope his mouth is fairly small! Although may take him out and put him back once the tadpoles are out of danger in a month or so.

This little plant above is an Orchid. Dendrobium kingianum. Now its only a small plant about 4" tall but has beautiful sprays of pink flowers in spring. This little plant has proved to be prefectly happy outside over winter on my window ledge. I was surprised how well it has coped. It prefers growing in shade and fingers crossed for some flowers soon!

Lastly a photo of Susie having a drink from the wildlife pond. Am getting increasingly twitchy about whether the chooks are going to have free range in the garden for much longer- i guess there is going to be a period in the spring when all the new shoots are emerging that will be particularly prone to chicken attack so will just have to keep a close eye on them when they are out.

Could spring be officially here?

For me there is no better sign of spring than the fact there is frogspawn in the ponds! :)

The Common frogs (Rana temporia) have been calling in the ponds outside for about a week now- but today was the first lot of frogspawn of the year. Its also the first lot of frogspawn ive had in the garden since moving in 3 years ago. Best of all it was laid in the wildlife pond i built for them last year! There are however 2 fish in the pond one Golden Minnow and one goldfish. If i want the spawn to survive i must remove the goldfish at least. Im not sure if the minnow could eat tadpoles it has a very small mouth so I hope not. The minnow was introduced to eat the mosquito larvae that are found there.



This is Blechnum tabulare its a beautiful evergreen fern - however the winter temps haven turned a few fronds brown but wont have caused any fatal damage. This will be probably planted in the shady border- its spent the winter so far on top of the wormery however since adding the most recent layer to the wormery its no longer stable enough for such a heavy pot.



Lastly some good news my Yucca rostrata which I had almost given up all hope for looks like it is finally showing signs of recovery. I bought it bare rooted 5 years ago from Germany however it never re-rooted properly and i moved it around a bit and in the process managed to break the roots that had started to grow. The central growing point browned off and died away and I thought uh-oh ive managed to kill it- sure enough it started loosing its crown and thought it really should be chucked as it looked awful!

However instead of chucking it I potted it up about a year ago into a pot and forgot about it- putting off the inevitable. And then about 2 weeks ago I decided to have a closer look at the plant.


There right in the centre a new crown had begun to grow- now it will take many years before it looks halfway decent again but im so chuffed its regrown that im looking forward to nursing it back to being respectable again. Im hoping this means its root system has been established now.

This morning the chooks got a porridge breakfast made with moist layers pellets, chopped tomatoes, grain and some Diatom powder. Yummy! Or at least they thought so! Flo went straight for the tomatoes, Cilla and Susie the grain and Hermione hovered around and waited for the others to finish. I think this is showing how Hermione is now lower down the pecking order than I originally thought- Cilla has certainly starting pushing her way up! Susie crouched for me when I put in the food- ive read that this is a sign the hen is amost ready to lay. Apparently about a week after they start crouching properly you can expect your first egg- lets see if thats true! Watch this space!

Carnivorous plants!

The winter of 07/08 was a bad one for my Agave bed- it is the main bed in my garden and the one you first see when you come into the garden. In the autumn of 07 i'd dug in a lot of grit to improve the drainage, but this disturbance to the plants roots left them more exposed to the cold so a lot died that winter.

Being disheartened, but also excited by the prospect of trying something new- I decided to move away from the drought tolerant succulent plants in the main bed and grow something wanting completely the opposite- lush leaves and moisture lovers.

I decided to it would be a great place to plant out some of my Carnivorous plants- I love these plants and had been building up a small collection of them. Up till then they had their own bog barrel but this was looking a bit full now so a Carnivorous plant area in the new bed was just what I needed!

My old Carnivorous plant barrel:


Sarracenias have a few basic growing requirements in order to keep them happy:
1) Grown in full sun- bogs are generally devoid of tall vegetation so do not grow in shade.
2) Watered only with Rain water
3) The soil is devoid of nutrients- and prefer a 1:1 mix of Peat Moss:Play Sand

Making the bog garden:

The bed has grown really well this year (to be honest it was stuffed to capacity so it certainly filled out easily) however I found that even the small amount of shading the plants got from some gingers and a fern- caused them to loose a lot of the red colouration I was expecting to see on the leaves- so they just turned a plain green colour instead. I look forward to seeing if I can do better with them this year!

My favourite plant- Sarracenia purpurea purpurea- a beautiful plant and very hardy to the cold!

The frog song "Bom bom bom..."

Last night we had some quite heavy rain- which is really relaxing when your trying to get to sleep- but above the rain I heard for the first time this year the frogs calling in the pond outside.

The pond is right by the bedroom window so its really quite easy to hear the frogs when they get going. Unfortunately they seem to prefer the Goldfishes pond over the 3 smaller wildlife ponds which I built specially for the frogs! So as a result we never get any surviving tadpoles.

Our wildlife ponds we have are below:

Last year I dug the newest wildlife pond which is only 3ft by 3ft which was a great hit with the damselflies but the frogs didn't move in- I think if we get any spawn in the goldfish pond I will transfer it over to the wildlife pond so increase the numbers of little frogs in the area.

Our tabby kitten India loves trying to catch the frogs unfortunately- and several times over the summer we have to rescue frogs which have found themselves out of the water and confronted with an over excited tabby kitten! This probably is the reason for the frogs reluctance to move away from the larger and deeper goldfish pond!

We have introduced other amphibians into the garden but it is are harder to see if they are still around. There should be Common Newts and Common Toads in the garden.

I think 4 ponds in a tiny urban garden is more than enough for most people but- i just love them and am wondering where to put number 5!