Tonight I heard a toad - my first of the year. My heart soared.
I was up far too late. It was a light but foggy night and I was letting the dogs out for their final Ps and poos. Whilst the BBC 24 hour news intoned horrific stories behind the double glazed garden doors, the toad croaked – and told me the beginning of Spring was happening. And he makes my “Wind in the Willows” winter complete.
The key characters of Kenneth Grahame’s delightful stories are Toad, Mole and Ratty. Toad is the only one truly welcome here.
“Ratty” should not exist thanks to next door’s “killer cat” but Pearl seems to be off her game at the moment and I have seen the most splendid rat running across my back terrace recently. It is a beautiful version of its species – large, well-fed, brown, healthy and clean looking. It’s not a dirty, grey, straggle-haired sewer rat – let’s face it there are no sewers here where we all cope with sess pits and drain-aways. It’s a beautiful, healthy farm/countryside rat. And it’s big. It is about 28 cms long plus its tail -like the one below.
And it's clear it has been living in my log store and moving from there to my neighbours' as it feels fit. Its fairly large droppings are the evidence both of it and its size.
There were smaller rats outside here when I first arrived. As a new owner arriving from London I shuddered and put some poison down where the dogs couldn’t get it and I hadn’t seen a rat since then – until now. But, in the nearly five years since I have lived here, I have become less and less able to kill or even imagine killing any living creature except mosquitos and flies. I gently capture spiders, bees, moths, dragon flies, hornets etc and simply move them out of the house. Rat poison kills horribly. One should leave water for them apparently because it makes them thirsty as they die. This all sounds horrific and I am not sure I can do it to this beautiful, intelligent creature. I just want it to move away.
Also tonight, a mouse was scampering on the wall under my bird feeders. It was so brave and ignored me completely. I even went into the house, called my Japanese ward, Sayaka, to come see and it was still there when she came out to join me. So I took pictures and it "froze" in the flash but remained with its food source. With its huge ears and white belly it was as cute as could be and there is no way I would want to kill it. The rat was substantially larger but no different in any other major way. Why should I want to kill it any more than the mouse, unless it wants to come and live indoors with me or threatens the dogs?
Of course, one mouse or one rat “seen” usually means many more of each unseen. I hope that the much more plentiful food available at the farm down the path (from whence I hope it came to eat my bird food) will lure it back again.
“Mole” has caused me much greater trouble this winter. The lower end of my lawn now resembles a battlefield. When Mole appeared “Dorset Reg”, who mows the lawn, advised putting empty wine bottles into the ground. Apparently, the wind passing over the open necks makes a noise moles don’t like.
However, my mole seems more than happy with the songs from Cotes de Gasgogne and Sauvignon Blanc bottles and has gone on to decorate the whole area.
He headed to the pond and I was seriously worried he might burrow through the sand, under-liner and cause a leak in the butyl liner but luckily the pond remains intact. I also bought four buzzy, solar “mole detractors” from Amazon - to no avail. So the lawn is now adorned with brown clay/soil mounds, two green bottles and four buzzy mole deterents. Not my idea of the ideal lawn.
But the idea of a mole trap? No, sorry. Again I can’t do it. I just hope Mole heads into the fields and has a happy time there. Reg and I will have work to do to reinstate the lawn later in the season.
I have just nipped out before heading to bed (even more horrifically late having written this) and toad has been joined in song by others and by frogs. Oh joy! That sound does something very special to me. Weird but true.
Watch this space re dealing with Mole and Rat and the survival of the progeny of toad in the coming months but, despite the invaders, I am deliriously happy. Spring is on the way.
I suppose an apology is in order – from me and the frogs.
As I write it is snowing in South West London – in April?. It is miserable, cold and windy. Spring has not sprung – the frogs didn't know what they are singing about. Their spawn is all over the pond, now frozen and snow covered. Let's hope some of them make it.
Interestingly the toads are still nowhere to be seen. They are still in hibernation. They obviously have a better sense of the weather than the frogs.
I am desperate to get into the garden, turn the heating down or off and generally feel the sun again. The plants seem to feel the same. They are waiting, mostly in bud, for a change in the weather. Everything is very late and we are counting the days.
But I have learned a lesson - ignore the frogs. I am now waiting for the toads and expect they will be wiser.
I feed the birds and don’t own a cat, so the garden is usually full of them.
The major residents and visitors are just what you would expect ie robins, blue and great tits, sparrows of various sorts and blackbirds. Through regular feeding of nyjer seed I also have large families of goldfinches and greenfinches. Collar doves and pigeons of course also try to eat from the feeders.
Irregular annual visitors include families of long tailed tits and starlings, lone jays and magpies and of course our new South London regular, the parakeet. Finding bright green/yellow feathers on the ground still shocks me.
Sadly I’ve only seen thrushes thrice in all my years here and around the same number of chaffinches and bullfinches.
The only bird that is not welcome in my garden is the heron (see Daphne blog).
And this is a video compilation of birds washing and feeding in the garden.
Though not strictly wildlife, the pond is a fish pond and the fish play an important role in my garden. Big Yellow is a large carp I have had for seven years now and he has a smaller friend, Silver Rocket. They both seem to be too large now for the heron. However, most of the other fish are still up for grabs. When I first stocked the pond with goldfish, shubunkins and others, they were obviously very happy because they bred like crazy and I had to take about 30 small ones out and transfer them covertly to somewhere nameless they could start a new life. As I drive past a fishing pond on a certain common nearby I often wonder how they did.
Vast numbers of frogs and toads inhabit the pond especially in February and March for breeding. They also hibernate in the gaps between the stones in the raised stream structure, under the shed and around the beds. Some days I can count 30 at a time in the pond and that’s just the ones I can see.
What I love most is their singing. Many evenings I can sit outside to a choir of frogs and toads. It honestly sounds musical not croaky! See blog re singing.
What I find most difficult is the frog and toad “balls”. See frog balls blog.
Obviously I get lots of spawn of both types in the pond but I am not sure how many make it past tadpole stage because the fish seem to get hungry again at exactly the same time as the water begins to warm up in spring. In the early years I had to be very careful not to tread on mini frogs the size of the smallest piece of gravel but nowadays it doesn’t seem to be a problem sadly.
One year I had to deal with almost daily beheadings of frogs. I would find a headless body on the gravel and a head somewhere else. I suppose it was cats or foxes. It doesn’t happen now which might be thanks to my dogs. Phew!
Despite their tough life, the numbers of both each spring don’t seem to be diminishing so obviously they are doing something right.
To see them in action, watch the videos in the various blogs on their singing and mating practices.
I love worms. They are the sign of a living bed and I take great care not to kill them. When I dug up the ancient front privet hedge recently there was not a sign of life down there, so I emptied the entire bed and started again. Soil and compost one can add easily. Worms are a different matter and I can often be seen now carefully carrying worms in a gloved hand from the back garden to the front bed in the hope of introducing them. My neighbours think I’m nuts and I suppose it does look pretty odd.
The garden robins also watch me very carefully, from a close distance as I dig because they know I am likely to bury any that come to the surface or take them to the front garden before they can get them. Before you think I’m being mean, they get fed so they’re fine - all large, fat and healthy even in winter and there lots of little things like millipedes for them eat instead once I’ve dug.
Well what to say? I have lots of them of course. In high season I do snail hunts after rain, often at night by torchlight and randomly when moving pots around. I’m afraid they are despatched into a plastic bag with salt at the bottom which kills them.
In the early years I treated the main beds with nematodes to eat the slugs underground and this seemed to work and has kept the slug problem under control since then - though I think I might do it again this year.
I also take care when buying plants in pots from nurseries to remove any slugs from the bottom of the pot before I leave the nursery and check the underside of the root ball before I plant it.
And of course I have frogs, toads and blackbirds to help me in my endeavours with this lot. They could work harder though!
When I first bought the house I was besieged by foxes. They became so brave they would face up to me in the garden and I had to get a stick to chase them out. Two male cubs also tried to dig a den in my hot bed. They dug up plants the moment I had planted them (I’ve not used bonemeal or dried blood and bone when planting since that first year), they ate my water lily flowers and then they even ate the plastic ones I put on the pond to replace the real ones! They ate the wiring (luckily low voltage) and even tried to catch the fish. Then to add insult to injury, they poo-ed everything all over my garden. They generally made my life a misery.
I tried everything – Lion poo, a high pitched cat detractor and a black, foul-smelling tar on sticks and rags but nothing deterred them for long. Eventually, with the support of my neighbours who were also being terrorised, I called in a professional. We caught one a night for eight nights in an humane trap and then four more in a neighbour’s garden. We must have cleared the population in the gardens because they were no more trouble for years.
There are a few around now but my dogs keep them well away during the day. I occasionally spy one looking over the back fence from the roof of a neighbour’s shed but generally they don’t give me trouble now.
I have one (or more?) very pretty mouse that I sometimes see dashing around behind the pots on the terrace. I think he lives outside (most of the year) and he helps himself to what the birds drop from the feeders in the Rowan tree – if the blackbirds, robins and sparrows don’t get there before him. He is small, brown and furry – and quite fat!
September is spider month and they are everywhere – in the beds, the greenhouse, the shed etc.. They seem to be able to spin a line across any width in minutes. I like spiders because they catch less pleasant insects such as flies.
Nice insects
In 2012 we had peacock, red admiral and even comma butterflies as well as large and small white, and large and small blue as regular visitors to the Buddleja and Verbena bonariensis. See the video above and related Blogs.
I also found a newly hatched Elm hawk moth in a pot and the hard brown case it had germinated from. Mint moths appear regularly, as do many other unknown ones.
By August 2013 we had had all the same butterflies except a peacock and then, suddenly, an unusual visitor arrived - a Jersey Tiger moth. See the video below and blogs.
Luckily I am blessed with a large population of many different sorts (though not Harlequin I think). They and their larvae munch through my aphids with relish. I have a ladybird/bug house too but I don’t think it's ever been let.
The bees love this garden especially the pineapple tree, Buddleja and Verbena bonariensis. They come in many sorts and sizes from huge bumblebees to small worker honey bees from a nearby neighbour’s hives. I look forward to their arrival each year with eager anticipation – just as important as the first snowdrop. I also have the flies that look and behave like a cross between a bee and a mini Hummingbird as they push their proboscis into flower heads while they hover.
A few lace wings appear at the right time each year. I have a lacewing house box above the greenhouse door but I suspect they have never used it.
This a very beautiful crane fly I spotted this year on the raised bed wall.
The pond often has blue and red damsel flies visiting. Sadly I haven’t ever seen a proper large dragonfly there. It also has skaters, waders, paddlers and many others including midges!
Less nice insects and pests
I have stopped growing Lilies for the moment so red Lily beetles are no longer around but I still get my share of Capsid bugs, swarms of aphids in quantities too large for the tits and ladybirds. I have to intervene and I squish them by hand (usually but not always gloved) and smear their residue on the plant stems which seems to deter others. This is a fairly unpleasant thing to do and even worse when they are being farmed and milked by armies of ants as well – which is frequently – but it has to be done.
I don’t like ants. I admire them but they are very destructive and they bite! I hate it when they build a nest in the flowers beds or pots and kill the plants – which are prone to doing when it’s dry. I also hate those flying, storm ants that suddenly arrive in swarms. Luckily they never seem to be around for more than a week.
The first I was aware of these was when the large wooden stump supporting my black ‘Family’ sculpture started to crumble and became dangerous enough for us to have to remove it. Inside the dead trunk were enormous larvae which turned out to be dung beetle larvae. They looked like something “I’m a celeb” contestants would have to eat. Despite treating the whole area and the new stump I bought in to perform the same task, it lasted only two years before falling foul to the same fate.
This year I saw the adult beetle for the first time (it’s in the welcome video). I don’t plan to try to stop them doing whatever they are doing so I have removed the stump and put the sculpture in the ground for fear of it falling through the fence and killing a neighbour. So the humble dung beetle has had a real design impact on my garden!