As the daylight hours are lengthening activity levels rise and so at the weekend my husband decided to tidy the shed so that in sunny periods he could sit there once more. I walked in to admire his efforts and caught sight of one of the biggest native spiders I have ever seen scuttling for shelter from whence it had been displaced.
I experienced two instantaneous reactions and I was surprised to find that I was ashamed of the first - a visceral response to spiders. It was not the manner in which were were brought up.
We were taught to overcome an innate repulsion for 'creepy crawlies'. We were encouraged to pick up worms and feel their bristly movements across our palms. We cupped spiders in our hands. Looping caterpillars dropped on threads from hawthorn twigs and we watched them gyrate towards us. Locusts once came home from the school biology lab to our greenhouse for the summer holidays, stick insects in large sweet jars ate our privet, excreted and reproduced. Twilight moths were captured in Woodbank Park.
This was our heritage, an invertebrate and entomological childhood. When I next come across a spider I may start with fear and curiosity. May curiosity prevail.
Tuesday 20 February 2018
Saturday 17 February 2018
Overwintering
Overwintering: the process, according to the dictionary, whereby animals, insects and plants live through the winter. Or not, as the case may be.
This was the week we checked on the geraniums in our unheated greenhouse. After the first spell of bad weather my husband cut them right back. This week he decided to put them into a home-made structure, something like a cold frame, to shield them from further exposure to low temperatures. Unfortunately only two plants out of our summer display have survived. The jasmine however, a native of the Azores, is still with us.
As are the daffodils in our pots at the front. We planted them in the long front bed and were disappointed in the spring of 2017 to see that less than a third were blooming. We dug up the unproductive ones, dried them out and stored them in the garage until the autumn. Now I am very gratified to see that at least three out of the four bulbs in each pot have flower buds. Truth to tell, they were the cheapest economy sack in the superstore, itself going through rather heavy weather at present. It takes more than one season for some things to come good.
Other bulbs and spring flowering plants are doing well. The iris that were new home presents and birthday presents, the snowdrops, the naturalised hyacinths surplus to requirements from my family, our new tulips secured by squirrel-proof netting, the white heather from the aforementioned unlucky superstore are all doing well. The only other casualties of the prolonged wet and cold have been the cyclamen and a variegated mint that I culled beyond recovery.
We may have snow in the offing, but our period of overwintering is slowly coming to an end.
This was the week we checked on the geraniums in our unheated greenhouse. After the first spell of bad weather my husband cut them right back. This week he decided to put them into a home-made structure, something like a cold frame, to shield them from further exposure to low temperatures. Unfortunately only two plants out of our summer display have survived. The jasmine however, a native of the Azores, is still with us.
As are the daffodils in our pots at the front. We planted them in the long front bed and were disappointed in the spring of 2017 to see that less than a third were blooming. We dug up the unproductive ones, dried them out and stored them in the garage until the autumn. Now I am very gratified to see that at least three out of the four bulbs in each pot have flower buds. Truth to tell, they were the cheapest economy sack in the superstore, itself going through rather heavy weather at present. It takes more than one season for some things to come good.
Other bulbs and spring flowering plants are doing well. The iris that were new home presents and birthday presents, the snowdrops, the naturalised hyacinths surplus to requirements from my family, our new tulips secured by squirrel-proof netting, the white heather from the aforementioned unlucky superstore are all doing well. The only other casualties of the prolonged wet and cold have been the cyclamen and a variegated mint that I culled beyond recovery.
We may have snow in the offing, but our period of overwintering is slowly coming to an end.
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