Spring is nearly here!

[pollygog]

Just when we thought it was safe to go out after the howling gales and torrential rain we've enjoyed lately, we have Coronavirus! so now we can't go out: even if the sun is cracking the flags!

On a brighter note, it's another of those springs when the frogs have gone ballistic, there is frogspawn everywhere! in all three ponds, my veg filter, even two lots in a in a plastic tub with 4" of water in; masses of it, and now it's the toads turn this week and they are turning up mob-handed, I fished two out in plexus from my Nexus filter just this morning.
Spring is sprung with a vengeance this mostly mild wet spring, a pair of woodpigeons have built a nest this last week in the same spot in our conifer hedge as they did last year. This is incredibly early for woodpigeons.

I have been busy grafting some Denbigh plum trees this last 6 weeks, starting off in the very mild last week of January, the first grafting's are showing swelling buds already. I have been experimenting with semi-dwarfing rootstocks this past two years as the standard St Julian A rootstock for plums is way too vigorous. I now have three rootstocks that won't grow more than 3m in ten years, one German, one Russian and one Dutch.
Picture below is Russian rootstock I grafted the summer of 2018, it's in flower already in my greenhouse at two years old and just 90 cm high.
Perfect for the smaller garden as it only grows to 2.5m in ten years and produces fruit in 3 years.

[pollygog]

Yesterday and again today has been a good day for butterflies, a Lesser Tortoiseshell, at least two Painted Ladies, two Greater Tortoiseshells, a Peacock and a small deep blue unidentified one on the lawn, this afternoon alone. Several of my plum trees, three cherry trees and a large clump of Honesty are in flower right now plus lots of daffodils' and Muscari are also in flower and seem to be attracting the bees and butterflies.
It's the first time this year I have sat outside on a bench, absolutely gorgeous, I actually had to come out of my greenhouse about 11:30 am as it was just too warm.
Mind you I don't have a choice at this moment in time as we are confined to barracks for the next few months so; it's home entertainment for now.
I'm so glad we bought a new all singing, all dancing new telly with Oled back in January.
As geriatric technophobes, we are still finding new things on the controls we never knew we had!

The photo below cheers me up as it's a good take on a whip & tongue graft from January 26th, the bud is now in leaf as are several others so the recent warm weather is a blessing in many ways.

[pollygog]

I cleaned my pond out today, very early this morning in fact and was totally amazed at the toad spawn collected on the bottom, in 5 feet of water.
I actually collected in my large pond net a pair of toads half way through laying a long double string of spawn.
I think that because there is so much frog spawn choking up the smaller wildlife ponds, absolutely masses of it this year, the toads have resorted to laying their spawn in my koi pond.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to clean and dose my pond earlier on in February as I normally do before frogs arrival, so today was a really good clear out of bottom then a belated treatment with Potassium Permanganate, 4 doses.
Water is still not cleared so I will treat again in a weeks time when the Hydrogen Peroxide has degraded from water.
I bought a gallon of 12% strength HP last year but despite keeping it in a dark cupboard in shed it had lost a lot of it's potency.
Erring on the side of caution, I dosed my pond at just 40ml which is just under normal dose. It really had lost it's potency as I put 3 lots in over 2 hours and it's still not clear of brown scum. I will check it out again in the morning as I think its reduced to just 2 or 3%.

[roselanekoi]

I can't say I've ever notice having a problem with the hydrogen peroxide loosing it's potency, something I'll look out for in the future.

I've been busy in the garden this week, hasn't the weather been glorious, preparing some of my vegetable beds. I was surprised how wet the ground was with a spades depth down being waterlogged, still with the dry weather forecast it should dry out a bit now.

Not being able to go out and about with the camera I've been taking shots of the bird table, only trouble is there's not much variety in my garden, just jackdaws, pigeons and sparrows. Here are a couple of photos taken this morning.

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[pollygog]

Here's a picture to cheer you all up in these miserable times, it's a picture I took from the beach in the strange sounding Holetown in the North West of Barbados a few years ago. What a positive cheerful character he was, this guy had a boat stuffed to the gunnels with all kinds of fruit, mostly pineapples, coconuts, watermelons, a cool box and about 5 gallons of neat rum for his special very large Pina Colada's. He did a roaring trade all afternoon.
We snorkeled on a shallow reef close inshore and actually saw lots of brightly coloured fish and turtles.
It was the first time in my life I actually swam in warm water! Incredible experience.
We even had a local 'trader' on the beach trying to flog us some top stuff, ganja (marijuana).If you listen to 10 CC's 'Dreadlock Holiday' you'll get the picture!

[pollygog]

26th of March saw the start of my pond spring clean this year, followed by dosing with PP then clearing off the brown scummy foam with Hydrogen Peroxide. I followed up with changing 55 watt tube in my Proclear on Friday the third of April, by Sunday my water was crystal clear, too clear it seems; the grey feathered fish wrecker arrived this morning and has absolutely sickened me.
A beautiful sunny morning I went out to check my greenhouse and as I passed by pond I noticed a golden Rudd swimming strangely. I stopped to check it out then noticed one of my new Gin Rin Koi was also injured. The koi had fresh wounds down both flanks just behind its gills, the Rudd which weighs about a kilo, was stabbed through its flank and gut, both had been seriously injured by the Heron!
I did a count and noticed that I had lost one koi and one Rudd to the heron and also had two badly injured fish which do not look like surviving: not a good morning!
I have never netted my pond in 13 years but I'm afraid I will have to grasp the nettle this week.

[pollygog]

Not having a good week this week!
After the heron attack on Tuesday morning I took out the two injured fish and treated their wounds, checking over the rest of my fish I noticed my oldest fish, a ghost koi was showing signs of illness to.
Thinking the heron had stabbed him I netted him out and noticed he had a lot of redness underneath and around his abdomen and tail. I put him in my quarantine tank and treated him with FMG, next morning he seemed to pick up and looked more lively, my quarantine tank is only 1000 litres so I returned him to the main pond on Wednesday night.
Yesterday morning at 8:00 am I found him dead on bottom of pond.
The capping stone he is laid on is two feet long which gives you an idea of his size!
I bought this koi in spring of 1978 with several others from Ince Blundell Nurseries near Hightown for a friend of mine Alan McDonald who I had just built a brick koi pond for.
These were tiny 4" to 5" fish, most probably Israeli, bought as cheap pond fillers. When this koi eventually grew too big for Alans pond, he was passed on to me with two others in 1999, I was still living in West Lanc's and had an enormous koi pond to accommodate them.
He moved here with me in 2007 and he was quite big by then, Alan, my friend passed away in January 2017, the fish was known as Amac in memory of him.

Some good news is the koi that was damaged just behind its gill covers looks like recovering from its wounds, not so with the Rudd, I do not think it will recover.

On a lighter note, I have taken a comparison photo of my Denbigh plum grafting's on three different rootstocks on three different dates, they are from left with leaves on, Wavit which was whip and tongue grafted on 24th Jan, second was on 1st March VVA.1, third on 10th March, which is a new Dutch variety, WUR. S766, the top bud is just bursting out of tape.

[roselanekoi]

Sorry about your losses, the heron is definitely not a koi keeper's friend.

The novelty of the lock down is starting to wear off, although I'm probably much better off than most. Living on a country lane at the outskirts of the village I'm still able to take my daily walk with the dog and as I have a large vegetable garden there's still plenty to do, although we do miss the longer walks in the Clwydian Hills.

There's been a very noticeably drop in car traffic down the lane although there must have been a 10 fold increase in walkers. I suspect some people are now getting more exercise than they've had in quite a few years.

Not being able to go out and about with the camera I've had to set it up at the bird table and this morning I captured a photo of a green finch, a bird I can't remember seeing before locally although I don't think they're particularly rare.

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[pollygog]

Excellent photo Colin, just lately we have had to take up our ground bird feeder as we have had visits from other unwelcome visitors, rats!. They are, or possibly were living under our next door neighbours potting shed and travelling in to empty our ground feeders, we actually saw them in daytime running across the lawn to the ground feeder and saw one climbing up the trellis alongside our pergola. I went under my pergola to see were rat had been and discovered a rat had chewed through the cover on our garden umbrella and right through the umbrella itself, see photo.
War was declared, up came the ground feeders, down went the rat traps, so far I've killed nine in ten days.
I threw all the dead rats into the field at the back of the house and it attracted our local Buzzards who live in the woods there. We thought two Buzzards were fighting over one of the dead rats a week ago today (last Wednesday) it turned out that one of the Buzzards was actually a Red Kite! After losing it's rat to the Buzzard, we saw it come back out of the woods and circle over the field for a few minutes, we actually phoned our neighbour Liz who is a keen bird watcher and she saw it too, as did our neighbours opposite. They have bred for several years on the Denbigh moors so it must be one of their offspring.
I've never seen one here before in our woods and never that close!

I have a lot of blossom on my sweet black cherry trees in tubs this year, the best is Rivers Early followed by Kordia, Stella, Regina and a semi-sweet one called May Duke, lets hope the frost stays away and we get a good crop this year, something to look forward to!

[pollygog]

I'm sure it's the fact that just about everybody is at home through Covid 19 that we seem to be getting more wildlife visit our garden than usual.
We now have a female pheasant visit our garden as well as the resident cock pheasant and there is a marked increase in wood pigeons feeding. They have built nests on both sides of the garden this year and I witnessed a grisly site last Saturday afternoon. A newly fledged squab sitting on top of our hedge was attacked by a crow and chased very aggressively into the field at the back were it was downed within 50 feet of our back fence and killed by the crow then partly eaten, there were feathers scattered everywhere!
I have never seen this before first hand but crows and magpies will kill and eat young rabbits so a defenceless pigeon squab has absolutely no chance against these avian thugs.
We had another newt on our back step on a wet Saturday night, this time a small Palmate newt about 3" long.
On a lovely sunny warm day last week I spotted a toad that appeared to be chilling out on my Oase surface skimmer, see pic below.
It was totally unfazed by my presence through the open window of my filter house were I feed my koi.

I also noticed the 7 Dwarves were social distancing around their residence, Snow White, because of her great age is wisely self isolating!