Spring is nearly here!

[pollygog]

Tabby or not Tabby? Cat is the question!
Wether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the Slings and Arrows
Of outrageous fortune.
Did Hamlet see a moggy ?

Things are getting more up market in our village hall of late as Saturday last we saw the Beulah Brass Band from Abergele give a concert from 7.30pm, excellent evenings entertainment by the band and very ably acompanied by a lady vocalist.
Sadly it was very poorly advertised as the audience just barely outnumbered the band members by three or four, how embarassing that was sitting there surrounded by all the empty seats.
Our village hall is quite large and a very good venue as some of you will know from the North Wales Koi Club pond visit guests buffets we have held there.
After the concert we went for a drink with several band members in the 'Trefnant' and we have arranged a return bout for them with full local advertising for the next time.
Somewhat ironic because the concert was arranged to raise money for a local choir in the next village to us; Tremeirchion who don't have a village hall (or a shop or a pub!)
More heavy rain forecast for tomorrow morning, just in time for us to go to the polling station in the same village hall to put our crosses down for the Europrats! don't you just love em.

[pollygog]

Moved some more tadpoles on today and relieved some of the overcrowding in my small pond. A friend came over from Merseyside for a run out on his BMW motorbike and very kindly brought me some runner beans in his panniers. I reciprocated the gesture and we packed two plastic bags containing several dozen tadpoles in each pannier then it was express delivery back to Merseyside on a lovely day; it is now raining again. The good news is my brother phoned from Toronto this evening and said they are having a heatwave at the moment so as we seem to get their weather a week later we are due for some sun soon !
Little fledgelings everywhere this week as several bird boxes empty out, sparrows, great tits, blue tits and we spotted two baby greater spotted woodpeckers at the fat balls today with one parent. I was standing quietly under an apple tree near my wildlife pond this morning watching the newts pop up to the surface when I heard a jay screech close by in the woods behind me then suddenly it popped into view flying into next doors holly bush about thirty feet from me but it quickly spotted me and flew of. They really can be shy elusive birds more heard than seen so it was good to catch even a rare glimpse of it; a much prettier bird than its close relatives the magpies that continue to steal my koi food every day off the pond surface.

[pollygog]

Checking my small pond yesterday prior to feeding and found quite a few tiny four legged froglets that have almost made the transition from tadpole to frog hopping about on top of pond weed. Most have still got tails but they are rapidly disappearing as they become more land based.
Found the answer to the magpies knicking the koi pellets at feeding time, I now have a 15" diameter feeding ring suspended between two pieces of string so it doesn't drift in to side where they can reach it.
Its gratifying seeing three or four frustrated magpies hopping around in circles trying to reach the pellets just out of their reach!
The koi do spread the pellets eventually from the feeding ring but they get most of the pellets now.
Theres a surprising lack of damselflies and dragonflies so far this summer but each day I see more casings of caddis fly left on the side of the small pond.
I have a large rock holding the net down that covers small pond to stop birds( magpies) eating the tadpoles and I found about a dozen discarded caddis casings on top of rock yesterday, they must have crawled up to the highest point before emerging and launching off.

Grow and show selection this Sunday at Colin's, parking is limited and can be tricky so try to share a car if you can; this is followed by 4th June club meet on Wed. not at Farmers though!

[pollygog]

Week of firsts this week,first gooseberries and cherries picked this morning, first waterlillies in flower (5 out together) and first dragonfly this year spotted on Saturday afternoon.
Sunday a nice day out over to Colins for grow and show selection and as ever a remarkably calm and competent effort from Colin, top man, nice one Colin.
A definite 10 out of ten for organisation and swan imagery (calm serenity on exterior; paddling like the clappers of hell, interior)
Good to see so many club members old and new turned out for the occasion, hope they all turn out for club social evening in Dyserth this Wednesday!
The squirrels continue to visit the garden, albeit more sporadically
( possibly a little less enthusiastically) of late and the dogs continue to chase them out of it with unabated vigour, possibly the reason the squirrels are not so keen.
Very large female hedgehog, we think its our resident one, trapped itself in one of our compost bins rooting for grub. Cyn heard it scratching and grunting yesterday morning and put it in summer house for the day and gave it some dog food, three lots it managed to clear during the day and evening. Hedgehog was released 11.00 pm last night full and fighting fit.

[pollygog]

We let our dogs out for a last pee about 11.30 pm and they found two large adult hedgehogs close together under bird feeders obviously picking up scraps of suet etc dropped by birds. Hopefully we get the tiny patter of baby hedgehogs soon although it is a bit late for the hedgehogs mating or should that be referred to as porking?
Found out this week that a neighbour of one of my nephews living on the lakeside near Toronto in Canada has over 200 varieties of fig growing in his garden, according to his local news its the largest fig collection in Canada; I'll bet he's regular!

[pollygog]

First and foremost this week a belated very big
THANK YOU
To Majdi for an excellent evening last Wednesday evening (the 4th), the speciality beer tasting or should that be sampling/testing was a brill idea that was much appreciated, judging by the amount of empty bottles under table.
p.s, I did write a thank you after the event and never posted it in error

Grew the biggest best cherries yet and they are just ripe this week. Just good timing I guess because today my brother in law Vernon and his family up visiting from Whitstable very kindly took us out for Sunday lunch to Denbigh and they repaired to my greenhouse later on in afternoon to help me pick the cherries (and eat them) and took a tupperware box away with some in for his brother in law who had come up with them from Kent. Vernon's brother in law and his wife had gone to the Albert Dock shopping/sightseeing for the day.
Oh well; easy come easy go I suppose! you have to be philosophical as he did buy us an expensive Fathers Day lunch. Theres a few unripe ones to look forward to still and the cherries in garden should be coming on line soon, if the birds don't get under nets again like last year that is.

Gave some more tadpoles away on Saturday about 2 dozen; the last ones I could find as all last week in rain I have found tiny frogs all over lawn and garden hopping about in wet and loving it. Sadly for them the birds found them too and the dreaded 'eat anything' magpies have been busy as ever hoovering them up to feed their young, you begin to see why only one in a hundred on average make it to maturity.
The hedgehogs are eating us out of house and home lately with the amount of dog food they are eating, Cyn has tried some specialist hedgehog food lately but I think that idea is very short lived as its costly for the amount they go through compared to dogfood, maybe get it wholesale somewhere?

[pollygog]

Sat for an hour or so yesterday enjoying the birdlife that comes to our bird feeders and I'm pleased that the small birds totally ignored me as they have got used to people sitting in the arbour by now.
Its shielded by a clematis, the hedge on one side and a large apple tree so its good cover to sit quietly with our binoculars and a cold drink and observe the birdies. Just so long as you sit very still its amazing the variety of birds that visit, we keep a log for the RSPB garden watch. On this years BBC Springwatch they also asked people to count the variety and number of bird visiters to their gardens. We logged wrens, robins, hedge accentors, blue tits, great tits,coal tits, long tailed tits, marsh tits,a pair of siskin, greenfinches, a nuthatch,several greater spotted woodpeckers, blackbirds, chaffinches, a black cap, goldfinches, and of course the ubiquitous starlings rooks crows magpies and jackdaws and the dreaded arch villain 'The sparrow hawk' on his/her regular daily visits. Its more often than not the smaller male who does the regular visits hunting but he is thwarted by my anti-hawk feeder system now; I have enclosed the feeders in green wire mesh with 2" holes that they can pop through but he can't.
Also as an added deterrent I have hung several four ounce lead weights on 25 lb fishing line strategically strung around feeders so he cannot get a clear run sweeping through and up at feeders as he normally does. Now,when he comes hurtling through he spots the vertical line on last second and aborts his run through. I keep moving them regularly much to his frustration so he doesn't get used to positions and learn to manouvre past them.

[pollygog]

Airstones have been kept running permanently during this recent hot spell and the result is an increasingly murky pond, also two of my fish were flashing and were showing tell tale signs of Trich again, so, I bit the bullet day before yesterday and treated water with Permanganate of Potash. I think that PP is the 'Marmite' of the fish medicines, you either love it or loathe it as its one of those products that you have got to treat with both care and respect, get it wrong as my friend did this last year and its goodbye old friends!
For last couple of years I measured PP dose with a teaspoon and I'd mislaid my dosing spoon so I got two different teaspoons and measured them both on my new digital scales, one level teaspoon measured 6.7mg and one level teaspoon measured 8.3mg! so;its accurately weighed measured dose from now on. This afternoon I treated water with Sodium Thiosulphate and tomorrow I will clean brown staining with very carefully measured dose of 35% Hydrogen Peroxide, this is another product you treat with great respect as its using one very powerful oxidising agent after another; get it wrong and its Caveat Pisces!

Both our dogs have managed to jump in the wildlife pond chasing squirrels this last week, one squirrel miscalculated the jump from the top of an apple tree to the safety of the hedge and our Lottie managed to land on top of it in the pond and completely missed it in the shock of the dunking! Not to be outdone, Hamish tried vainly to jump the wide part to head off a squirrel that had just jumped the narrow part and was doubling back to the hedge, its not put them off though!

[roselanekoi]

It's a pity you haven't got a video camera as I'm sure a video of the two dogs chasing the squirrel would have been quite a hit on Youtube,

Colin

[pollygog]

We do have a video camera Colin but we would have to hover around all day like the dogs do waiting for a squirrel to chase but; we don't have the patience or the time.

Last week a second brood of sparrows fledged and I noticed on Friday morning a baby sparrow was still in nest cheeping loudly and peeping out while the parents were making a fuss nearby obviously trying to encourage it out.Saturday morning I looked in nest box expecting to find it empty and found a small nestling crouched on bottom, I closed lid gently and left it. Late Saturday afternoon I looked in again and the baby sparrow was dead, I lifted it out and discovered the reason for its death; it was crawling with hundreds of lice that must have sucked the life out of it, no wonder it was so small and emaciated. I have cleared the nest material out today and disinfected the nest box with Jeyes Fluid then I treated all the other empty used nest boxes the same.
I discovered that the worst affected were both sparrow nest boxes with lice, fleas and maggots in both nests with the bluetits box coming a close runner up, but they did raise 10!
I normally clear all the nest boxes out in the Autumn when they are finished with.

Its that time of year again when we all troop off to the garden centres or B&Q for bedding plants to brighten up our gardens and to look for that lovely plant or bush that took our fancy when we were abroad.
One such bush I fell in love with was the shell pink beatifully scented Oliander growing outside the hotel were I stayed in Marbella with my children many years ago, so, when I got home I looked it up in my RHS plant bible and discovered that it is highly poisenous; particularly to fish!
There are lots of other ordinary garden plants that are toxic to your fish so beware before you buy and plant close to your pond, here are some of them.
Holly, particularly the berries being eaten by fish, Marijuana,if you smoke a joint don't throw your tab end in pond, Euphorbia, any member of this group,Ivy, Foxglove, Privet,Wisteria, Laurel, Rhubarb but leaves only,Ranunculus,(buttercup family) Peach, Cherry or Oak leaves, etc etc.
If you need a more comprehesive list Defra or the RHS websites give them.

Don't forget Wednesday meet here at our place.