1st NOVEMBER 2020

I don't know how it has come about that it's so long since I last posted. Here we are at the beginning of November and England is about to enter another 'Lockdown'. Not that this will have much of an impact on the way I live. I've continued to live very separately, grateful for the wonderful countryside around and the interesting area of town I live in.

For some reason it seems like the beginning of June - June when I did a post nearly every day. I can't work out exactly why this is but I think in part it's because of the very definite change in season - the winds and the rain are beating the leaves from the trees at a tremendous rate - and partly because the idea of a lockdown makes one more intensely aware of one's immediate surroundings.

So here's a little update on a small part of what's happening in the very tiny area immediately outside my front door. I put it that way because as usual, the smaller the area one examines, the more there is to see.

Harlequin ladybird. 1st November 2020.

Let's start with the wildlife. Ladybirds are still moving around. Here a harlequin is exploring a pot containing a groundsel plant that I've been watching over the summer. Groundsel is a very common 'weed' in England; probably familiar to most readers. However, I doubt many have really paid much attention to what it's like, what it does, how an individual plant behaves. I would encourage everyone to put a pot of earth outside their door and see what happens - an empty pot with earth. In England at any rate it's almost inevitable that a seed will land there. Let it grow, see what it is, examine it. If it turns out to be a nettle, you might want to pot it on, let it grow to its full height, watch it flower. Or it might be something you have never come across before.

Snail hibernating in brick wall.
1st November 2020

In the short wall that separates me from my neighbour, a snail has taken up residence for the winter. I was going to move it but it's further in than it looks so I'll let it be. When it comes out of hibernation and begins to wander around, I'll probably relocate it to a distance as I am not tempted by the idea of letting it feed on the vegetable seedlings I will put outside my door in spring. I say 'to a distance' because snails have an annoying homing instinct. One year I painted numbers on the snails that I removed from my garden - on their shells with typewriter correction fluid. They kept coming back. Each time I removed them further away until I found the distance from which they would not return. Number "2" was specially persistent.

Hart's Tongue Ferns in brick wall.
1st November 2020

The hart's tongue ferns in the wall are thriving. I still feed them every so often with the fluid from the Hozelock Bokashi digester which arrived via Karen. I've lost count of how many there are now. I've also poked leaves from other kinds of ferns in some of the cracks - waited till the spores on their backs were ripe and in they went. Whether they will grow or not . . . that will be another adventure. (Incidentally, a couple of leaves have appeared all by themselves which I think are probably of an ivy leaved toad flax. I hope so. I like that. Unfortunately they are on the most shady part of the wall so may not thrive.)

Lemon Balm and Pink Geranium in pots on steps.
1st November 2020.

On the steps to my door I have four pots. Here are two - the lower step has lemon balm, the upper one a geranium. They are getting bedraggled - but it is November!

The demise of pot marigold flowers and beginnings of some seeds.
1st November 2020.

On the other side of the step from the geranium is a pot marigold from Mike. I had hoped it would produce seeds but it isn't doing too well on that front. On the other hand, a couple of seeds which I planted in another pot at the same time but which didn't immediately germinate have now come up and look quite sturdy so I am hoping they will over winter well and flower early next year - the Sofa-Flying Calendula connection will continue!

Pot with bulbs under earth concealed by fallen sycamore leaves.
1st November 2020.

Also in pots, ready for next year, I have alliums, tulips and daffodils. I can't remember which are in which pot but never mind. It will be fun to see what happens. I have been piling sycamore leaves on them to keep them warm when frosts come. Sycamore leaves take ages to get soggy and flat and keep blowing away - but the moment will no doubt come when rain will win and turn them into a soggy blanket for the bulbs which are not really as deeply beneath the surface of the soil as they would probably like to be.

Seeds coming up in earth.
1st November 2020.

There are similar bulbs in the tiny patch of earth outside my house. I sowed some nigella (Love in the Mist) and cornflower seeds to see if they would come up with a head start and keep the marigolds company over-wintering. Some seeds are germinating. Whether they are seeds I've sown or more petty spurge I don't know! I've scattered fox gloves (I don't think they are fox gloves) and aquilegea there too . . . we will see . . . or perhaps not see if they get eaten or drowned or frosted . . . ! ! !

Cyclamen seedling.
1st November 2020

Back to pots; a couple of years ago I bought red and white and pink cyclamen from a garden centre and put them in my window boxes. Only one has survived. However, they dropped seeds which grew and I have transplanted the results into pots. This is the most advanced of them.

Twig with common orange lichen.
1st November 2020

And finally - look what the wind blew in. Here's a little twig with common orange lichen on it (Xanthoria parietina). It landed behind one of the pots on the door step and I placed it on the wall between me and the street to take its photo. The little metal lumps are the remains of railings. I expect they were sawn off during the second world war. The government collected up railings from the fronts of people's houses to melt down and use as part of the 'war effort'. I don't think many, if any, were actually used. Maybe it helped people feel involved. I don't know. I wasn't there. But all over England there are these sad little stumps, constant reminders of futility.

The lichen's lovely though, isn't it?

Link

"So What Really Happened to Our Railings?"  On London Gardens Trust website.

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Connecting with Nature Notes on Rambling Woods.

TWIG

It's very windy here in Halifax (West Yorkshire). Trees battered. Blossom and leaves flying and falling . . . and this twig landed outside my front door. I brought it in to show you it. It's eight and three quarter inches long and 4mm wide. There are at least two kinds of lichen and several tiny threads on it. It's very dry and once you start looking you find differences in colours and texture, the amount of dust stuck to its various parts, and even what I think are tiny scale insect (too tiny to photograph indoors without extra light so you'll have to imagine them). (I'll come back to scale insect another day.)

The smaller something is, the more there is to see.

To see better, click on the picture to enlarge it.

The twig. It's eight and three quarter inches long and 4mm wide. It may have come from a sycamore. It may have come from an apple tree. It might have come from further away from another tree entirely. Tree people . . . can you tell?

The twig and its shadow as an abstract.

Where the twig has broken free from a slightly bigger twig, or maybe from a branch. (If you peer or enlarge, you'll see one of the threads.)

Where the twig itself once had a twiglet - and another thread

One kind of lichen. (The little round satellite / cup-like structures are its 'fruiting bodies'.)

Another kind of lichen.

If I can find out for sure what these lichens are, I'll add that in later.

The other end of the twig.

I found this end particularly interesting. So many shapes, colours and textures in less than two inches.  I think the wrinkles may give a hint about years of growth . . . or is it where the twig has broken while still on the tree then continued to grow? If anyone can expound about this I would be grateful!

EXTRAS

1. New to the 'Identifying Things' tab, DUNG BEETLES UK MAPPING PROJECT - See the side column on the home page for 'Find, Identify and Record Dung Beetles'.

2. An interesting thread by Harriet Lambert on Twitter: by damaging leaves, bumblebees are making plants flower earlier than they would otherwise.

EVENTS IN JUNE: GET YOURSELVES READY!

30 DAYS WILD

1. 30 Days Wild (with the Wildlife Trusts). Can you think of something nature-related to do for every day in June? Everyone knows that everyone is more limited than usual when it come to looking around this year so it's an extra challenge - how much 'wild' can you explore from home? I'll be seeing what I can do / find and posting the results on twitter - @LucyCorrander. (I've tried in other years and have never managed 30 days yet but here's for another go!)

NATIONAL INSECT WEEK
2020

2. National Insect Week: 22nd - 28th June - an event organised jointly between The Royal Entomological Society and others. This year on-line. The site is gradually gearing up. For example, you can see a little cartoon video explaining what an insect is. (See if you can define an insect before watching it. er . . . um . . . ) Explore!

Linking to 'My Corner of the World'.

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'My Corner of the World'
International Photographic 
Linkup

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WALKING THE STREETS ON CHRISTMAS DAY - A STREET PLANT POST

Preamble . . .

I don't seem to have written this well.

I enjoy living in Halifax so much I'm surprised when little things remind me of the past. That was the intention of post. But instead of saying it clearly I appear to have given the impression that I don't like it here at all. The opposite is the case. I'm really, really happy to be here - and the photographs are of things which delight me.

It'll get confusing if I re-write the post. That could result in email subscribers receiving a different version from those reading it straight from the page. But I think I must put in this extra little bit as a retrospective preface - I LOVE IT HERE!

From this point on, the post is as it was.

* * *

Here is my new 'lawn'.
Grass growing on the anti-social cobbles designed specially for not walking on.

I'm thinking inevitably about the things I miss about Dorset and the things which are missing here; which are not necessarily the same. Nor are they quite what I would have expected.

I went for a walk on Christmas Day and what I missed was not the sound of the sea but the absence of dried out Prickly Lettuce (Lactuca serriolla) stalks rammed up against walls. I haven't properly worked out why. It might be that I knew in advance that Halifax is sea-less so the lack of a tide hasn't come as surprise. The pain of that absence becomes a part of life; a familiar dull throb of discomfort. But it never struck me to wonder if there would be prickly lettuce. I didn't know I'd mind. So I was surprised both by its not-here-ness and that it hurt. Is there really no prickly lettuce here or is it simply that I haven't walked past it yet? I have a kind of hankering, an irritability springing from 'not-knowing'.Not that it's pretty. It's a straight up plant with boring leaves and small, uninteresting flowers and at this time of year it's nothing but a dried out twig anyway. So who would care? This is the next lesson - that when missing things no-body else has noticed, one can feel very alone.

Part of my new moss garden. Miniature sculpture.

I've experienced it in lesser ways in Dorset . . . someone pours weed-killer onto a row of urban wild plants along the foot of a wall. They want rid of them. Other passers by are unlikely to identify the difference and I'm thinking 'where have they gone?' But such plants are resilient. They either grow back the next year or, failing that, nearby.
But not growing at all? That's something else.

Here's something Halifax has in common with Dorset
Common Orange Lichen (Xanthoria parietina)

I'm sitting here asking "will I miss Alexanders?  Chicory?  Vipers Bugloss?" Yes. But differently. They don't usually grow in the middle of towns so I'm not looking for them. It's part of the background ache. But I'd made the mistake of thinking urban plants grow in urban places and are, therefore, ubiquitous. Of course they may be. But maybe not. Dorset is warmer. Sunnier. Will I find Black Medic here or does it just like the south? Scarlet Pimpernel?

Escapees add an exotic element to an invisible street garden.
This one is wandering over a wall while retaining its domestic roots.

At the same time . . . of course I sort of did know things don't just pop up all over the place merely because they are familiar . . . I even wrote about hoping there would be dandelions. I'm inconsistent. And I discover there were so many thousands of dandelions along Dorset paths and roads and hedgerows I'd put them more in a more conventional wild-plant bracket.

This is something I would never have come across near my old home.
Indeed, I don't yet know what it is I'm looking at!

On Christmas Day when I went out to look for street plants, I set out in a business like fashion. I knew there would be some - there always are. And I would begin to construct from them my invisible urban garden. But I hadn't expected grief for such mundane things as prickly lettuce. And I hadn't expected to be swept by the power of shape. Moss grows everywhere in some form but each patch, even of the same variety, builds itself into distinct and therefore missable sculptures. I'll move from here one day so will I risk loving things that I will inevitably leave behind?

I hesitate.

On Christmas Day I went to visit the Alder I am 'following'.

I should be able to say 'yes, of course'. But I've had to think about it - hard - and with some gritting and grinding of teeth have decided Street Plant posts will continue in their new location. People with broken hearts can learn to love again.

Flowers on Christmas Day!

Here then, may I proudly introduce you to my new, wild, scattered urban garden.




And assert, almost as an item of faith, that there is growth where there appears to be none.

Yes. Even when there really appears to be none.

Because Halifax is in a sort of bowl in the hills,
these three blocks of flats are a distinctive identifier for the town.
(Just as Big Ben is for London.)

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