Flighty's plot

Tigers, wolves and birds

If like me you like big cats, and especially tigers, then we’ll all be settling down on Sunday evening to watch Tiger – Spy in the Jungle on BBC1 at 8.00pm. This is a new series of three programmes that looks like it is going to be absolutely brilliant viewing. Sir David Attenborough says “The most extraordinary portrait of tigers yet seen.”

Lobo – The wolf that changed America is next Wednesdays Natural World on BBC2 at 8.00pm. It is slightly different as it is more of a history programme than usual.

The RSPB has published the Garden Birdwatch 2008 results earlier this week. This Guardian article about them makes interesting reading.

It’s a shorter entry that I’d planned but as I’ve done a few more than usual recently then I hope that you’ll excuse me. The weekend weather forecast for London is wet and windy so it’s looking likely that I won’t be allotmenteering. If that’s the case then as well as at least one entry I’ll probably redo my Flighty page to include a bit more detail.

Have a good weekend!

WordPress problems!

Please note that I, and others, are having a few problems with WordPress.

Some comments that I made on friends blogs, including Daffy and Nikkipolani, have not appeared on the entries as they’ve been treated as spam! This has been happening with Purplephreak‘s comments for some time.

Daffy also lost her photos yesterday for no apparent reason, Nikki’s comments here over the past few days haven’t been linked when they should have been and last night I also noticed some hiccups with the stats.

I’ve emailed WordPress, and Akismet, about these and hope to receive a prompt response. Meantime if things seem a little strange here I apologise but it’s entirely due to circumstances beyond my control.

My usual Thursday entry will be posted this afternoon after I get home.

The pond

Having spent most of yesterday indoors sofa flying with a good book, along with lots of cups of tea and too many biscuits I needed to get out today.

As it was dry, although cold and windy, I went to the allotment this morning to have a look round as usual. I ended up moving the pond, as I’ve never really been happy with where I’d put it. I’ve only moved it a foot so that it now partly nestles next to a clump of grass which I feel is a much better place, being far less obvious.

I then lighty forked over the wild flower area, which has the pond at one end and the log pile at the other, with the recovering globe artichoke in front of it.

As I put things away in the shed I’m reminded by my small collection of flowers of sunny days to come!

Easter Sunday

Yesterday morning following on from the entry I did I decided to venture out in the cold to the horticultural society hut and the allotment site.

Not surprisingly I was the only customer at the hut whilst there so I chatted with the guys on duty. I had a cup of tea, bought some peanuts for the birds and two different sized plastic screw-top spray bottles then went on to the plot.

By that time the snow had mostly gone but you can see how bleak it was
Note the still upright daffodils and you can just see two starlings on the right-hand feeder. The brown and white box, at top left, is a beehive.

After refilling the feeders, clearing the ice on the pond and taking this photo I watched a couple of coal tits on the peanut feeder then came home to warm up and have lunch.

This morning when I pulled back the curtains in the living room I saw a chaffinch perched on the wing mirror of a car parked just a few feet away! The forecast for today, Easter Monday, is cold and sunny but so far it’s been grey and now at 10.00am it’s snowing.

One hundredth

This is the one hundredth entry that I’ve done here on Flighty’s Plot. I’m going to leave a proper celebration for a few months until its first birthday, and when Plot 124 will also be one year old.

Hopefully the weather will then be nice and summery. I’m sitting writing this before 9.00am on Easter Sunday looking out the window at the snow not only falling quite heavily but settling on the rooftops!

Clearly no allotmenteering is going to be done today, or for the next few days, so I shall enjoy some sofa flying instead. After lunch I’m going to settle down to a good read, along with a cup of tea and some plain chocolate biscuits.

Stay warm and take care…Flighty

My new header!

Over recent weeks I’ve been enjoying looking at the superb images on NiC’s London Daily Nature Photo.

I’ve always liked photo blogs and this one has become a favourite, especially as the pictures have been taken about 15 miles down the road from me.

I particularly like one image and asked NiC if I could use part of it for my new header! He thankfully agreed and I think that it looks terrific.

I have also changed the theme which I hope you like as much as I do!

Happy Easter!

Tomorrow, Good Friday, heralds the traditional start of the gardening year, which is early this year. It also sees the welcome return of Gardeners’ World on BBC2 at 8.30pm.

On Sunday, Easter Day, there is a real wildlife TV treat with My Life with Animals:Simon King on BBC2 at 6.10pm. He looks back over thirty years of making wildlife films and relives some of his most astonishing moments.

Wednesday sees the return of the always excellent wildlife TV series Natural World with Elephant Nomads of the Namib Desert on BBC2 at 8.00pm.

The forecast for the holiday weekend is, typically, not looking very good. If you do venture out to the British countryside then the When to Watch Wildlife site is worth looking at before you go.

Happy Easter!

Too many seeds ?

For the record here is a photo of the 60 plus packets of flower, herb and vegetable seeds that I will be sowing on Plot 124 over the next couple of months

Bear in mind that the plot is no more than 30 by 60 feet and has a pallet patio, woodchip paths, a compost area, a soft fruit patch and so on. There’s also various bulbs, corms, tubers, onion sets and chitted potatoes to be planted. On that basis I reckon that the area for seed sowing is reduced by around a third.

Even taking into account that many won’t germinate, and some eaten by the birds, I really do think that I have enough. So I must stop browsing through the catalogues or looking at the seeds in the hardware shop and horticultural society’s hut.

I went to the plot this morning as I’d not been there since Friday. There was a cold wind so apart from topping up the bird feeders and putting up some wire trellis for the grape vine I did little else.

On my usual tour of inspection I did notice that there’s plenty of signs of growth including some tiny leaves on one of the raspberry canes! I’m also happy to say that the globe artichoke is recovering, just as I was told it would.

Spending spree!

Well kind of as on Thursday I went to Homebase to spend the £50 worth of vouchers that I’d been given in December as compensation for the damage done to the plot.

I bought a pair of Pruners, a Dutch Hoe and a Soil Rake all of which are to replace the ones I have that really aren’t very good.

I also bought this trough which is for the climbing Asparagus which I mentioned in this entry.

I shall also grow some Matricaria White Gem

and Viola F2 Joker Blue in it as well.

That was the £50 spent, well very nearly as I actually got 34p change!

As you can see in the trough picture most of the daffodils survived the rain and wind during the week, but sadly the crocus didn’t.

The only newspaper that I buy now is The Independent on Saturday when I’m at the bookshop all day. I always read Cleve West’s Urban Gardener page in the Magazine which last week was aptly titled A mighty wind as you can see here. Has anyone grown, cooked and/or eaten Jerusalem artichokes ?

Happy reading !

There are no new wildlife programmes on terrestrial TV next week.

That meant I was wondering what to do for this entry. I was at the bookshop yesterday afternoon where, as it was quiet, I got to look through various trade catalogues and found several books that I thought would be of interest.

Panda looks to be a very reasonably priced book full of wonderful pictures of China’s national treasure by award winning photographer Heather Angel. This wonderful image is typical of the many full-colour photos to be seen, all of which are accompanied by engaging and informative text.

Not surprisingly The Allotment Book:Seasonal Planner and Cookbook caught my eye. It’s written by Andi Clevely who wrote the well regarded companion volume The Allotment Book.

Mind you as cooking is not really my forte then I’ll probably buy this paperback, which is subtitled Adventures of an Allotment Novice, when it comes out in early May. I shall read it whilst relaxing on the plot!

If I was rather younger than I am then I’d be more than happy to given a copy of the First Garden Activity Book. I looked at a copy we have in the shop and think that it’s a terrific book for any budding young gardener. It’s a Dorling Kindersley publication who do a wide range of really excellent children’s books.

Celebrating 100 years of pure reading pleasure is Mills & Boon! We don’t sell their books in the bookshop, and they’re not my kind of reading. However don’t scoff at them as they account for a surprisingly large percentage of all paperbacks sold in the UK.

Happy reading , and have a good weekend!