What are we doing in the garden 2025

Are you sure it was not Nessie @Escarpment

I saw a yellow banded damselfly in my garden yesterday. I was so proud. I would love to have a pond, but my garden is too small. 3 water baths fill the gap. One of them is really shallow.

 

I was out at 6am, watering. When everything is newly planted and the forecast is 30c for two days, all great resolutions of being eco friendly go to compost and off flows the tap water.

Anyways, it was a delightful way to spend an hour on a lovely summer morning before work The pond looks great and the cheapy solar fountains (without nozzles) make the funniest little plop-plop-plops of water.

The Child has been a true hero, carrying home backpackfuls of large cobble stones that are waiting to be skipped at the place where she volunteers in the gardens. As the result, the pond edges are slowly transforming into something a bit natural-ish.

Oh, and an experiment from yesterday. I want a curved piece of decaying driftwood in my pond. We have a nature reserve nearby with just the thing, it looks stunning but I can't really steal the wood from there... (at least now when the nights are so light )

So I went exploring around our stone-harvesting field surrounded by marsh and ditches and found a fairly good piece of wood about 1.5m long.

Now, it just might be slightly illegal to take decaying wood from the nature so I had some concerns when carrying it home through our estate, but kept a straight face and tried to look like a teacher preparing for a school project.

All went well, apart from the fact that every single dog on their walks grinded to a halt, turned to me with eyes wide with admiration trying to rush to worship me dragging their owners behind.

Apparently, carrying a 1.5m hefty stick is a huge merit in the local dog world.

 

Just checked the garden. No fox damage for 3 consecutive days

 

Awesome!

 

@Simone , why not try a mini pond ? All sorts of containers work , i have an old galvanised bucket which i have set into the ground behind my compost bins, a quiet part of the garden but a public right of way for all sorts of animals . I have some aquatic grasses in there which are offshoots from our pond

 

How lovely to get damselflies. I had a small red one on my alpine strawberries a few days ago. My pond is tiny, one of the smallest preformed ones. It's just right for me because I can easily reach to pick out all the fallen leaves in the autumn.

I went out first thing this morning to have another look - definitely newts and not Nessie! More than one too - they were very obligingly sitting on a pale rock under the surface and I managed to get some photos.

 

Nothing today, the temperature on the shed is showing any eye watering 38 at the moment!

 

Wow - is the thermometer directly in the sun? My living room is 26C which is bad enough. I've opened all the windows but there's no breeze.

 

Just caught up reading this thread , think i ought to change my handle to ‘ mad bloke’ .
In recent days ive been up at 6:30 out in the garden still catching up on tasks that are long overdue (recovery from leg injury which kept me out of action for months so i was still well behind) .I have relined and refilled 9 hanging baskets and 3 hayracks and filled them with plants plus recycling some of the plants that were still salvagable in the said racks and baskets ( big job and grateful to Mrs B for assistance) and with good intentions to stop by midday each day but it never works out like that.
Its peculiar ! I cant just sit in the sun , i overheat and sit outside in full shade, but, with a legionnaires hat on , long trousers and heavy boots i can potter for hours- wouldnt dream of it without the hat! (And a shirt ). Plus i am not completely barmy as i had set up 2 parasols to work in the shade as much as possible.Yesterday i thought - its hot , so lets sort the pond out - as the lily pads were overflowing and their flowers smothered. The notion that the pond water would be cooling was offset by the effort it took to get them out and getting really slimy and dirty. The pond seems better for the effort though and the water lilies are now settling down once more .
Sanity returns as i am only going to do some watering for the next couple of days and with temperatures lower next week i shall be back to it on Monday

 

I am green with envy. During the last 2/3 weeks my daughter has seen a hedgehog in her garden. A couple of days ago she was sitting out when it arrived, she was able to film it trundling around, checking out corners etc. It didn't seem bothered by her sitting close by. I hope it doesn't mean it has something wrong with it.

 

Sadly I believe it's a bad sign if they're out during daylight hours.

 

Actually I've just googled this and "If the hedgehog is moving purposefully and appears well and active, this is probably not a cause for concern". Which does sound like what the neighbour's hedgehog was doing. Would probably be a good idea to put some water out for it in this weather though - maybe that's what it's looking for.

 

@Escarpment , the back of our house faces direct East so we get all the sun and heat there on a morning until the sun moves around. The shed is in line with direct sun and the thermometer is on the outside. Our other thermometer, at the other end of the garden, facing West, is showing 29 and it’s hidden underneath a thick clematis! Very hot day forecast so I will be staying inside and keeping as still as I can

 

@Robert Bowen we are surrounded by water in the NE of Wiltshire. All damselflies are happy at the Cotswold Waterpark and other lakes here. It’s not that there is nothing here.
I like the look of a pond. I used to have a mini pond but the lack of dappled shade made it impossible to keep it.
My 3 birdbaths are in demand by all kinds of birds and they need to be cleaned daily and topped up twice a day.

 

I also understood it was not good to see hedgehogs out and about during the daytime.