There are four pigeons up in the sycamore tree. They are not eating but grooming. They are a pretty bedraggled bunch as if they have been out all night at a party. I can’t get the fourth in the photo. Three scruffs will do. Another pigeon, on the same tree, but some way from the quartet is eating the buds. There are no leaves yet on the tree but the buds are swollen, soft and no doubt tasty. For pigeons at least. The silver birch in contrast is almost in full leaf. Its leaves are rhomboid, the size of postage stamps.
The ukulele players are practising in the shelter. Although a chilly wind is blowing, they are protected and warm. Colds hands are not good for plucking strings. They have a spot at the Forest Gate Festival, three months away on the 5 July. They have had a year of learning since Misty ran her course last summer. It’s good to hear them, our Sunday morning music. They attract the attention of passers-by.
Last Friday in the garden, it was warm, over 18 degrees by noon, and the right-hand corner of the pond was awash with tadpoles. Today, it is 6 degrees cooler and there are hardly any tadpoles to be seen. They are cold blooded, and become docile and inert when it is cold, immobile under stones or comatose at the bottom of the pond. With their metabolism at such a low ebb they have no need to eat, but will need to in order to go through the phases of metamorphises. It’s only early spring, we’ll surely have warmer days to enliven them.
The papyrus in the pond survived the winter and is now about a metre high. It might get another half a metre in growth but the plant is in a pot which will restrict it. Along the Nile there are vast acres of papyrus, three metres high, and in some places blocking feeder streams.
The white cherry is in full bloom, while the pink is just beginning to break out. There will be a few days when they are in bloom together. Not quite hanami, the Japanese festival of cherry blossom, which is centuries old. People come together to have picnics and celebrate its fleeting beauty. Ours is a good showing, for a few days depending on the weather, and then the blossom will fall, the white first and the pink shortly after with the paths awash with petals as if a wedding has passed. So get in quick for your picnic.
The three-cornered leeks (Allium triquetrum) are in flower, white blooms, very like bluebells but for the colour. The stems are triangular in cross-section, hence the common name. My brother hated it, and dug it all out. Not my feeling at all, a flower for free. Let it grow.
The perennial wallflower is in bloom, a profusion of yellow and red flowers, almost intertwined is a periwinkle with its blue blossoms.
The buddleia is growing strongly, the tunnel through it, heaped over. Although attacked by leaf curl in the last years, it keeps on coming. At its border, near the Fothergill bed, there is a walnut tree. We had hoped to move it and so give it space to develop, but it is in a very large container with half a ton of soil, which may well have rooted into the soil under it, and impossible to move without a crane. A few years ago, it bore a single walnut.
Our apples and pears are in blossom, our plum too. I suspect it is going to be a dry summer, we’ve had a few weeks with little rain. Our barrels will be used up in few weeks, unless it rains, but we have our tap, as back up. Weather is notoriously difficult to predict. Mine is just a guess, and I hope we get some rain. I looked up the possibilities for the next few months on line, but the sites so hedge their bets, you could as well spin a coin. My bet is a hot, dry summer.