Posts filed under 'Tales from Pond Cottage'
What a difference a year makes. I’ve been wanting to post pictures of our Natural Progression to winter since, well, since we progressed to winter. Hard to believe it is a year to the day since Susie installed her bamboo sculpture on the edge of the pond.
Flashback to 22 February 2009 – a sunny Sunday warm enough to work in the woods without coats, hats and scarves
Twelve months of rain, wind, sun and snow later the bamboo is still cheering me up when I walk through the woods.
The odd winter storm has knocked it about a bit but as soon as the ground thaws enough we will soon knock it back into shape.
So happy birthday Natural Progression. One year old today. And happy birthday Bobby. Congratulations on naturally progressing to 24– come to think of it, February has some good points.
Full circle – winter, spring, summer, autumn and winter again
.This is a picture Dougal took in the big snow of January. That has melted but there was hard frost on the ground again yesterday and the ducks were skating on the pond.
February 22nd, 2010
[thanks to Dougal for the snow track picture]
You don’t have to be able to read the tracks. When we get to Pond Cottage, the signs of deer and rabbit are all round the garden. Deep snow protected the plants from frost but gave the animals a leg up above the tree guards. Apples, hollies, junipers and yew are all stripped bare. “I thought yew was poisonous,” says Ray.
A few hours later we get the answer. A dead deer is lying on the path not far from the yew. It was sniffed out by the friendly lurcher that comes for a daily walk through the woods and Mr Lurch (his friendly owner) points it out to us.
I’m sad about the yew, it has been growing well for the last 10 years or so. The idea was to make a focal point at the end of the bird cherry lane and thanks to the run of mild winters the tree has been making good progress.
But I am sad about the deer too. Real foresters would not agree – deer cause a lot of damage – but the roe deer are a magical sight running through the trees on a winter evening (and once we found young twins curled up together in the long grass in the clearing which is enough to melt anyone’s heart). Until this year they haven’t caused us much trouble. They must have been really hungry to attack the yew. According to the DEFRA website death follows within two to three hours – animals are often found lying beside the yew or yew clippings – and it sounds a miserable way to die. But then, so is starvation.
On the other hand I am mad about the fruit trees. For the last few years we have had fantastic crops of apples, we’re even getting quite good at making juice (if pretty useless at cider). But the rabbits (the droppings give them away) managed to climb above the tree guards and munch their way round every tree. This happened to one flowering cherry the last time we had heavy snow and amazingly, despite being ring barked, the tree survived but we don’t have much hope for the fruit trees. Interestingly I just found a comment on Yahoo answers from a vet claiming that rabbits might be poisoned by the cyanide found in the bark of apple trees.
Taxine and taxol in yews, cyanide in apple trees; it’s a wonder trees ever die!
Ray buried the deer under the larch trees where the daffodils are just ready to burst through the ground. Larch, by the way, is full of medicinal and disinfecting properties but daffodils are poisonous in a half hearted kind of way – the bulbs cause stomach upsets if you mistake them for onions. Rabbits don’t.
January 18th, 2010
The pond taken by Dougal standing where he really shouldn’t ought to.
The night we arrive we have to abandon the car by the gate and carry the cats through snow so deep it comes right over our wellies. It’s so cold the cottage feels like a scene from Dr Zhivago.
“Diesel freezes at minus 15,” says Ray, matter of factly, remembering that winter when the generator didn’t work because the oil froze in the pipes. Outside the cottage, the windmill, blades blanketed in white, is facing resolutely north and standing absolutely still. Inside is obviously much warmer than it feels because oil and water are still flowing. That means we can light a fire and start the tractor. Ray makes tracks to retrieve our booze and food and clothes from the road end while I guard the fire willing the thermometer to rise ( a hard job but someone has to do it).
Like that scene in Dr Zhivago the icy, shrouded house slowly comes to life; candles burning, fire blazing, food cooking, steamed up glasses filling, cats purring on the sofa. I know it’s not quite like that in Varykino, in the midst of the Russian civil war, but in the absence of Omar Sharif and Julie Christie, Beth and Marley will just have to do. Besides, according to Wikipedia, the ‘ice palace’ scene was shot in Spain in a house with icicles made from beeswax. Huh.
Our snow is real and it keeps on coming for the four days of our holiday. Moon on snow, sun on sun, snow on snow and when the New Year’s day pheasant shoot starts in the neighbouring wood, blood on snow.
There are stalactytes and stalagmytes growing by the back door. A couple of Christmases ago, before recession set in, village houses were festooned with electronic icicles. Now we have the genuine articles hanging from anything that would drip.
Each new fall transforms every mundane object and turns every task into an endurance test: filling the log basket is an expedition to the North Pole. “I know it’s been said before,” says Ray, “But I am just going outside. I might be some time…”
We watch chaos on telly and wildlife through the window: crowds of birds visiting the feeders, one crow loads his beak so full of goose fat it is a wonder he can take off.
Last time we had snow this deep was 15 years ago (second thoughts, make that 17 years ago) in Aboyne where we built a fine igloo, big enough for the six footers in our company to stand upright inside. This year Dougal, Anny and I find it hard going.
“It’s the wrong kind of snow,” says Anny after an hour or so. And it really is. Too dry and powdery to stay together though we keep trying until our fingers and toes go on strike.
With an old biscuit tin (mine) and some rudimentary geometry (Dougal’s) we reach waist height (Anny’s) but when it’s time to start curving inwards for the dome the building material defeats us.
That was the holiday. We’re home again now and it’s still snowing. We left the cottage and the igloo and the ducks on the frozen pond a little wistfully thinking it would all be back to normal next time we come. Watching today’s weather forecast I am not so sure. We might manage to finish the igloo this weekend. As long as the anti freeze keeps the diesel flowing!
January 7th, 2010
Maybe it’s a sign of my age, but I am getting quite a taste for purple.
I don’t really have time for blogging. There’s a scary deadline to meet and I must find thousands of words to put together before the end of the month. But, hell, I am going to treat myself to a few minutes of posting some purple pictures to mark the end of a very mixed year in the vegetable garden. I don’t like to tell you what the slugs did to an otherwise monster crop of potatoes in the new patch but I suspect slugs had a lot to do with the Irish potato famine. However the beans were fantastic: good to eat and beautiful to look at.
In a moment I will look up the Marshall’s catalogue to see what the variety is called. I picked them simply for their looks in the colour pictures and after a slowish start they have not been a disappointment. This is how they looked once they finally started to flower.
Meanwhile, the dwarf French beans were cropping heavily with the more common or garden green pods. By early September I was beginning to fear the purple flowers would not produce a bean. Wrong.
There were also some old fashioned runner beans called Celebration with pretty peach pink flowers but I didn’t manage to photograph them.
A quick look in next year’s Marshall’s catalogue shows that the purple bean is called Empress, ‘high yielding and stringless with excellent flavour’. And, though I was so discouraged by the subterranean slime thugs I sometimes thought of giving up vegetable growing altogether, just flicking the pages I am very tempted to try a few other gorgeous looking crops for next year.
Take a look at this new asparagus pea with scarlet flowers and the purple artichoke called Violet Globe. Oh, and there’s a new purple carrot called Purple Haze. Irresistible! Better get a bumper box of slug eating Nematodes too.
October 6th, 2009
‘You know those ducks in that lagoon by Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over?’
I blew the dust off my old copy of The Catcher in the Rye to find that quote. Rather eerily it fell open at exactly the right page. But never mind those ducks in Central Park, Holden Caulfield. What I want to know is where do the swans go when they leave Pond Cottage? Long before it is in any danger of freezing over.
Who knows what is in a swan’s head. We can’t find a bird book that comes close to explaining the behaviour of swans that come to breed at Pond Cottage.But we have learned not to believe that stuff about mating for life.
We first began to get a glimpse of the murky world of swan relationships when that bad boy AJA did a bunk having fathered three cygnets (well, six actually but only three survived).
We knew he was AJA because we could see the letters on a ring on his leg. What we didn’t know was that he had left his first mate (his mother no less) after fathering a brood on the Town Loch in Dunfermline in 1995. That is we didn’t know it until (thanks to Google) we found two expert and dedicated swan handlers, Allan and Lyndesey Brown, who were able to tell us AJA’s story by decoding the letters on his ring.
Then they came and performed a little magic on the banks of the pond, coaxing AJA’s abandoned mate and her three cygnets out of the water with some white sliced bread. They were gentle and deft and knew just what they were doing. It was an amazing experience which we had given up hope of repeating until this year.
I contacted Allan and Lyndesey again last month to ask if they might be able to come and ring this year’s family of nine swans. Sadly, Lyndesey told me, they have decided to call it a day after years of catching and ringing hundreds of swans in the Fife area. Still, thanks to Allan and Lydesey, we know what it feels like to stroke a swan’s chest (they seem to find it soothing when they are being trussed, weighed and measured) and we have the pictures to prove it.
And though AJA never showed up again we know quite a lot about his movements until that summer of 2004 – he came and went between Lochgelly, Loch Leven and Town Loch. Part of me wishes we didn’t know what happened to his son, less charismatically ringed as ILS in September 2004.
The mother swan flew off as soon as her new feathers grew leaving her three offspring to winter on the pond. They pottered about quite happily coming up to the bank to be fed every time we appeared. One misty February morning we arrived to find the pond empty and a few days later I got an email with the subject line: mute swan ILS. It was a message from Allan.
We have received a report that cygnet ILS was found dead below power lines at Milnathort (NO131047) on 6th February 2005. Was this its first flight? A not untypical cause of death for cygnets but a great pity all the same – especially after the food you have given it!
Holden Caulfield never does find out about the ducks. Maybe sometimes it’s a happier ending not to know.
Flashback to Spring 2004.
September 10th, 2009
They shall not pass…
The picture is not very clear but you get the idea. These swans have no intention of letting anyone get past. When I stand up the adults stand up, when I move forward so do they, hissing and opening their wings to make sure I get the message. It takes a man in a hard hat (oh, why didn’t I get a blurry video of that!) brandishing a white plastic chair, like a lion tamer in a circus ring designed by B&Q, to clear a path to our new vegetable patch. Swans have last laugh with a march round the garden leaving a trail of surprisingly black poo.
It’s the swan walk that intrigues us. Most days the parents take their brood round the garden, walking in a line to the bird table then round the house pausing to rest every now and then when the smallest cygnet stages a sit down protest. We have watched them do it almost every year since the first pair of swans appeared on the pond in 2003. That year they started out with five cygnets. By the end of an afternoon’s marching there were only three. Which gave us dark thoughts that this was nature’s way of removing weaklings.
This year for the first time the whole brood of seven cygnets has survived. As if to celebrate, Ma and Pa are rapidly expanding their territory. A couple of weeks ago a farmer a couple of miles down the road rang to say ‘our’ swans were marching the wee ones past her house, should she call the RSPB? Ray reassured her they knew what they were doing and sure enough a couple of days later they were back on the pond.
I have never found a bird book that describes this peculiar behaviour let alone explains why they do it. But just now a precautionary Google reveals that a pair of swans with seven cygnets have become celebraties in Eastbourne for marching their young round a housing estate.
“They have walked up and round to the car park at Langney Shopping Centre, they have walked round the circumference of the local junior school and even walked along sections of the busy Sevenoaks road. ” Wild Life Extra.
According to the local Wild Life Rescue and Ambulance Service (WRAS) this is unusual behaviour. Does anyone out there know what it is about?
If past performance is anything to go by our swans will soon be off downstream to Loch Leven before they start to moult. Usually, showing great good sense, they hang around until the weekend after T in the Park. Then we get the pond and the garden back to ourselves and it all seems very empty. But this year we won’t miss the piles of black poo.
July 7th, 2009
I have a new routine before I start the hard labour of gardening; a nice half hour or so of delaying tactics, wandering round, cup of tea in hand, counting ducklings (four, nearly full grown) and cygnets (still seven a month after hatching) and then, oh go on, just another few minutes to check the bamboo sculpture (lots and lots of pieces) in the woods.
We are very chuffed to have our very own sculpture among the beech trees. It has been there for more than three months now and never fails to surprise, constantly changing with the season, the light and the time of day.
Susie installed Natural Progression at Pond Cottage way back in February and I have been planning to write about it ever since. But today is pretty good timing because it is exactly a year since Susie drove 600 pieces of black bamboo into the ground at the Botanics.
Flashback to June 2008, surely the wettest coldest summer on record. Despite rain, wind, and dance, Natural Progression held steady on the lawn near the Chinese hillside where it provided a setting for Wind and Bamboo, the great midsummer happening created by Kimho Ip and a multicultural, multimedia, multi-talented cast of many
Anne-Marie dancing in midsummer rain
After being on display for a month, Natural Progression was offered for sale at the Friends plant auction – but apparently no-one had room for so many pieces of bamboo. Ray and I happily offered them a home.
Then we couldn’t decide where it should go. Nature rules the roost at Pond Cottage and I didn’t want the sculpture to disappear beneath docks and thistles. Susie thought that might look quite interesting but in the end she chose the meandering line through the beech wood where the roe deer have made a path on their way to eat our newly planted trees.
Susie and Ziggy mapping out Natural Progression (watch out, something lurking behind a tree). And Ziggy with a bad cough too.
It works beautifully. Each season is a new setting and Natural Progression seems to belong in them all; as much at home among the daffs as when it is almost swamped by bluebells and wild garlic.
June
I now have stacks of pictures of the bamboo through three seasons in all lights. I am amazed to see how colours change: from February’s brown to the bright green of June. If I was an artist I would make a huge collage of postage stamp pictures tracking Natural Progression through the beech wood year. Maybe I need to talk nicely to Susie. Or Tommy.
Winter, Spring and Summer.
June 9th, 2009
There was a moment of disbelief. We’ve got so used to chasing grey squirrels from the bird table (there is no such thing as a squirrel-proof feeder) that I thought the sun must be playing tricks with the colour. But this squirrel really was red and, we have since discovered, possibly the first sighting of one in our area.
At first we hardly dared move in case we frightened it away. After a good half hour Ray got fed up trying to take pictures through the window so he went outside and as you can see the little thing positively posed for the camera.
Watching the squirrel was such a magical experience. For once no other thought got in the way: no work, no worries, no washing up. There was only the animal, the sunlight and our disbelief suspended over rapidly cooling coffee. This was something we never really expected to see. When we first came to Pond Cottage a neighbour told us there were red squirrels, badgers, otters and pine martens in the neighbourhood. Oh yes, pine martens? We were polite but privately sceptical.
Even in red squirrel country further north I have only ever caught a fleeting glimpse of a red tail disappearing up a pine tree. But this one seemed almost tame. In fact it seemed so undisturbed by our presence I began to wonder if someone’s pet squirrel had run away from home.
There have been other magical moments at Pond Cottage: finding two baby roe deer lying together in late afternoon sunlight in the clearing; watching a kingfisher flash sizzling blue towards me on the bank of the pond and then (incredibly) coming back repeatedly to hoover up midges on the surface of the water.
But the red squirrel has brought an added dimension of new responsibility. Life at Pond Cottage may never be quite the same again. What do we do about the grey squirrels that live among the beech trees down the lane? They are bigger and bolder and in some places we’re told they carry a pox that kills the smaller reds, though with weird timing the night before our red squirrel appeared we saw a television clip of an irascible Bill Oddy acknowledging a new theory that reds are showing signs of immunities to the grey pox.
So what do we do? Ray asked for suggestions when he emailed one of his best pictures round family and friends. Considering most of them are townies they sent some very blood thirsty answers: catch ‘em, kill ‘em, eat ‘em. That is more or less the word on the Scottish Squirrel Survey website and the Perth and Kinross Squirrel Group has promised to send us a squirrel homepack with advice on what to feed reds and (ahem) how to get in touch with the grey squirrel hit squad.
Personally, I favour Jean’s method (trap them if we must but release them elsewhere). Whatever, I promise Bobby there will be no barbecued greys at my birthday bonfire!
November 5th, 2008
The birds have flown. Or rather, since this is the moulting season, perhaps they have just shuffled off somewhere downstream. Wherever they have gone and however they got there, the pond seems much too quiet and I am wandering around gloomily counting ducklings and cygnets that are nowhere to be seen. I don’t think it is just empty pond syndrome; I know, I know, all young things have to move on. My fear is that something nasty lurking in the reedbed has had them for lunch.
It’s a hard life being a softy. Ray says mink won’t mess with full grown mallards but the weekend of the wedding Jared saw something black scuttling away with a rabbit in its mouth. That sounds hellish like mink to me and surely a rabbit is no smaller than a mallard?
The first time we saw the pond it was choked with weeds and reeds but there was just enough water for a pair of swans. I think they were put there by the estate agents because we didn’t see any more swans for the next eight years until we had finished building the house and turned our attention to dredging the pond. Next spring two swans appeared out of nowhere (we were so surprised we thought the white splash on the bank was an old poly bag) and produced the first batch of Pond Cottage cygnets.
This spring we saw a record number of tiny mallards scooting across the surface like fluffy pond skaters. They moved so fast it was hard to count them but we reckoned there must have been up to 30 from three or four different broods. By last month there were just two parents with four healthy almost full grown young and they all looked very content, swimming round the pond in one happy family group. The swans had four young too and occasionally they were joined by moorhens and dabchicks. We spent hours watching them and a fortune on sacks of grain.
As always the swans were first to disappear but we have got used to that – each year they seem to prefer to leave before the moulting begins in earnest, travelling downstream to Loch Leven to seek safety in numbers (we know that’s where they go because neighbours have seen ‘our swans’ escorting their cygnets across the road and into the stream going down to the loch). But the ducks always stayed on the pond until this year.
Now they are all gone, except for one drake and his mate who stay in hiding most of the day. The pond is empty most of the day and it doesn’t feel right. Mind you, there are reasons to be cheerful. When Ray was working on his new engineering project in the dam he found two carcases in the pipes leading from the pond which he knows is where they mink hangs out. They were dead rabbits.
August 7th, 2008
July is supposedly the most popular month for getting married which is tricky in Scotland when you are planning a woodland wedding. But look at the potential for accessories. Forget the fascinator! Angela has just sent me these great shots of the Pond Cottage wedding of the year. Well, ok, the only PC wedding of the year (so far) but there will surely never be another one quite like it.
And the bride wore…white wellies. Unfortunately you can’t see them but I know Fran invested in her footwear long before they booked yurt, marquee, hog roast, florist, or humanist celebrant. (I’m remembering Dougal was told not to call Gillian a minister when he made his best man speech).
We know a lot of young friends who got married in July. Sadly we missed the chance to see Rob ride across Leith Links on a horse to marry Dolly in true Hindu style but we were back from holiday in time to see Fran and Jared overturn most western wedding conventions. Apart from the kilt and white dress.
Almost exactly a year ago, when they asked us if they could get married in the clearing, I don’t think any of us (including the happy couple) knew what we were letting ourselves in for. I must admit our apprehensions grew with each new email under the heading Pig Out: Hog Roast and we graciously accepted the offer of a night in a local hotel a safe distance from all night celebrations.
But the night before the wedding Dougal sent a text, “The place looks amazing” and next morning I wandered round marvelling at what they had done: the dressing up tent, the lights in the trees, the bar, the chill out zone, the music, the yurt, the marquee, the toilets and the campsite including a tent for the newlyweds.
It was all absolutely magical. And the sun was shining too, at least for as long as it took for people to gather in the Boys’ Brigade marquee for a glass of champagne in the clearing which (before we arrived at Pond Cottage 14 years ago) used to be the neighbourhood dump, now festooned with flags and adorned with wellies (”I haven’t seen the same pair twice,” Angela whispered, happily snapping people’s feet).
“How does a humanist pray for no rain?” Ray asked as we waited for the bride to arrive. Gillian held up crossed fingers and beamed.
The humanist prayer worked for at least 30 minutes, long enough for Fran and Jared to exchange vows during one of the simplest but most moving wedding ceremonies any of us had been to. Then, just as the official signing began, a big black cloud opened overhead. The downpour arrived in perfect time for us to sing the closing ‘hymn’ Always look on the Bright Side of Life beneath umbrellas. Doo-dudoo-dudoo-dudoo-dudoo. The wedding march followed on white kazoos (come on, any other colour would be tacky) and it would not have sounded the same in sunshine.
But the sun came back. During the speeches, Ray and I got more than our fair share of thanks and the gift of a specially named Pond Cottage rose. What can we say (apart from thanks to the wonderful clear-up team who magicked away the mess), we wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Ray did have to prize me out of the clearing and on to the get-away coach which arrived much too soon as the bonfire and the dancing was just warming up. But I don’t regret the hotel booking.
July 25th, 2008
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