Valley Creations13/04/26 Pleasant weather after a cold start. Ruth, Simon and I all pottering. Some sluggish bees about and everything changing fast. Between us we created a log pile from the defunct arch, mended a boundary fence, potted seedlings trimmed back a willow arch, cleared beds of weeds and mulched more tender plants, Cleared the debris from an earlier pond clearance and put it in the dead hedge…….
It is nearly 20 years since I moved into this house and there were old, unused, nest boxes here then. Those were put up by Ruth who arrived here 10 years earlier. Despite that we’ve put up several since. One was hidden in a conifer about 20m away from where I film with an old Fairphone 3 but just about visible from that angle. Then wood pigeons nested and played trampolines on one of the branches and the following winter snows made a big gap in that part of the conifer.
Still no sign of activity, other than a quick investigation. Suddenly from another room, I spotted a bird going in, so rushed up and set things up. Over several days there have now been multiple sightings. Hurrah.
The first video is the best so far. The second just illustrates the effect of a change of wind direction on temperatures and thus insect activity in early April.
It has turned from reasonably cool to excessively warm and back to cool again in a week. Today has been warm in the sun. After finishing the arch replacement a well deserved ramble to take in the garden’s other pleasures.
Having watched a program on solitary flower bees and having recent logs lying around, I thought we’d give making another bee intended log pile/ stumpery a try. I did manage to overheat a small drill with my usual gung-ho approach. First I had to remove all the suckers from the Hazel, then split some of the logs, then the drilling and piling
In 2015 I made an arch from pollarded Sycamore branches, to mark the begining of the main steps down the garden. I didn’t expect it to last long. A bit later I added a carved sycamore owl to it. The insects were boring holes in to it already.
2026 and high winds have finally brought the arch down. It has done good service for wood from our own garden.
At the same time my latest sculpture project is coming along nicely. Something to smile at till the arch returns. As it is a cherry tree that had to go, carving needs to be done in stages. It is very soft and prone to split at first in parts then dries out much harder. Time to leave it for a while longer and decide how much more work to do when it has dried out more.
Update:
The logs have evolved into a stumpery with loads of holes drilled for bees (and one overheated drill bit casualty) and a slightly less pretty but pretty practical arch has risen up. The roses that collapsed with the old arch will come back and soften its lines. The old wood turned from nuisance sycamore tree to insect friendly arch and will now be reduced to shorter lengths and continue as a wildlife friendly zone. The two wood pigeons in the tree behind the arch fooled me into thinking they were pheasants. Masters of disguise.
On Monday Ruth was clearing one of the longer vegetable beds (they are all actually mixed flower/veg beds). We’ve got into a habit of treating brassicas like Purple Sprouting and taking heads of, leaving the plant to do its own thing, unless we need the space. During the clearing it became clear that the cabbages had developed multiple little loose heads, the Autumn broccoli had developed nice little sprouts, some spinach had developed a few vaguely acceptable leaves and a little patch of beetroot that was too small to harvest hadn’t entirely given up the ghost. Ruth saved them and passed them over to me.
Ruth and I are both on the same side of one of life’s great divides – Beetroot. I have a policy of keeping on trying things until I find out what it is people like about it and after many years of failure I discovered that Beetroot with goats cheese, really worked, especially if the beetroot is roasted. We eat it regularly now.
With that is mind and what I had in the house I came up with the following vegan recipe, which went down very well.
Flavouring – 1 tsp Allspice, 2 tsp sumac, 2 tsp ginger 1 tsp cardamom powder added to 1.5 tbsp olive oil in a roasting tin at 180 degrees fan oven.
Vegetables – 1 medium red onion, 1 clove garlic, 1 carrot, 10 small beetroot, 2 punnets of brassica tops, tin of sweetcorn,
To add at the end – 1.5 tbsp nutritional yeast, 1 dsp vegan bouillon powder, 100 ml water.
Process – Clean and if necessary peel/scrape vegetables and cut into long pieces not to thick. Remove any hard stalks from the Brassica tops and clean up.
Starting with the beetroot and carrot, pre-cook the vegetables (other than onion, garlic and sweetcorn) in the microwave and add in turn to the hot roasting tin, putting the onion and garlic in after the beetroot has cooked crisped up a bit. When the leafy bits are starting almost to turn into crisps, add the sauce ingredients and the sweetcorn and return to the oven for around 5 minutes. You can turn the oven off at this point.
We ate it with toasted home made bread and there was a little bit left for lunch today.
