Bless - thank you! Bear seems to be doing okay, though a little tired.
Sharon - The way things are going, that fuchsia will outlast me! I'm going with 'post viral' now. It's awful.
Cherie - It's absolutely grim. I hope that you feel better soon.
Eileen - Bear has always been good with maths and science. DH and I emphatically not good with maths and science. We are both baffled. As for that fuchsia, it was a dwarf fuchsia when father planted it.
The fuchsia is the most amazing thing that I have going on at the moment. It was only a little one when father planted it, probably around ten years ago. He had form for getting 'small' fuchsias that got out of hand, so I shouldn't have been surprised. I think I will track it next year and take a pic on the same day of the week and, if I can, the same time of day, every week for a full growing season, so that I can compare the start and the end of the year. I pass a fuchsia that looks similar on the school run and I have a regular moment of smugness as that one is nowhere near as flamboyant as ours. I mutter about flamethrowers and chainsaws sometimes, as it does take over our tiny garden, but I love its brightness. It has been a boon for the bees and the sparrows have enjoyed the berries in their own rowdy way.
And speaking of rowdy, as I left to pick up bear this afternoon, a squirrel was armpit deep in a jar of peanut butter that we had put out for the birds. I had bought a bird feeder with peanut butter in, that looked something like this
Except I got mine from Aldi and it was considerably less expensive. It was very popular indeed. Then we tried with some inexpensive peanut butter from Asda. The birds were equally impressed, and so was the squirrel. I came home to this.
Which took some cleaning up as the jar was glass - lesson learned! I've ordered some 'Flutter Butter' from Amazon which, on Subscribe and Save, comes in at the same price as the cheap peanut butter.
The bird food station looks like this (please ignore the weed filled garden in the background)
We have a very assertive robin, blue tits, great tits, sparrows, jackdaws, pigeons, magpies, blackbirds, thrushes, starlings and I think I saw a wren the other day. Plus the dratted squirrel!
By the time I had finished tidying it up, I thought I was going to pass out, so I'm going with post viral and I'm just going to have to pace myself.
Hugs and good health to all.
That's a very impressive bird feeding set up you have there! No wonder the squirrel is intrigued! I just saw a squirrel in my garden! Now that the garden cat population has dwindled down to one rather old cat (Mama Cat who is half blind) the squirrels are rediscovering my garden! Which might be a problem, next year, if the fruit trees bear any fruit!
ReplyDeleteWeeds !!!!!! Surely you mean an assortment of native self sown wildflowers :-) They are all the rage. x
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to encourage small wild birds while discouraging pigeons and magpies, without much success. Currently, my regular visitors are the pigeons and magpies with just the occasional small birds, mostly sparrows and the tit family. I love that you get such a variety of visitors, xx
ReplyDeleteOh no on the squirrel! I have given up trying to fight them. We have loads in our garden. Our current regular resident squirrel is a little one that has no tail! It is quite assertive now. It had been living up in a tree near the feeder during the summer and will come down whenever I put food on the table! It has got enough courage to come down for a peanut now!
ReplyDeleteYour birds sound lovely.