12 June: a bird drama

Sunday, 12 June 2022

Mostly at home

Allan installed the new gate.

He heard lots of fussing from birds and looked in Alicia’s back yard to see a large fluffed up bird on the ground. We both took photos from a respectful distance. (These are all Allan’s.) I took my phone photos straight to local Facebook for advice. The bird was an osprey. I called the new Peninsula Wildlife Rescue up in Ocean Park. She was ever so helpful, telling me it is less likely that an osprey would have avian flu (recently a problem here) because they eat fish. She or a volunteer would have come to assess the bird, had it not been gone when I went back out. It had spent almost an hour here. I looked around for it because she told me (from the photo I texted) that it was fluffed up, which meant it might be not feeling well, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I didn’t think to ask if it could be fluffed up because it was annoyingly windy here today.

I puttered around the garden, got some plants planted and some pots amended with new soil, got the roses fertilized, didn’t take photos of the assorted little projects though. Just some of the usual garden photos.

Clematis

Rose rubrifolia

Geranium palmatum

Allan saw this sweet pea on the front fence.

Not a pink Lewisia despite the tag.

I love the selaginella (spike moss, not really a moss) and hope it increases.

A hardy pomegranate that Ann Amato gave me. I thought it had died, glad I did not give up on it.

Oh, and my big accomplishment was to layer wool, the escallonia clippings from last week’s pruning at Coho Charters, and brown debris in bin one, finally getting three tarps of clippings emptied and giving myself some hope of getting the compost sifting started sometime soon. With five bins, there must be some good stuff in there.

Allan got our sodden lawn mowed, and also the J Crew Cottage lawn and their roses deadheaded.

It had suddenly poured rain.

Last night we discovered on the HD Clump website a new show by Carol Klein, Spring Gardening, wonderful as she always is. She told me to deadhead my pulmonarias, which I’d been meaning to do, so today I did. The new Springwatch has arrived on Britbox and we got an interlibrary loan of season 3 Survivor: Africa, so we suddenly have a wealth of shows to watch. Last week we watched the thrilling season 4 of Stranger Things. Ever since, I’ve had Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill in my head, where I’ve been enjoying it in a poignant way; it brings back verklempt-making memories of 1985 and life with Bryan and the sadness that he died in his mid 60s. I did so much love the music of the 80s.

HD Clump also now has the complete two seasons of Christine’s Garden. I adore it. It’s all mixed up with other shows in the general gardening shows folder.

I realize these posts often end abruptly. I don’t have time to think of clever endings!