Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Spring”
Volunteers are the heartbeat of the garden. The garden can’t run without them. They meet and greet, they do lots of work: planting, clearing up, watering – and keep the place going. So on Sunday, 18 May we had a volunteer session. It was planned to be informative and enjoyable, and to help volunteers get to know each other. The …
Around 70 people attended our VE Day celebration. It began with Peter Williams telling us about Newham during the war: the evacuation of children, the phony war, the blitz, the prisoner of war camps on Wanstead Flats – one for Italians, the other for Germans. There were anti aircraft guns on the Flats too and barrage balloons. Forest Gate suffered …
Damselflies are mating over the pond. The male grasps the female around the head. He flexes his abdomen to encourage the female to loop her abdomen round to interlock with him, forming the ‘wheel’ position where mating takes place. They have spent two years as larvae at the bottom of the pond, before emerging as adults. The adults live for …
The Cherry blossom has gone from our two large cherry trees. First on the white blossomed tree where it had come earlier and then on the pink blossomed tree. The fall on the pink tree was like snow. Outside the garden, under the tree, was a large pool of blossom. I saw it at 7.30 one morning, a pristine, pinky …
Our pond has had a green bloom for the last year. The bloom is composed of microscopic algae, tiny single celled plants. When the bloom first occurred last April, I thought the bloom, by cutting out light, might kill off underwater plants. But there was no effect over a month or two, so I forgot about it. A few days …
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 was a partial eclipse of the sun this morning, starting at about 10 am, peaking at 11.04 and finishing just after noon. An eclipse of the sun occurs when the moon passes between the earth and the sun. I had some eclipse glasses which I shared with garden visitors, as you must never look directly at the sun. I …
Last week, I estimated the proportion of frogs eggs that become mature adults. I wanted to know what wildlife groups were saying. So I trawled the internet. An assortment of figures are quoted for eggs to mature adult. 1 in 50 is a common quote, though 1 in 12,000 is heard in our garden, an enormous span. I found this …
In the garden yesterday, there were at least six frogs in the pond, and two more on the concrete outside the pond, hearing the croaking above them in the pond, but not knowing how to get to it. We have what we call a frog ladder, a ribbed piece of wood, slanting from ground to pond rim, but I have …
In the shelter, it is warm and sunny. The walls are transparent plastic as is the roof. It is about 15 degrees outside but considerably warmer in the shelter. The extra warmth is due to the greenhouse effect. Not global warming this time, but due to its original meaning: the extra heat gained in a glass (or clear plastic) enclosure. …
