Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Spring”
We have had 3 mm of rain in the last month. Last night, we had a teaser of rain. It looked like it was going to be a real storm. The BBC forecast suggested it would be. But just a few drops, dark skies, and that was that. It didn’t even register on the garden rain gauge. This is serious, …
We have had just 3 mm of rain this month. The average for April in London is around 40 mm with 10 to 16 rainy days. We have had just one this month. In a couple more weeks our barrels will be dry. At least, we have a tap. I think of farms and how they suffer at times like …
The garden is full of spring. At the front of the garden we have the pink cherry with its showy blossom, intermingling with the white blossom of the hawthorn, also known as the May Tree. Here ard there in the garden are three cornered leeks, like white bluebells, the latter around too. The old regulars: marigolds and kerria keep on …
It’s around 12 degrees but feels colder because of the chilly wind. The sun comes in and out of the clouds. We have been donated a few tadpoles. Yesterday, they were together, more of less, so very visible. Today, they have dispersed and are hard to spot. Tadpoles don’t stay together. They have no collective sense. They are fishlike and …
We are not to be the host of the cargo bike from OurBike. I feel we were misled as we didn’t realise we were competing with at least one other group. That had not come up when Douglas came down to explain the scheme. We thought we just had to agree the scheme. Well we did, with some reservations. Our …
Today is the first day of Meteorological spring, covering the three months March, April and May. The year is divided up into four three monthly seasons in this splitting of the year. Astronomical spring begins on the equinox which falls on 20 March this year. It is the day of equal day and night, from when the northern hemisphere begins …
We had a visit from Douglas Leroy from OurBike, a community e-bike company. To discuss whether we would want to be a host for a cargo bike. A cargo bike is one of those bikes with a big bucket in front that can carry cargo, this one up to 100 kg of goods or people. We sometimes see them around …
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 …
