Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Uncategorized”
It has warmed up in the last week. The frozen pond is just a memory. It was surprising how quickly the thick ice melted. The temperature had risen from around freezing, and below at night, to 8 to 12 degrees. And it had melted, like ice cream taken out of the freezer. We are becoming more aware of ice as …
Since doing the Cereal Project in 2020, I have maintained an interest in cereals, their growth and usage. More than half grown in the UK, mostly wheat, oats, and barley, are used for animal feed. In this blog, I am looking at wheat, the most important of our cereals by tonnage. Its primary contribution to our diet is as bread. …
The leaves are all but gone on most of the trees in the garden. A few languidly hang on but a strong wind will tear them away, leaving a winter silhouette of skeletal trees. We have two evergreens: a dwarf juniper by the small pergola and the olive tree. There are two distinct strategies playing out. The first is dump …
On Thursday and Friday we had an inch of rain, brought in by storm Amy. All around the garden are sycamore helicopters, and scattered along the pavement of Earlham Grove, which made me think how wasteful nature can be. Those on the pavement are being trodden in, and will either be swept up by the roadsweeper and end up in …
Kate Spencer was the second speaker in our fortnightly series of Sunday afternoon talks. About forty attended. Kate is a professor at Queen Mary college. Her research is in pollution. She lives on Earlham Grove and has been a friend of the garden since its beginning. Most of the audience had brought along a little of their garden soil. They …
I saw the first mating pair of frogs in our pond on 18 February. The male lays on the female’s back and grasps her, holding on for many hours. A breeding pair can be spotted by the two heads, his and hers, and you can see more legs than a single frog would have. She’s bigger than he is, especially …
