Hands in the earth ...

I got my fingers into some soil yesterday for what seems like the first time in years.  I'd done some planting earlier this year ... but this was different.  It reminded me of when I was planting some hedges in my front garden in Cornwall:  I could feel the energy of the Earth in the soil as my fingers gently made it fine enough to help introduce new plants to my garden and a visitor commented on how 'in-tune' with the Earth I seemed.

That feeling is coming back and it's much needed.

I planted some climbers, as well as 2 virginia creepers.  I'm going to put one of the creepers outside the secured backdoor as I'd like to see it climb around the front corner of the house.

I found a way to add an extra 4 arms to the bird-feeding station and have added a large feeder of niger seed as well as a water dispenser.  This years tally of bird specie in my garden has been amazing: sparrows, chaffinches, goldfinches, spotted woodpecker, thrushes, starlings,  wrens, blackbirds, long-tailed tits, great tits, blue tits, coal tits, robins, wood pigeons, collared doves and magpies.  It seems a fair exchange to me - I provide them with food and water for having displaced them and making it harder for them to survive as a species ... as a member of my species of animal.  The grey squirrels were a real pest with regards to the feeding station.  I got around the problem by placing the feeder in a central spot and then covering the central pole in industrial grease.  It's greased to below the area that the birds need but higher than the squirrels can leap to from the ground.

There's a very small pond that works as a watering hole too that I hope the local foxes use and maybe the hedgehogs too.  I cut a little hole in the back garden fence towards the front to ensure that they have a corridor through my home and can go about their business unobstructed.

The bottom garden was dug out years ago and so lies 3 or 4 feet below the foundation of the main house.  As you can imagine, there's very little decent soil there as it's mainly rock.  I've decided to use biiiiig pots for bushes to bring colour and scents into my garden.  That'll be done slowly now in preperation for next spring.

I also found some solar lights or the garden that dont look tacky - well - maybe the string of dragonflies do ... but the four lamps that look like flickering candles look neat.  The best one is the statue of the Lord Buddha with a lotus flower in his lap that is also a solar lamp.  So the tarmac garden that I inherited is slowly being transformed into a green haven ... for the wolf as well as other visitors.

The only thing that worries me now is the red algae appearing in the bird bath.  I hope it doesn't harm the wildlife.

I saw a lovely cultivated tree that was living in a huge pot.  It had obviously been taken care of and cultivated for pot life ... but a bit out of my budget!

Time for my morning soak and then to get more new images up onto the website that were taken earlier in the year.

Later

Wolf