Bits and Bobs...
Frogs Galore!
We dug a pond in our back garden. The first year, we had hardly any frogs. The second year, a couple of dozen frogs showed up overnight, heaven knows where from. After merrily bonking away for a day or so, they all quietly disappeared. We had quite a few tadpoles.
This year, the frogs returned. It was fairly cold and they weren't very active, so we were able to count them. We gave up at a hundred. They stayed for nearly a week, during which it often looked as if the water was boiling, and left large masses of frogspawn behind. Now, we have tadpoles - we think it's in the order of ten thousand.
It's difficult to give a good impression of just how thickly they line up arround the pond margin because the camera tends to focus on surface reflections rather than on what's going on underneath but here's an idea.
A collection of tadpoles around  |
A montage of pictures set against a  |
Larger versions of both pictures can be seen by clicking the green links below |
The Big Question is, at the current rate, how many frogs are we going to have next year?!
Last time, I mentioned the sad effect of the new building around Bradley Woods; it spoils the formerly uninterrupted view of the woods, and we hope that the new planting of trees will soon help to rectify this. April Baker was on the council at the time, and tells me that the building was opposed by the council, but it went to appeal and the developers got their way.
She tells me also of a happier event: she was responsible for keeping the approach to the Scartho Top development looking 'wild', and even had - at great expense - a blue cedar moved in order to achieve this.
In her time as a councillor, another local active member Jacqueline Cooper, fought successfully to keep part of the beautiful valley road from Hatcliffe through Ravendale unfenced. We need more people like April and Jacqueline who are willing to use their time to keep Britain green and pleasant.
As I mentioned earlier, I am to leave Grimsby, after 16 years here, for Barton-on-Humber. This will be a wrench, but of course all wildlife folk know that Barton is a great place to be.
Our new garden is set to be a source of delight; already I've been surveying it, and found that we have several yew trees. One of them was rather large and airy, so having clippers handy I had a go at some elementary topiary.
What a revelation this was! It is part of a conifer bed - not my favourite type of planting - and while the other, dwarf, conifers revealed themselves to be just thinly veneered with a semblance of green life, and were dry as dust within, the kind of real deadness that doesn't support a community of wriggling things, the yew was just alive, alive-o, all the way through, all year round.
Now I know that the books tell you that this is so, but some things only come home through hands-on experience; I realised while I was clipping, that ancient people had had the same experience of this tree, and I could see how it took hold of their imagination, leading them to see this as the most sacred of all trees and symbol of immortality. But when I looked up 'yew' in Richard Mabey's Flora Britannica, I saw that in some parts of the country the berries are given the (very) common name of snotty-gogs. Ah, the wonderful Anglo-Saxons!
Other aspects of moving garden are quite comical; but I bet I'm not the only one who decided that the contents of the compost heap must travel with me! And that wild garlic should be potted up and transported as though it were a Madonna lily (do try the wild garlic: the stems are crisp and delicious). I need to take some of my precious pink forget-me-nots just in case there are none.
And what do I leave behind? Well, a lot of wild garlic; all part of what was an early experiment with 'wildlife gardening', begun in 1990. I can see that I made mistakes, but in general my 'vision' seems to have paid off. My present garden stands in an area of suburbia which often seems to me to be too tidy, and so I had the idea that I would try to create a kind of wild edge to the garden using native plants, so that the inner part looked as if it had been carved out of a field.
It's hard to quantify, but it seems to me that over the years the amount of bird-life has increased; and since our present church building has not yet reached its 40th birthday, I find that to be surrounded by mainly native plants with an ancient lineage (as opposed to modern hybrids and introduced species) helps to supply some sense of continuity with the past which our 'machine for worshipping in' has not yet acquired; but give it time!
Meanwhile, just 1000 years earlier than St. Matthew's, Fairfield, St. Peter's, Barton was beginning to be built (in 970-ish); that's the one in the care of English Heritage, open daily now from 1-3 p.m., and our new vicarage is just opposite. Do come and say hello if you are passing.
You may remember that in 2004, our AGM was accompanied by a
fascinating talk from Nic Lance on the Luttrell Psalter, a book of psalms copied and
illustrated in Lincolnshire in the early 1300s. Nic recently let me know that
some pages from it are now available online via the
British Library
website. Its wonderful 'Turning the Pages' is now online.
On the right side of the home page, under 'site search', click on 'Turn the Pages of 12 great books'. Then you need to download some software (Macromedia Shockwave) which takes several minutes; then you can click on the Psalter.
A new museum in Lincoln, 'The Collection', opening in about June, will have some banners featuring Luttrell Psalter illustrations. The Psalter is notable for its depiction of everyday life, and the imaginatively painted monsters in its margins.
The bishop of Lincoln once said that Lincolnshire would be a good place to be at the end of the world, because everything here happens 50 years later than everywhere else! But Lincolnshire is well up in the forefront in many respects, as a recent visit to Alkborough showed.
Alerted by the Natural World magazine, I discovered that there is a huge and innovative project of land realignment due to take place there. It's worth a visit to the village just to see the turf maze, and also worthwhile is a visit to the English Nature website, which explains that a massive scheme is under way to allow flooding of the area of land ('Alkborough Flats') adjoining the confluence of the Ouse and the Trent into the Humber.
Seasonal flooding is to be allowed of a huge triangle of land, in order to help us cope with rising sea levels, and this means that there will be summer pasture for grazing animals, with wonderful wildflower meadows. A visitors' centre is planned. It's one of a number of similar schemes throughout Europe, and promises to be rather exciting.
Our dynamic friend Anne, (who does a lot of work with Sure Start and does amazing things with allotments in connection with that - contact her for details of open days), recently mentioned that Willow Weaving is taking off.
My first thought was that this was something to do with basket making, but it turns out to be a way of making living barriers in your garden from willow cuttings, which you plant in the ground and weave together to make all kinds of tunnels and hedges (or 'fedges', being a cross between a hedge and a fence).
The long cuttings actually grow, and you trim them like a hedge. I put out a Google * search (gobbledegook to non-computer people; sorry!) and found that the necessary willows are available by post from the Slimbridge wetlands near Bristol. It could be just the thing to get children interested in doing things is the garden. (This is an area in which I seem to have failed: three strapping lads all 18+, and I still cut the grass, me, a 50 year old weak little woman! Also being an overprotective parent - I still worry that they might cut their toes off!)
* Google is a 'search engine'. You type in a key word or five, e.g. 'Willow weaving'. Google will then find 94,200 references to the subject in 0.08 seconds, most of which are irrelevant to what you want. It will also find pictures for you, which will usually include photos of several cats, a couple of dogs, a pig and a llama. Don't ask me why, but there's almost always a llama! - Ed.
Small gardens
I've noticed that many houses with large gardens round my area are being bought up and redeveloped with several houses replacing the original one. This means smaller and smaller gardens for the new occupants.
In the last issue we heard from Ray Hume on how he enjoys the wildlife in Weelsby Woods bordering his house; I'd like to hear from anyone with one of these new, minuscule gardens, on any wildlife successes you may have with your small plot.
Printer cartridges
People have been asking whether any particular kind of inkjet cartridge is unsuitable for recycling. The Trust says asks that people donate ANY kind of inkjet cartridge, and that they will sort out whether it is the right kind or not. Bring to meetings, well-wrapped.
Bird seed
Our sales team does try to make sure that the bird seed for sale at our evening meetings is what you need; if you have any particular requests, say for a large bag of something-or-other, please let us know and we'll try to make sure it is available for you. Contact Carolyn Lovely or Viv Rowett.
Wolds LEAF farm award
Congratulations to Chris Dowse of Hall Farm, Stainton-le-Vale, which has won an award for its wildlife value. Carolyn and I attended a day there some years ago when it was just entering the LEAF scheme (Linking Environment And Farming).
This scheme promotes environmentally responsible and economically viable farming by the use of a system called 'Integrated Farm Management'. This combines the best in traditional farming, while also taking on board modern technology in such a way as to produce healthy crops and animals, with minimal use of artificial fertilizers and other chemicals.
It's commonsense farming, which means farmers, environmentalists, people wanting good-quality food, and people who just want to enjoy the countryside all have a chance of being kept happy at the same time. And don't we all belong to at least one of those groups? Long may it flourish.
Food grown under this system is awarded the Leaf Marque, and is
on sale in Waitrose supermarkets, recognizable by the
logo. You
can click on a website given on the package to find out where the produce came
from too.
Because Hall Farm is a 'Leaf demonstration farm', you can contact Chris Dowse and apply to take groups such as schoolchildren for an informative look around the farm, which is a beautiful place. All information is on the web site:
Good news on orchards, maybe
Some time ago I mentioned that orchards were under threat because farmers couldn't afford not to grub them up. There is now hope for them, because new regulations mean that orchards now appear to be eligible for subsidies. But progress on Irby Dales, a perennial issue with the local group, is not so good, and we continue to be concerned about the health of this valuable wildlife area, which urgently needs managing properly if its wildlife value is not to deteriorate further.
Wildlife and....
The great thing about being interested in wildlife is that you get to find out about a lot of other groups which have interests which border on ours - we've had recent input relating to wildlife and calligraphy, wildlife and art, wildlife and poetry, wildlife and engineering, and I see in a magazine devoted to the study of Anglo-Saxon literature to which my husband subscribes, an article on the return of wild boar, and also 'What bit me?' looks at what made Anglo-Saxons scratch.
I won't bore you with the details of that except by request, but will provide a link to the website of the Heritage Lincolnshire organization to which David Start belongs, who gave us an interesting talk in October, 'A Bird's Eye View of Lincolnshire' in which we saw how an interest in the natural environment can be greatly enhanced by a knowledge of local archæology, particularly of the huge number of disused monasteries in the Witham valley in Lincolnshire:
Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire
But I weaken; here is the link to
where you'll find links enabling you to find out all manner of things, such as just what wildlife the Anglo-Saxons would have encountered, including the lovely ðiseltwige.
ðonc, Viv!
Summer events
Look out for news of walks etc on our web-site; details will be given out at the evening meetings and in the next issue.
And here...
...Ed.
This page was last updated on 5th May 2006
The latest update is at the top of the page.