Last sweet peas of the year + a woodpecker

[Petal]

Oh well.... we've picked our last sweet peas of the year - here's a piccie of them



It always feels a bit sad when you start to put the garden to 'bed' things get chopped down and put on the compost bin.... but then there's bulbs to plant, seeds to order and digging to do...Oh yes, the other day I snapped a very elusive woodpecker on our 'on the piss' bird feeder



I sat on the seat and waited patiently for him/her to come round to my side of the feeder, so I could take a pic of the lovely red/white and black feathers.... 5 minutes later and he was still in the same spot. I finally put my camera down after taking this piccie and hey presto, the cheeky bugger came round to the front as if to say 'you're not taking a piccie of all of me matey'!

Lovely bird though - we see them often. One of the feral cats nearly 'had' one recently, but we opened the door to let her in and she decided she preferred the warm living room to tucking into our lovely woodpecker - phew!

off to do the dinner now ....

back later hopefully

xx

[Di Sandland]

Your sweet peas went on a lot longer than mine! I love sweet peas and grow gazillions of them every year but I've never had them beyond September - and, yes, I do cut, and cut, and cut... I do always choose old-fashioned varieties tho, for the perfume. Cupani and Henry Eckford are a couple. (I grow the Eckford ones cos I worked with his great great (not sure how many greats) grandson, who's a consultant obstetrician).

[bustagasket]

i used to have sweet peas growing all over the fance around our vegetable garden, sadly it has all gone now, but i do love them

We have had one of those woodpeckers although we usually get the green one more, but its lovely to see one captured on film

[amazingbabe]

Multi talented people on here, making jewellery and growing peas

[Petal]

Your sweet peas went on a lot longer than mine! I love sweet peas and grow gazillions of them every year but I've never had them beyond September - and, yes, I do cut, and cut, and cut... I do always choose old-fashioned varieties tho, for the perfume. Cupani and Henry Eckford are a couple. (I grow the Eckford ones cos I worked with his great great (not sure how many greats) grandson, who's a consultant obstetrician).

Ours were called 'Romeo' and had a very fine blue edge to them and they were the most wonderful perfume. My OH tells me that if you want zillions of sweet peas, you grow them along the ground for about a foot and then upwards ! (There was a techy term for this, but that's long forgotten) - but anyway, that's how we grew them and had tons and tons and tons (and they were planted late too). As for the sweetcorn, it was a total disaster. We had two cobs and the rest were like rubber - yuk. Everything else was lovely though and we are still eating the tomatoes and courgettes and custard squash. We dug up a carrot yesterday that weighed 2LBs .....

oh well - off to bed .... spk tomorrow

xx

[Boo]

Lovely to see both photos.

I did sweet peas this year as I haven't done them for a long time - as we don't have room in this garden to devote some wall space to them - and everything is in pots. But I saw some dwarf varieties and got two to try. They were pretty much a disaster. One lot were so tiny, they seemed to grow totally compressed and didn't get more than 8" tall, with one flower on each plant. The others were not what I'd call dwarf and grew about 8' and the top 3 feet just fell over the top of the frame I'd given them. Can't have got more than 30 flowers off the whole lot. And those we did get were covered in greenfly, so not suitable to cut, which had been the plan.

I do better with woodpeckers though - our feeder is a bit closer, about 4' from the kitchen window and Mum visits regularly and was obviously feeding a youngster in early summer and then he started coming too - a young male. Only ever see Dad flitting through the trees.

I put this photo in Flickr in June when she must have been feeding him - she always called as she arrived in the garden - she was appearing every 10 minutes around that time - they're normally very, very shy and timid, but she seemed to throw caution to the wind for a while: woodpecker12818 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[Petal]

JHi Boo,

I think nature and plants are such a magical thing and your pecker piccies are brilliant, unlike mine. Its lovely, isn't it Boo that they come so often and have a very distinctive 'call' - you can hear them before you can see them sometimes. I must admit we have loads of them here - they 'live' mainly next door and they come onto the telegraph pole that we can see from the kitchen window and start their tapping there, then they move onto the feeders. We've had both the red/black variety and the green ones occasionally. Always a delight. Then there are the zillions of buzzards. When we first moved here, we got quite excited when we saw one, but everyone else seems to take them for granted and say 'oh those'. I think they are beautiful, majestic creatures, but they don't have a very majestic cry - its more of a squeek! We occasionally see barn owls too, but haven't seen one for a few months now.

With sweet peas they like to have lots of compost/rotted manure surrounding their roots and also a deep root run (so maybe a deeper pot, like a lilly pot?)and you might want to try removing the side shoots too, that's what we do.

lots to do today......so will try not to be on here much ....

[EmmaRose]

oh he is lovely
Em