Green & Country in the City 23 July

• Last Saturday I got an enamel daisy necklace for £5 at a local charity shop. On Monday I wore it with a long, green, sleeveless, button-through dress and a yellow long-sleeved t-shirt. I got 5 compliments on the whole outfit and 3 more just for the necklace. Two of the compliments for the whole outfit were from colleagues in their early 20s, which I think good-going for someone my age!
• The wind with the thunderstorm on Tuesday night had one of the plum trees in pots over and it lost a few more plums. 
• Today able to kayak, go to the café, take a detour to pick blackberries and cut back stuff in the garden before a thunderstorm and then a hail storm. Compensation for the 30 minute walk to Tescos and the same back again in the rain yesterday afternoon!
• Getting a large handful of plump autumn raspberries each morning.

Green and country in the city 16 July

• Sunday evening found two tiny frogs in garden - and have seen several around the garden since, as well as the full-grown frogs.
• It rained hard Tuesday evening which was welcome on the garden. The rain on me walking back from Stowtellers (story-telling club) not so welcome as my pac-a-mac turns out not to be waterproof.
• Less insects in the garden around at the beginning of the week though they have picked up again now.
• Picked some large juicy blackberries yesterday and made a crumble.
• Klaus, a German friend, was saying it was drummed into him as a child to keep away from an unafraid fox, as that lack of fear a symptom of rabies. So he is really spooked by all the tame foxes in London!

Green and country in the city 9 July

• There has been a major second flowering of the wisteria - instead of the few late flowers I usually get. I've even seen insects on the flowers - they are supposed to be good for insects but have only ever seen an insect interested in my wisteria flowers once!
• Tuesday morning a fox was digging a hole in next door's (ex Dorothy's) lawn. Wednesday morning there was a magpie eating what looked like bread it had got from the hole.
• Two small holes dug by fence ex Dorothy's side - foxes looking for worms or want to dig a tunnel underneath? There is a gap between the fence and the back wall and they can get onto the back wall and walk along the backs of several gardens so they don't really need a tunnel.
• Wednesday lots of bumblebees and other insects on the lavender.
• Was thinking Leyton getting like Cornwall as, as well as the gulls on the youth centre field have several times had gulls flying above the garden, lower down than normal, crying that distinctive cry. However, visiting my mother this weekend, and I find that in Cornwall (Truro) the gulls walk on pavements. (Truro is not a seaside town.)
• I got a bright white bangle from a charity shop in Truro. I have several white ones that appear cream when put against white clothes. Hope this one can be worn with lots of things - then I will have to think about getting rid of the others  (to a charity shop).

Green and country in the city 2 July

Lovely to have had some rain for the garden - and nice weather - sunny, but not too hot - this weekend.

• Disturbing frogs a lot this year. This week there has been a frog in the top of the wild strawberry pot who is not disturbed when I am picking berries and checking there are not snails around the inside of the rim.
• The farmers 5-day forecast on Monday morning on radio 4 was completely different from the ordinary day's weather on the Today Programme about 10 minutes later. Was it going to rain that day or not?
• First thing Tuesday morning there were 2 fox cubs playing on the grass in the next door garden. Later there were 2 adults playing together (which I've never seen before) and the small cub. Then one adult played with the cub.
• Day off on Wednesday and after breakfast I was meditating. I felt what I thought were the tip of a cat's whiskers on my forearm - but it stayed the same pressure so I opened my eyes to find a thin, black and yellow caterpillar. I didn't know what plant it had come off so put in back on the blackcurrant bushes as I had been picking some blackcurrants to have with my breakfast.
• Picked blackcurrants to make blackcurrant gin but I forgot (again) to buy a bottle of gin from Tescos. Looked to see what I had left from previous years. I had enough - and 4 empty gin bottles for the recycling.
• Many more butterflies, bumble bees, other bees and other insects this year than I have had for several years which I am really pleased about. Yesterday there were 3 bumblebees on my lavender. Recent years I was lucky to have 3 bees in the whole garden. I did notice when I left Wanstead Meeting House after being one of the storytellers at a Leytonstone Arts Trail event that there were 12 bumblebees on the lavender in their front garden!

Green and country this week - 25 June

I have realised that these notes of being green and country in the city are mainly about wildlife rather than community, craft, food, etc. And it is the same again this week.

• The foxes are still bringing clothing into the garden.
• Tuesday morning there was a magpie flying from fence to wall over several gardens and back, cackling every time it was perched. Then it was on the end wall following a fox pecking at the fox's tail. Fox not bothered.
• Saturday morning magpies saw off two collar doves who wanted to settle on the fence.
• Tuesday after KAPAP there was a kestrel hovering over the sports field behind the VIth form college.
• Had to get a red admiral butterfly out of the photocopier room at work.
• My perennial sweet pea has flowered for the first time - I've had it several years.
• Got pots of african marigold, oregano, Garvina (first winter hardy gerbera variety),a yellow coreopsis and a scabiosa. I have had many more bees and other insects this year and want to make sure I have the flowering plants for the rest of the season.
• I saw two Egyptian geese when kayaking today and one had its wing extended - lovely blue section. I'd like to get a feather of that!

Birds in the garden

Delighted to see a great tit in the garden this morning.

When I first moved here I didn't see birds in the garden. Some would be in the ash tree that partly overhung it, often they flew over it.

Before I moved here I had an allotment where I used grow some sunflowers each year. I would be down working on the allotment while birds were taking the seeds from the sunflowers. I only ever had one self-sown sunflower. My first year here I had sunflowers and the first time I saw a bird on them was one finch on Christmas Day. The next year there were sunflower seedlings everywhere!

The past few years I have seen birds in the garden more and more frequently, though I put no food out for them. I don't encourage birds directly because of the amount of cats that use the garden.

I was worried that the clearing of my elderly ex-neighbour's garden might impact on the number of birds in mine as I have no shrubs. There has been the occasional magpie and wood pigeon. The sparrows were getting nesting material from the plumes of what's left of my neighbour's pampas grass.

But today there was the great tit. And then a group of 5 sparrows on the beanpoles.

One rook is a crow - not so!

This isn't exactly green and country in the city as it takes place in Great Dunmow a town in Essex (a very pretty little town too with a very good local museum).

I went there yesterday in my friend Tony's sidecar and we met up with our friend Tina in the carpark by the co-op. There was a rook there - it was definitely a rook and definitely on its own.

The saying is that lots of crows are rooks and one rook is a crow.

I don't know about the country but here in London you can definitely see large groups of crows. And now it seems one rook can really be one rook!