The Garden Today

Still quite a lot of colour in the garden, even though the day has been damp, grey and sunless. 

Garden Notes
Pyracantha - covered in berries, more so than this time last year
Viburnum - in flower

Bird Record for Today
Starlings - 10+ on suet
Blackbirds - on bird table (sultanas)
Blackcap, female - on suet
Robin - meal worms
Blue Tits - eating insects from shrubs near the house
Chaffinches - have had 20+ in the garden for most of the day - bathing in saucer on the ground and feeding on the ground and on nut pieces on birdtable
Siskins - two visited briefly, mild interest in the niger seeds
Goldfinches - 10+ visited a couple of times today - nuts, sunflower hearts, niger
Wren - solitary, very close to house looking for insects, plus spent a lot of time in the yew back left
Wood pigeon - I'm reluctant to include these as they are more or less a permanent fixture in our garden!  The minute food is out on the table, they appear. 

I was sent a link to this site:-

http://www.birdsofpooleharbour.co.uk/

There is a live daylight webcam on there pointing at Brownsea Lagoon.  As Brownsea Island is closed off season, this is a good way to 'see' avocets, snipes and other waders.  I spent a while watching, saw avocets for sure, but then had a lot of difficulty identifying the less colourful birds - the standard webcam image is too small, but when you blow it up to full screen, everything becomes blurred.

Looking forward to a long break from work!

Someone commented via Twitter last night about the flowers etc. on my blog here - it was only then I realised I hadn't posted anything at all since September!  Not only that, but apart from a brief week or so when I knocked out a few chapters on my new novel, I haven't written much either.

The main reason has been dealing with the deterioration in health in an elderly relative - hospitalization, subsequent admission into a residential home - and all the other things which such an upheaval for that person involves.  It certainly is a sure way of completely killing off any creative thoughts - instead my head has been filled with routine stuff which has to be sorted - selling a flat, sifting through someone else's belongings, which has been very sad.

It certainly made me think, how much 'stuff' we all hold on to, when really, we don't need very much at all to enjoy life.  Once the sorting out has been done on the elderly relative's behalf, I need to have a serious declutter here.  Things like the hundreds of books we've accumulated over the years ... I've got a Kindle now, so surely I don't need half of them.  I was amazed to find out that even charity shops aren't as keen to take hardback books any more and was advised that the demand for lesser known or less popular works have declined.

The elderly relative has held on to some very interesting papers which were passed to her by her aunt who died twenty years ago.  These hadn't been moved from an old metal crate thing since she'd inherited them and I was delighted to find original 'letters from the trenches' written by a serving World War 1 soldier who was apparently captured and kept as a prisoner of war.  The letters are all neatly folded, in date order, and kept in a box with various Forces communications confirming he had been captured, periodic notifications that he was still alive, and in the box are his original medals too.  I feel that these would be of interest to someone and I think I'd like to scan them and reproduce in a book - plus want to research exactly where he was and at what stage of the war etc. 

As the post title confirms, I'm really eager to finish work for Christmas and enjoy a couple of weeks doing as little as possible, apart from perhaps starting the 'trenches' work.  Oh. and decluttering :)

The picture above was taken last winter - Waxwings - around twenty just appeared and cleared the cotoneaster berries.  We haven't had any yet this year, just a few redwings and a fat song thrush.  The brief cold spell brought loads of birds to the garden - wrens, blue tits, great tits, various finches - and a male and female blackcap (I love them!) - but we are back to heavy rain and slightly milder temperatures, which seems to stifle bird activity.

If you are still reading, and interested ... I'm using my last free day with Amazon's KDP programme on Thursday 20th December - my novel The Splintered Circle is historical fiction, set in the UK and Channel Islands, with some mystery in there too.  Includes various locations in the UK and a look back in time to when the Channel Islands were occupied by German troops during the Second World War.

Some Pretty Visitors

The heat today was unexpected.  Watching the weather forecast last night .... well, wrong again.  Temperatures were 5 or 6 degrees higher than that.  On my way to work, I noticed hundreds of gulls swirling around high in the sky catching the flying ants which had presumably hatched as a result of the heat and humidity.

It was so nice to have a couple of pretty visitors to the garden today.

A red admiral butterfly attracted to the last few buddleia flowers.

A humming bird hawk moth taking nectar from white phlox flowers.

Sad, though, that even three years ago, we were seeing dozens of butterflies and other insects in the garden.  This year, thanks to the prolonged rain in June and July, there's been hardly anything.

#amwriting.  Well, yes, surprisingly.  I don't find much time to do so, but I'm on Chapter 3 of my historical mystery, yet to be named, and the characters and ideas are coming through.  It'll be Dorset based, which will mean visiting a few places for inspiration.  Wimborne will feature at some stage.  It's one of those olde worlde village type places (in places), with the Minster and traditional thatches near the centre.

The Corn Market, Wimborne

I also need to continue working on my plants book, non-fiction of course, but my motivation on this one has waned given the poor summer we've had.

#amreading.  Again, a surprise.  I find I only now read on holiday, but Deep Storm by Lincoln Child is enjoyable and needs to be finished!  It also made me feel a bit better about my own lack of reviews on Amazon when I saw that Mr Child has only received 9 for Deep Storm.  Next up - well, I think I need to stay with this author, he's paired up with Douglas Preston a few times and I fancy 'Riptide' next.

Garden and General Update

Had a few days away the week before last - consequently it took a week to catch up on work, the garden, life ... time just flashes by and it is so frustrating not to have enough of it to dedicate to a good writing session.  On a positive note, I have come up with a couple of ideas - one for fiction, one for non-fiction.  I had a couple of hours on the novel, bashed out 5000 words quite easily, typed up some thoughts for the next chapter as well.  So - #amwriting :)

 An update on the solitary bee situation, as a couple of people have been interested.   

No - this isn't exactly the same picture as last time :)  Two bees continued working on it up until the weekend and I would say this is the end product.  I particularly like the pink rose petals which were used in a couple of the holes!  Next step is for us to find some chicken wire and loosely cover the front - birds have been trying to eat the contents :(  But the canes go back a good few inches so most of the eggs are safe.

The garden is turning now, Autumn is definitely in the air and the perennials aren't going to carry on for much longer.  The hemp agrimony and purple loosestrife below - both in or near the pond, have been really popular with honey bees, a couple of red admiral butterflies and hoverflies.

But it's the unexpected things I like best - plants that have self-seeded or just popped up out of nowhere.  Like the borage and chicory below, both plants really attractive to bees and hoverflies.  And both edible I believe but I haven't felt inclined to try them.  

Borage

Chicory

Over the Bank Holiday weekend 'd hoped to finish reading the novel I'd started on while I was away, but it didn't happen.  I love sitting in the garden reading, but it rained sporadically yesterday and was also too windyoutdoors.  I'm in the middle of 'Deep Storm' by Lincoln Child.  I took that, and 'Thunderhead' by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston, to Guernsey with me.  I read Thunderhead in two days.  I'd forgotten what great writers Child and Preston are - read 'The Cabinet of Curiosities' a while ago which was amazing.  But Thunderhead was in another league.  I don't know if it was just because I was on holiday, or because I hadn't read a whole book for over a year while I'd been writing my own, but it was brilliant.  Mesa Verde and the surrounding area was so well described, together with the American Indian customs, that I know I would love to go to Mesa Verde one day and see those cliff dwellings.  How frustrating it was to be without internet access - I was itching to look at images, wiki and youtube about the area.  It made me realise how important the computer - blogging, social networking, researching etc. has become in my life - and I mustn't take it for granted.

A final picture of the garden taken at dusk this evening from upstairs - a bit blurred, but the colours always look clearer when it isn't taken in sunlight.

On Solitary Bees ...

When we received this 'solitary bee hive' (a bit of a contradiction from a sales point of view?) I was sceptical, I admit.  But I was clearly wrong, not something which upsets me too much.  Watching the Olympics this afternoon, I kept noticing insects flying in front of the patio doors and heading for this contraption.  Gently turning it around I was amazed to see the amount of work the bees had done over the past week and realise I maybe should follow their example and get going on the next book!  At times they were carrying pieces of leaf as big as themselves to line the cane chambers above; this takes a long time, as the hollow canes are long and as far as I could see, they carefully place a piece of neatly cut leaf, then lay an egg and leave a small amount of nectar to feed the young when they hatch, then seal with another piece of leaf.  I imagine each cane houses several eggs with a separate food supply.  The end of the cane is sealed roughly, as can be seen in my photograph.

A bit more about solitary bees from the Royal Entomological Society website below:-

There are more than 200 species of solitary bee in Britain. They are so named because, unlike honeybees and bumblebees, they do not live in colonies. The first solitary bees to appear in the garden, as early as March each year, are the miner bees (Andrena). Similar to honeybees in appearance, they lack pollen baskets on their hind tibiae. These hairy bees make nests in the ground, usually in sandy soil and along paths. The female will dig the nest, stock it with nectar and pollen and then seal it, leaving the young to fend for themselves. Also to be seen later on in the season are the leaf-cutter bees such as the Megachile species, which cut neat circles out of rose leaves and petals to build nests in dead plant stems or sometimes in stacks of old flowerpots. These bees resemble honeybees but can be distinguished by the bright orange pollen brushes under their abdomens. All solitary bees are excellent pollinators and should be encouraged into your garden.

After the very low count of honey bees present in the garden this year, I realise how important the solitary bees are and perhaps I'll be buying some more bee houses soon.  I don't think we can have many more flowering shrubs and plants in the garden to attract wildlife than we have at the moment.  I took the photo below today - not only are we low on honey bees, but apart from a couple of plain whites and small blues, butterfly numbers are poor too.

Really pleased with these annual mallows - a free packet of seeds carelessly sown, creates a beautiful array of big flowers.

Twitter Angst

Everything I've read post-publishing my e-book suggests that Twitter is a way of promoting yourself, learning from other writers, networking ..... and countless other good things which I'm not positive enough to recall at the moment.

I set up my account (second to my personal one which I use just to follow pro-cycling, the odd comedian, politician etc.) and started to add authors, publishers, others who seemed to have similar writing or relevant interests to me.

I read all I could every day for around half an hour in the morning, and the same again in the evening, figuring this would give me a good 'spread' of tweets from around the globe.  I bravely made a few comments, thanked people for following me and tried one of those multi follower thingies to attract new followers (until I realised that it was auto-tweeting a load of crap when I wasn't paying attention and some of the new followers were not quite what I had in mind shall we say).

I tweeted links to my e-book on Amazon, to Pinterest where there's the makings of a picture gallery relative to the book and to this blog.

When I'd built up a few followers, I felt it was a good time to start asking some questions.  I do want to learn from others, so tips on 'print on demand' publishing in the UK, the Amazon KDP package and learning about using Google+ effectively are all things which would really help me.

But my tweets went unanswered and the only feeling I have for Twitter in a 'work' capacity is that it is just a listing zone for people to advertise their wares, rather than the community feel I was hoping for.  Just looking at my timeline tonight, all it contains is links to author's new or existing books, blog entries (which I do try and read and have commented upon, but there's no real interaction there either) and retweets.

I know I must be missing something big-time here.  But how am I going to find out when no-one answers my questions or read my blog I wonder?

On a lighter note, because there always is one, today's biggest visitor to the bird feeder wasn't a bird.

Not much modesty either :)

Spent a restful hour after work crashed out on a bean bag watching hundreds of herring gulls and common gulls milling around in the sky.  We decided they were catching flying ants - the hot/humid weather today forcing them out of the nest.  Amongst the gulls, three buzzards circled and swooped, which was beautiful to watch and above all of them, were half a dozen swifts, so high in the sky that I had to strain to hear their haunting shrieks.

Mevagissey Memories

As is the case with many holidays, there's always the intention to revisit certain places and Mevagissey is definitely one of those.

I used Mevagissey, Cornwall, and one or two other locations near to it, in The Splintered Circle.

This meant drawing on memories from twenty years ago, but if you have a good time then powerful memories tend to remain clear, at least for me.

For some of our trip to Cornwall, it rained - another vivid memory is when we visited Gweek Seal Sanctuary and were soaked for the whole day, but the seals were delighted and we managed to see some rutting deer and 'dippers' fluttering along the river bank, which may never have happened on a sunny day with lots of other visitors.

Luckily when we stayed in Mevagissey, it was warm and sunny.  We stayed in 'The Shark's Fin Hotel' which I believe is still open, parked the car near the water's edge on a narrow track with no railings to reverse into and appreciated the unique atmosphere.  I doubt it will be the same today, so perhaps a twenty year old memory is better than a revisit?

In the book, the character Raif Condor spends some time in Mevagissey, where he appreciates an open air folk concert and, totally out of character, dines on fish and chips :)  Unlike me, he doesn't get the chance to say in a hotel, or even bed and breakfast, instead his employer relegates him to a downmarket trailer park a few miles out of town in an effort to keep his profile low.

Here's some relevant links.

About Mevagissey
http://www.meva.co.uk/mevagissey.htm

About Gweek Seal Sanctuary
http://www.sealsanctuary.co.uk/