Live - A Murder is Announced

Just like Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in a Murder is Announced, I was consumed by the mystery that was the dead birds and rabbits in the garden.

Fret no more, no wildcats here.... It's a HAWK! Or KESTREL! (or other bird of prey that I'm going to look up right now).

This is live blogging and viewing readers. How very exciting.

It's just like spring watch, except that you'll have to imagine Bill Odie sitting next to me.


Update: it was a Kestrel, due to its red feathers:

Murder on the lawn...

What a mystery, this week we had a murder!

It was a rabbit's body left mangled on the lawn. I assumed this was a fox but remembered Guernsey doesn't have foxes, squirrels or snakes. So no chance of a raving rabbid squirrel attack. Mixy-Ma-Toes-Is?

No!

Today at around 3.31pm or thereabouts, I noticed a bird carcass and lots of feathers 5 metres from the house. This carcass wasn't there at 1.05 pm when I hosed the thirsty plants. It being the same place, was this the Same M.O officer?

3 hours work for 2 pots - hmmm

That's a ratio of 90 minutes per pot. Admittedly, I did sand an old peeling paint terracotta pot to look older still (but better). Added to those 2 hours spent with the joys of the electric sander, I walked an hour's round trip to the hedge veg stall. You've never seen a brighter more sparkling sea, and more flowering paths on the way to buy maroon-coloured bedding plants to match the maroon Aeonium succulent.

Question - does only Guernsey have Hedge Veg stalls with honesty boxes?
ALSO - when did they become Hedge Veg stalls? We never had such snappy marketing speak for 'tomatoes sold on the hedge by Mrs Tostevin' when I was a kid.

AND - if I didn't actually buy Veg, but I bought plants and it wasn't on the Hedge but actually was on next to a beach slipway, do we need a new phrase? Bedding Plants on the Beach? Pots on the Slip?

What say ye merry guernsey gardeners?

Lizzie gets busy!

The geraniums in the stone well cum planter were all killed off by 'Feb 2nd 'Snow Day'. Some may have returned from the roots and short stems but frankly I enjoyed ripping them out. Pruning and cutting back is very therapeutic, even if you're not an overtly angry person it helps. Trust me.

So I have planted a mixture that hopefully will be a riot of pinks and reds, a coup of colour: upright Fuschia in the well centre, trailing fuschia for longterm and scarlet busy lizzies for this season's colour.

I hope lizzie gets busy soon as I'm excited to see how well she goes.

Sowing a seed or digging your own grave...

A favourite song lyrics is by Ian Brown - "picking up a pen, is like picking up a spade. Either sowing a seed or digging your own grave".

Today was about sowing seeds and filling in a job application. Mr Brown's lyric couldn't have been more apt. The seeds are trailing blue lobelia - a bargain from B&Q for 79p a packet. I won't jinx the application by telling you what it was for,
suffice to say it's a version of my dream job. It's not digging my own grave.

These are the smallest seeds I have ever seen. Barely-there rust coloured specks. I have sprinkled in seed trays in the graves of tomato seedlings that didn't take. It was by accident rather than by design that these were planted so late. So it may mean the garden has a lovely Indian Summer bloom of blue trailing from the edges of its pots. To be admired at the end of a dreamjob day, perhaps with a Tanqueray and tonic in hand. (I hate gin but it seems the thing to drink when admiring plants, no?)