Yellow Teddy – Garden

I hope you like these pictures of my garden. The fishpond is definitely the best part.

Here the fish are diving round and round through the jet. We put the hose in when there is not enough water.

Fish enjoying a slice of bread. This would be accompanied by a lot of kissing sounds as they suck the soggy pieces off the bread! Sometimes they get their mouth round a piece and twist themselves round to break it off. Most of the time they get proper fish food.

This is my movie of 8 seconds of goldfish. They do not come up much in cold weather. The way to count goldfish is to throw some bread in and take a photo.

 
The frogs come every year and lay their spawn. After a while they disappear again. They eat flies and slugs so they are good friends. I counted 22 one year and their croaking was very loud. This frog has jumped up onto the granite rock and is about to dive into the pond. We leave space below the netting so that the frogs can always get in and out. We are very careful when gardening because frogs hide in the damp places under plants.

Here is my 28 sec movie of some starlings having a bath. There was not much water left at the end of that! I like starlings because they are not afraid of anything. But sometimes they all fly up if the fish make a sudden splash.

A 37 sec movie of sparrows in the smaller birdbath, which is shallower. They like to bathe together, because they feel it is safer with more pairs of eyes watching out.

 
Here is my bluetit nestbox that we made from bits of planks (see my Diary entry). Only the blue tits can get in and it's a long way down inside, so the babies are safe. We are letting the leaves grow up to hide the box but leaving the front clear. You must never have a perching stick on a nest box because it helps other birds that the blue tits don't want there.

You can make a nest box from just one plank of wood, with a diagram from the Royal Society for Protection of Birds:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/Nestbox%20pdf_tcm9-173857.pdf

Brown Teddy said he thought RSPB meant Robins Sparrows Pigeons and Blackbirds!

This pretending well makes a good bird drinking place. It's supposed to be a wishing well, but I never wish, instead I like to invent things for myself. It was my idea to fill the bottom in with cement so that it would hold water.

This Peacock Butterfly is resting on a warm piece of granite stone. They like warm places to rest and flowers with lots of nectar. They really like Buddleia flowers, which is also called Butterfly Bush. I had to creep up very slowly to take the photo.

 
We always have lots of bees on the big cotoneaster bush, although the flowers are very small. They are only interested in the nectar, so I can get quite close and they ignore me. You have to be quick taking the photo as the bees don't stay on one flower very long. I remember the bees when I am admiring all the red berries later in the year. NEVER NEVER eat garden berries!

When I stand at the top of the steps, it makes me feel really tall looking down at the bottom part. The frogs and blackbirds like to wander around under the bushes where they can't be seen. The rocks and stones are good hiding places for snails.

I have some pieces of giant bamboo cane around the garden, so the frogs have somewhere to hide or get out of the sun. The bamboo pieces are about 5 cm wide and 15 cm long.

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