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Some of my earliest memories are of going to stay with my grandparents in Scotland. Every afternoon my grandfather would wander off to sit on a bench and feed the birds. He had a tin filled with peanuts in his waistcoat pocket, and robins and tits

Spring is in the air. Birds are tweeting. Comfortable nests are being flung together. Plants are sprouting. Frogs are croaking lasciviously. Daffodils are flowering away with nothing less than gusto and the gloom of February fades into distant

of the last flowers.Anyway, I tell you all this not only to entertain you with tales of my day but also to demonstrate the fact that this garden teems with wildlife. Apart from those mentioned we have birds a-go-go, the odd hedgehog and there is a grass snake

been; they founded no new colonies and narrowly missed discovering Australia but it produced lots of discoveries for Commerson - not just plants but birds, fish and mammals.In Brazil he discovered, among many other species, Bougainvillea - a vividly

combine beautifully when poached with pears (with ice cream and a dollop of chocolate) - a way of using up our vast stock of unripe, bullet hard pears. Anybody else have problems with pears that refuse to ripen (the ones that are not eaten by birds

than that.By the way, we had a visitor to the garden this week: a stoat. It climbed over the roof of the barn and disappeared into a convenient hole in the bargeboard (presumably on a search for birds' nests). The only other time I have seen one

the young leaves were added to peoples' sandwiches; it supports at least 149 species of insect and the berries feed more than 23 species of bird; hawthorn is pollinated by dung flies and midges attracted to the mildly unpleasant smell and the fact

Do you have an autumn clear-up in your garden? Do you cut down all your herbaceous stuff so that everything is tidy for the winter or do you leave everything until the new year? Most people nowadays leave it until later to give food for small birds

apples and, once we have had a few frosts which tend to soften the fruit, they will provide a good food source for birds.There are five varieties in particular to which I would like to draw your attention. Ladies and gentlemen:The first is Malus 'John

for as long as possible, in order to feed the birds and give the frost something to hold on to, but there comes a time when one has to surrender to weather, nature and decay.As you can see from the picture above, that moment has, I think, arrived. (Just