The Gardens at Raby Castle

While visiting friends a few weeks ago, back in August, we spent a lovely afternoon exploring the gardens at Raby Castle, near Darlington in County Durham. Raby Castle is situated in approx 250 acres of parkland. The deer park has red deer and fallow deer and we watched them grazing near the castle as we strolled around the pathways.

There is plenty of bird life too and blackbirds were in full song as we explored. We watched the swallows dipping and diving and swooping across the greens. Woodpeckers, mistle thrushes and grey wagtails are popular here too. The ponds in the castle grounds also attract varieties of geese and ducks and oyster catchers.

The 18th century walled garden contains 5 acres of lawns and spectacular herbaceous borders. The garden features two magnificent yew hedges, an ornamental pond and many fruit trees. There is also a glass house, which has it's very own fig tree. 

There was plenty of late summer vibrant colour in the borders - those bright oranges and yellows, which take over from those early summer pastels. Many perennials were out in full bloom - crocosmias - especially the lucifer variety , chrysanthemums, cat mint and lavenders. Heavily scented rambling roses climbed the fences on the outside of the wall, making a lovely frame for the view towards the castle. The rose beds were in full bloom and heady with perfume. 

There are also tearooms and a gift shop to complete your visit. 

Raby Castle

Spring at Last!

Spring is well and truly here, we have come to the end of March and it's nearly Easter and it's that time of year when we have those beautiful displays of bright crocuses and yellow daffodils popping up everywhere. It's that time with the longer days and lighter nights when everything in the garden starts to wake up again and there is one display of flowers after another through the rest of the year. 

Sunny yellow daffodils are always a welcome sight, brightening up the garden - they usually arrive around the time when we've just tidied up the garden after the winter and cut the lawn for the first time in months. Suddenly the garden looks set and ready for the growing season and full of promise for the enjoyable days outside in summer. 

I always associate the vibrant colours of the spring flowers with Easter time: yellows, purples, pinks and white - early colour before the summer's vivid displays. 

The daffodil blooms always coincide with the busy activity of the birds too. Suddenly the dawn chorus is getting louder and the birds in the garden are hypnotic to watch. Blue tits and great tits are coming in and out of the nesting boxes and the feeders are being emptied by greenfinches, robins, long tail tits, chaffinches and goldfinches - even the blackbirds are flapping around them eager to join in, but they struggle to balance and are a sight to watch! The pond is full of frogs and their spawn and you can see it bubbling with activity too. 

It's an exciting and promising time in the garden - enjoy it! Here's wishing eveyone a very happy and enjoyable Easter holiday! 

RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch 2015

This weekend it was the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch 2015. The RSPB run this activity every year to help them record and monitor trends to understand how different birds and wildlife are faring. It can assist in identifying and helping species that are in danger and the best ways to give nature a home. 

It is a simple activity to take part in and all you need to do is find one hour to just sit and watch the birds and record which species come into your garden. The results can then be submitted via most electronic devices or by form to the RSPB. (See their website below) There is still plenty of time to send in results - they can be submitted up to 16th February. 

It was a lovely morning on Saturday- perfect for watching birds come and go. We watched and counted:

2 bluetits

2 blackbirds

2 magpies

2 wood pigeons

2 robins

4 sparrows

1 great tit.

It was fairly quiet morning and we do often get many other species of birds visiting such as long tail tits, goldfinches, greenfinches, wrens, fieldfares, redwings, woodpeckers, chaffinches and even moorhens and pheasants to name a few, but you can only record what you see in the hour that you watch. 

We have worked hard to try and attract wildlife in our garden and have an assortment of feeders and bird boxes to attract a variety of birds. It is always a pleasure to sit quietly and watch the different birds busily coming and going. I love it in spring when the waterfall on the pond is flowing properly

 -not iced up like it is now - and the birds come for a bath in it's pools all day long. We have a couple of bird baths too and try and ensure there is water out for them to drink, especially in this freezing weather. 

Did you take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch, if so what did you spot and what birds come in your garden?

The apple tree plentiful with bird feeders

Sunflower seeds

mixed seeds

A fat feeder - the birds love this one

Bird box ready - blue tits are already looking around it

More mixed seed on the cherry blossom tree

Another fat ball feeder on the blossom tree

Fruit feeder near the conservatory so we can spy who's on it!

Little seed feeder - a favourite for the robins and blackbirds - the pigeons like to mop up the leftovers underneath it too!

Another bird box - hidden on the back of the summerhouse, but viewed nicely from a distance on the top patio

Bird table with a little butterfly house hanging too

Bacon rind, mealy worms and table seed  for dinner today!

Drinking hole amongst the shrubs

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/

Skylark

The Lark

The lark, that shuns on lofty boughs to build

Her annual nest, lies silent in the field.

But if the promise of a cloudless day,

Aurora smiling, bids her rise and play, 

Then straight she shews, 'twas not for want of voice,

Or power to climb, she made so low a choice:

Singing she mounts, her airy wings are stretch'd

T'wards heav'n, as if from heav'n her notes she fetch'd.

Edmund Waller (1606-1687)

It started off a wet, cool and dismal day here in Knebworth on the Spring Bank Holiday Monday, but it did fine up and the sun did try its best, although with little success, to break through the heavy low cloud. 

We hadn't much planned, but decided to go out for a walk through the fields at the back of the recreation ground. The fields are full of rapeseed plants that are now fading back, I think the aroma of the flowers would have been too overpowering for me if they had been in full bloom still. 

We veered off a path to the right, away from the busy recreation ground were families were enjoying walks and ball games and children were busy amusing themselves on the play areas. The path took us away further into the peace and quiet of the countryside and into the depths of acres of fields. All we could hear was birdsong and then we spotted our first sighting of a skylark in a long time. There it was sitting tall on the foliage of a rape plant, singing its heart out. 

As we got further into the farmland, it became clear there was a whole flock of skylarks nesting in the deepness of the rape plants and grasses on either side of the pathway. It was as though we were suddenly walking through the dawn chorus and had stumbled upon something unexpectedly magical. It was one of those surprising and enchanting moments that make you stand still and listen and watch carefully to capture the minute. 

We watched as the skylarks sang and chirrupped their pleasant, liquid warbling songs on their low perches. They would take flight with their fluttering broad wings, flapping and gliding over their territory, rising high and then parachuting down again. 

We continued on with our walk and edged further towards woodland and civilisation, the singing became fainter and fainter and then the mellow blackbird song became more prominent from the woodland, together with the low cooing of the wood pidgeons.

We made our way back home again and as we came back to the recreation ground I felt as though I'd stepped back into the real world again. For a short while I'd been entranced and back in those childhood days of summer, Enid Blyton books or in one of those 'old' poems about the countryside. 

And just to think the skylarks are there in all their glory, right behind where we live, just the park and recreation ground between us and I never knew. In all the years we have lived here. I was pleased we went for that walk, as I hadn't felt very motivated that day and now I felt uplifted! 

The Heaven- Soaring Lark

The heaven-soaring lark, its rapture spent

On morning's quest

Drops down again, soul satisfied, content

Unto the nest

O singing soul, chafe not, that by earth's chain

Thou seemest bound! -

The sky's true messenger did ne'er disdain

The lowly ground. 

Mary Eleanor Roberts (late 19th early 20th century)

A Green Cornfield

The earth was green, the sky was blue:

I saw and heard one sunny morn

A skylark hang between the two,

A singing speck above the corn;

The cornfield stretched a tender green

To right and left beside my walks;

I knew he had a nest unseen

Somewhere among the million stalks. 

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)