The Fairweather Gardener - A Sucker for Succulents

I've recently realised that I’m a cactus collector, well cacti and other succulents. This seems to have been my unintentional lockdown project. I spent a lot of time potting offsets and cuttings of my houseplants.

The autumn before covid 19 struck, I'd bought a small, three-tier, wooden shelving unit with attractive turned uprights, which was narrow enough to sit on the window board in my conservatory. At first I put a few small cuttings of jade plants (crassula) and a lot of baby spider plants on it. I soon discovered that on a sunny day, I could put the spider plants and one or two other rooted babies outside with a sign, “Houseplants Free to Good Homes” and they’d be re-homed within a couple of hours. 

So the shelving unit now displays some of my small to medium succulents beautifully. On the top shelf is a bears-paw (cotyledon tormentosa), a small jade plant with unusual pointed leaves, a tall, variegated jade plant (crassula ovata variegata) and a long crassula perforata in a beautiful artichoke pot, whose stems are beginning to hang down.

On the middle shelf in a red and green pot is an echinopsis cactus with several babies who need potting on. There's a second echinopsis sharing a low dish with cobweb houseleek (sempervivum) and between the two are my latest editions, four small pots whose occupants I'm not yet sure how to care for so I'm being careful. Two are types of lithops (living stones) which I know can be tricky, one is a string-of-pearls (senecio) which I'm assured is easy, and the fourth is a tiny, unidentified, globe cactus which I'm hoping is as easy as the echinopsis.

The bottom shelf houses another echinopsis, an echiveira (they come in lots of varieties, mostly look the same so I don't know which type this is!) a sad Christmas cactus which I'm nursing but may not survive (I overwatered the poor thing) and some Hawarthia in a strange Spanish pot with crude butterflies decorating it.  

In the pot to the right of the shelving are sanseveiria (snake plant), echinopsis and haworthia which have all been in one very overcrowded pot for ten years, I seriously need to free them! Beside them on a stand are another haworthia below, and above a green jade plant in a lovely red glazed pot. This is only about half of my windowsill collection of succulents and that number doesn't include two large, potted gasteria verrucosa which sit on the floor and are flowering in the sun. 

There's also Mama cactus, who was my first echinopsis and has produced all of the others. She's very fierce, lives mostly outdoors, she flowers every summer and lives in a colony with many daughters and grand-daughters. They will shortly be going out onto the patio, when I can find my thickest gardening gloves.

 

Ospreyitis - Part I

Monty nested at Dyfi 2011-2019

One of my favourite activities has begun again in the past couple of weeks, osprey watching! There's 
no osprey nest in Sussex and that's a fact, they're big birds and the county has a large human population, somebody would have noticed, but I'm told a few fly over on their annual migrations. Not that I've ever seen one of those, I do my osprey watching almost entirely online. 

I began in 2014 with the nest at Dyfi Osprey Project, which was one of a few raptor nests with a dedicated webcam. The resident pair, Monty and Glesni were model parents and their efforts at raising their two chicks Deri and Gwynant. The webcam had sound and I learned how loud young ospreys can be when demanding fish from their father, the female chick, Deri was deafening. I occasionally looked in on the Glaslyn webcam, but didn't follow regularly. At the same time I was also watching peregrine falcons in Worcester and a family of kestrels who nested on St Andrews Church in the same city. 

The next year I still watched the Worcester birds and saw Monty and Glesni successfully rear three chicks but I also began also watching the Glaslyn osprey nestcam with the legendary Mrs G.  The Glaslyn nestcam had no sound, but the fascination was episodes of  'Ospenders', watching the battle for the favours of Mrs G, whose mate of 10 years (known as 11/98, his ring number) had failed to return. 

Mrs G was first courted by a young Scottish osprey ringed CU2, who was named Jimmy for obvious reasons. Next to arrive was Blue 80 who was actually one of Mrs G's sons from 2012, but CU2 Jimmy saw him off, then Jimmy left too.  Mrs G laid several eggs but they probably weren't fertile. Then another young male arrived, and stayed. He was named Aran because he had no ring and he raised two chicks with Mrs G that summer.

The following year (2016, keep up!) I followed three osprey nests and gave up on the Worcester peregrines, who weren't nesting, and the Worcester kestrels whose camera had failed.  Mrs G and Aran at Glaslyn and the Rutland Manton Bay pair of Maya and 33/11 all raise three chicks apiece. Monty and Glesni at Dyfi, reared two, although the female chick, Ceri, fell while still a novice flyer and died of her injuries on the nest - drama and heartache.

By now I was totally hooked on these fantastic birds! Osprey are an ancient species of raptor who have evolved as exclusive fish-eaters over many millions of years, they aren't hawks or eagles. They are hugely successful and range over every continent except Antarctica. They were hunted to near extinction in Europe and were extinct in the UK for 50 years. They're now nesting successfully in Scotland, England and Wales.

The Fairweather Gardener - Indoors

Plants waiting to go outdoors

As a fair-weather gardener, much of my gardening takes place indoors. My parents always had a few  houseplants and dad was quite interested in cacti, the weirder the better. I’ve always liked houseplants, but for ages I seldom had much space for them where I lived. 

Our first proper home, in Stony Stratford, was a tall, period terraced house, whose south-facing windows were beautifully proportioned and elegant with original, eighteen-paned sashes and shutters, but had no window ledges suitable for houseplants. The rear of the house had small, even older windows which faced into a wide, sunless alleyway. I tried, but killed every houseplant except spider plants, aechmea (urn plants) and a rubber tree.

We eventually moved to Huddersfield and a much more conventional, if second-hand, Barratt home, with south facing windows and a wide box-window in the living room. Most houseplants thrived there even in winter and despite the single glazing, except for the rubber tree which finally succumbed after it grew too tall and I tried decapitating it. The final grandchild of my urn plant also eventually expired.

Now in East Sussex, I have a small, not very elegant south-facing conservatory, maybe 3 x 4 metres, which I’ve stacked with plants. I’m fairly certain myspider plants are descendants of the original ones, I also have several generations of crassula ovata, gasteria verrucosa, echinopsis eyrisii and howarthia. Anyone who knows their houseplants will observe this indicates I have an interest in succulents!

However I’ve also got more conventional leafy plants, including a weeping fig (ficus Benjamina) which came from IKEA in Leeds nearly 30 years ago. Then there are three different varieties of dracaena, self-perpetuating zebrina, four-year-old geraniums (zonal pelargoniums), two poinsettia and, waiting to go into the garden, thumbrgia which already have lovely orange, black-eyed flowers, Lewisia and a bright purple celosia. The larger cactus will go outdoors soon as well.

All I need is the weather to warm up a little more and I’ll become an outdoor gardener again.

The Fair Weather Gardener - My Magnolia

Purple is the colour of my true love’s hair… actually it isn’t and that’s not even how the song goes, but purple is definitely the colour of the flowers on my magnolia. It’s looking healthier than for a while, with at least two dozen large blossoms and the green of the leaves just beginning to show. I feel purple today, maybe it’s my hair that wants to be an imperial hue.

Magnolia is the dullest of insipid paint colours, which can't decide if it's vaguely yellowish or pinkish, so it stays vague, but then no paint can ever catch the dazzling, pearlescent hues, the soft velvet texture or sweet, subtle scent of the true magnolia blossom.

Those purple flowers glow in the sunlight at the side of the garden, if it was larger I’d plant the magnolia in the ground, but there isn’t really enough space so the poor thing has now languished in a pot for ten years. Last year I refreshed the compost, although it really needs a bigger pot. And if I do put it into a bigger pot, it will be too heavy for me to move around. The whole point of having plants in pots is to be able to move them, ring the changes.

Why did I buy a magnolia which I knew perfectly well I’d never be able to plant into the ground? Because of its name, magnolia Susan!