Where we walk the dog

This is a map of our regular dog walk. 

From start to finish the walk is about three kilometres. 

Starting from the house, we walk along the road.  Fenrir has to stay on his lead during this part of the walk.  He bolts toward cars and I am sure he would run in front of a car if he wasn't restrained.  

When we make the left off the road and start walking toward the gate we can unclip the dog and let him walk free.  A few times a year we will bump into a neighbour, but it's never a problem.

When we get to the gate, Fen is too big to go under the gate and far too heavy to lift over but we found a way to walk around. (smile)  

Until a couple of years ago the whole walk from the gate was completely forested.  It was a big piney walk in the woods.  It's now rough meadow and newly planted trees.

Every single walk follows the yellow line.  When we get to the end of the yellow line, we have a choices.

Taking another left toward The Pond leads us to a big gorse bush that smells of coconut in the spring.  There are sometimes deer up here.  If we have been loud, they will have bounced off  well in advance of us showing up.

The green path takes us to the Hidden Pond.  The hidden pond is off the track and a bit of a scramble to get to, but is very pretty and at this time of year is full of frogs.

I have indicated the two main turn around points in pink.  However, if you are feeling adventurous and the weather is good, you have the option of taking the wild path (purple) back to the gate. 

If you are quiet and observant during a walk, you can see loads of wildlife.  Look in the puddles, muddy bits and drainage ditches.. Look up at the sky and the tops of the trees, there is always something to see.  

Spring IS Coming

Every Wednesday I drive to Dumfries at about 7 pm to go to the swimming pool.  Last week the temperature was about 9 C.  I noticed that there were a few toads on the road. I almost stopped to take a photo of them, but I was in a bit of a rush.  I thought to myself . . . spring is coming!

Last night we had a frog on the woodpile.  He (or she) was just sitting there.  Toads last week on the road and a great big frog last night tells me that spring is on its way.   The next time I go to the front garden to fill the bird feeders, I'm going to walk over and see if there is any frog spawn in the pond.

Sure we may get one last bit of snow before it is all over. . . .but the teeth have been knocked out of the beast.  I've been less cold in the house too.  I didn't realise this until I started writing this . . .but I haven't felt the need to have a cardigan on at all times.  I may go and scrub the greenhouse this weekend.

Stuff Keeps Showing Up

It has been so wet this spring I never got a chance to plant anything in that nicely dug up vegetable patch.

The tadpoles are quickly becoming frogs. 

This wee man has almost completed the transformation.  The tail is almost completely absorbed.

The newts are getting fat too.

I haven't seen the diving beetle larvae.  They might be pupating because they were the size of a decent shrimp the last time I looked.

If we leave the light on by the back door we will have moths on the wall in the morning.   Here are two beauties that visited this week.

White ermine

Buff tip - looks like a bit of birch twig!

Spring Can be Cruel

We started the month with two lovely sunny days.  The daffodil spikes have started to show the lumps that will eventually become buds and then flowers. 


There is one hen that needs to have her wings clipped.  She flies out of the chicken run every day, lays her egg in the big plastic tunnel and then flies back into the chicken run.   From time to time she'll have a wander around before going back.  If she is out and needs some company or is bored, she'll peck at the back door.  I'll hear a faint tapping at the kitchen door. . . . when I open the door.  This is what I see:



Hello nice lady!

I have a strict no-chickens-in-the-house policy so this one is wasting her time.

I was outside this morning in my pajamas and wellies dealing with the aftermath of a visit from a fox.  Polly, our dog had been barking.  Instead of going to see what she was barking about, and Polly is not normally a barky sort of dog I told her to be quiet.   When I finally got off my backside and looked out the window, I let the dog out immediately.  The biggest fox I have ever seen was bounding away from the place.  There were feathers all over the inside my chicken run.   I thought that run was fairly fox proof.  It turns out that the run is merely fox resistant!  We lost one good laying hen and another has been bitten but not badly.  The bitten one has just lost some feathers and didn't want to come out of the chicken coop for a couple of hours.  

This is the remainder of my hens - the bitten one is the one at the top, all muddy and upset.  Six chickens is still plenty to be getting on with.  I'll not replace any just yet.  To cheer myself up after all this fox trauma, I filled the bird feeders and checked the pond.  There is a big new clump of frog spawn in the pond.  As I was hunkered down to see the state of things, I saw the BIGGEST great diving beetle I have ever seen.  He really is The Daddy of all diving beetles.  It sort of figures.  Do you know what great diving beetle larvae like to eat best of all?   Tadpoles.

There are new catkins dangling off the corkscrew hazel.  I think they look lovely.  Smaller and far less showy are the little red female parts of the plant, the part that will eventually be edible hazelnuts. 

The plump and delicate little flowers can be seen dotted around the hazel. (In the centre of the photo) They are so small that they run the risk of being covered by the lichen.   

The moles are renewing their efforts in the front and back gardens.  With the fox and increased mole activity, it is time to make a call to my friend Mike the Gamekeeper.

So, that's the news around the garden.  In other arenas, I have completed my 100th dive.

It was cold, murky and almost devoid of underwater life but I had a great day out. 

Pick the Fights You Know You Can Win

I have a new battle. Duckweed!I didn't feel I could win this war in the past. Duckweed had taken a firm hold on the pond, to the point that we had to skim holes in the solid blanket of green to peek into the water. It was our own fault. A little bit of duckweed had come in with some purchased pond plants and the pond was infected. I didn't scoop each and every little bit out when I had the chance, not realising how invasive this stuff is. It got a solid footing in our pond. It wasn't until The Man of the Place changed the pond liner earlier in the spring that I thought I had even a small hope of keeping this stuff out of our pond.

When reintroducing things back to the pond after the new liner was put in place, we wiped away all visible signs of duckweed. It still appeared. Tenacious stuff, duckweed! As I have plenty of time to keep an eye on developments in the pond, I am removing each and every little bit I see. This used to be a good kitchen sieve. I found it, crushed on the ground near the pond near the time of the big liner replacement. Being downgraded from kitchen utensil to pond sieve, it now lives on a rock at the edge of our pond. I use it to scoop floating duckweed out of the water. Every day and sometimes more than once a day, the pond is scanned for signs of duckweed. I swoop down and remove the evil green floaters as soon as they are spotted. It rained yesterday for the first time in a while. I knew that this meant there was a strong possibility that some new duckweed would be visible. Duckweed will grow between rocks and float free once the water levels rise. I scooped out about 15 little bits while still in my pajamas. I figure that by the end of the summer, I will have removed all threat of duckweed. Constant vigilance!!!In the future, any items coming from an outside source will have to be quarantined in a bucket for a number of days ensuring my duckweed free pond is not reinfected.

---------------A rosebush on the front of our house comes from my husband's childhood home. A cutting was taken from that house when they moved to a new place back in the early 70's. Decades later when The Man of the Place and I moved to Whitelees, my mother-in-law layered a portion of the same rosebush for us. We now have this vigorous climber by the door with a beautiful show of delicate pink roses at the end of June. It always is in bloom on his sister's birthday so in our family this rose is named Victoria's Rose. This year is no exception.

More Life

Yesterday another creature returned to our pond.

Two newts!! Common newt - not my photograph


I think newts are so interesting! I hope there is enough for them to eat in the pond. It's still pretty barren in there despite the return of the diving beetles and the pond skaters.

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After a look in the pond after dinner - there seems to be a water boatman in there as well!

New Life

As I was filling the watering can from one of the rain barrels, I saw that I was disturbing resident mosquito larvae (sorry guys). It made me wonder what would be the first aquatic residents to make it back to our pond. We (the Royal we) have changed the pond liner. The new liner is in and the pond has been full of water for a week.Today, as I was doing the pre-mowing dog poo patrol on the lawn, I went and had a look to see what was going on with the pond. Pond Skater

It turns out that pond skaters and diving beetles were the first to return!You can make out the young diving beetle in the upper right hand corner of that photo. These diving beetles get much bigger - about the size of a quarter or fifty pence piece. They're very carnivorous beetles as well. I don't know if anything else will be able to colonise that pond. Certainly I no longer fear the mosquito larvae. Hungry beetles will make short work of them. I wonder if I could catch one or two and pop them into the rain barrels to eat the larvae there. . . . it's a thought.

The Pond Upgrade

When we bought our place 15 years ago we discovered the southwest corner of our front garden is where the outhouses used to live. For the first year or so we didn't really do anything with it. You could make out the two square, brick-lined holes and these holes would fill half way up with water when it rained. We decided that instead of ignoring the low wet corner of the garden, we'd take advantage of the situation and put a real pond there. The Man of the Place evened out the ground in and around the two former outhouses and did the best he could with these features. We lined our new pond site with old carpets that had been lifted from the house.

Not long after we moved in, we redecorated and pulled up some of the ugliest carpets ever produced. I have a theory about carpets, the uglier they are, the longer they will wear. The orange and brown swirly carpets we pulled up were actually 80% wool and must have cost a small fortune to put down at one time. The carpets and worn out underlay were used to cover over any sharp things that would puncture a pond liner.

We wanted a nice butyl pond liner but discovered that these premium rubber liners with a 12 year warranty also had a premium price and we could not afford a butyl liner. We saw that the next option on the list was a plastic liner that only had a four year warranty. It was about this time that I found myself at the local agricultural supply place getting poultry supplies and saw some silage pit liners off to one corner. Those are merely big sheets of black plastic. Even the smallest silage pit liner was cheaper than a plastic pond liner and was the same gage of black plastic. When we got the liner out to put in the pond we discovered just how huge a silage pit liner actually is. The old pond liner

The liner was folded in half and then in half again. It was then covered with stones and soil and thus protected from the destructive rays of the sun. This worked for over 12 years - the same as a butyl line would have worked. We love our pond.All sort of lovely things came to live in the pond. Frogs, newts, Great diving beetles (and their evil looking larvae), pond skaters and even some leeches!As the years rolled on the pond matured. Did you know that water lilies are fussy about the depth at which they will grow? We know now. The third water lily we tried in there worked beautifully. The fish we put in there did not. I suspect that local herons just picked them out as quickly as I put fish in there.

This year when I went to inspect the amount of frog and toad spawn I noticed that the water level in the pond was very very low. There was probably a puncture somewhere in the liner and it needed to be replaced.Last weekend the work started. The first part was the worst part of replacing a pond liner, cleaning out the pond. There was over a decade of leaves and other assorted detritus in there and it didn't smell very nice. In fact, it smelled like an old pond. Thank God for soap!

We think that it was a rodent that finally put an end to the pond liner. A labyrinth of vole tunnels were unearthed when the liner was finally lifted.Today the new silage pit liner was put in and the pond was re-filled.
The upgraded pond is deeper than the old one and much more level. When it was almost filled I was reminded of the clear cold springs that are found when canoeing at Juniper Springs in Florida.The Man of the Place has put his back out with all the work that has gone into the pond over the past two weekends. When he is feeling better, the surrounding stone will be replaced and some of the flora will be re-introduced back into our pond. We're hoping to keep the duck weed out of the pond this time and we're going to be extra vigilant about keeping each little tiny speck of that stuff out! Once duck weed is established - it is nigh on impossible to eradicate.Here is an evening shot of the upgraded pond. Still loads to be done, but the back breaking (almost literally) part is over. Well done darling!