Garden Bears' World - A Sunny Day in the Garden

Hello everyone!  It's Garden Bears' World time with me, Endon Bear, and all my pals.

Just before the current spell of very chilly weather started, we bears had a morning playing in the garden.  This was the first time we had been able to take little Waverley outside without wrapping him up in his thermal sock.

We started with a run right down the long garden path to the woodland garden we had helped to replant in the summer.  Here we found clumps of snowdrops poking through between our foxglove plants.  Waverley thought it was lovely.

After doing some climbing in the lilac bushes and sniffing to see if there was a hedgehog hibernating in the den we made (sadly, we don't think there is), we ran half way up the path to the greenhouse.  All pushing together, we could just get the door open far enough to squeeze in, so I could show the other bears the plants for the front garden bed and some other plants being grown from cuttings.

There are heucheras, pineapple sage, roses, dogwood and figs.  I'm not sure which ones have rooted yet but I hope they all will.  We also looked at the nasturtium seeds I have collected and dried, ready for sowing in the spring.

After sneaking back out of the greenhouse and closing the door, we went to explore the flower beds.  The hellebores are all coming into flower now and look very pretty, and Waverley found the first primrose in flower, under the roses.

Just behind the rose bed is the Witch Hazel bush.  I was very keen to show the other that, as it is the brightest thing in the whole garden at the moment and looked glorious with the sun shining through its little yellow flowers.

'It's great for climbing as well,' I said, scrambling up the trunk and into the branches.  'There are lots of twigs to hold on to, and the flowers have a nice smell too!'

Soon, we had all climbed up into the shrub and were enjoying the sunshine.

Didn't Polar laugh when she came out into the garden and saw us all up in the branches!

'Who wants to help in the greenhouse?' she asked.

This time, she meant the lean-to greenhouse on the back of the house, where the plants that need to be kept a little bit warmer live during the winter.

Polar's geraniums are all coming into flower again and, when it is a little bit warmer, we will take some cuttings from them, but today she was sowing more broad beans.

We were pleased to see the lettuce doing well and, under a plastic fruit box cover, my very old rocket seed from 2015 had germinated!

Even on a cold day, the greenhouse is warm and always has a lovely smell of fresh compost and growing things!  We decided to stay in there and chat to eat other for a little while, before having another run on the lawn before lunch.

We are very lucky bears to have such a nice garden to play in, especially when we can't travel very far for walks and adventures just now.  We hope you enjoy seeing our garden and reading about the plants we grow, and we hope to see you soon for another Garden Bears' World.

Birdwatching Bears

On the last weekend in January, the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch took place and we bears joined in.  In previous years we haven't always seen many birds during our watch hour, so this year we decided to do several watches and report the best one.

Endon and I did the first watch after lunch on Saturday, while Hanley and Waverley helped Polar to make some marmalade.   

Usually, we look for bargain oranges that have reached their use-by date but we can't do that with online shopping, so Polar ordered a tin of processed oranges.  Hanley and Endon said it made their work easier, as there was no peeling and chopping to do, so they didn't get sticky paws.

They stirred in two whole bags of sugar and warmed the mixture to dissolve it, then Polar helped them to divide it between two pans so it could be boiled fiercely without the mixture bubbling out of the saucepan.

Hanley and Endon collected some of the jars from the larder that we get our cream from the milkman in, and found there was enough marmalade to fill ten of them.

'Let's give the first one to Mr Matt the milkman!' said Endon.  Hanley agreed, and said we should make sure the posties and binmen get some too, as even four small bears don't need that much marmalade.

Meanwhile, Endon and I were bird-watching - until the steam from the marmalade made the window all foggy!  Fortunately, we had spent almost a whole hour watching by then and had a long list of the birds we had spotted.

We saw more blue tits (9) and sparrows (12) than anything else, although we also saw goldfinches, chaffinches, blackbirds, starlings, wood pigeons, great tits and a robin.

It was Hanley and Waverley's turn to birdwatch in the afternoon, but that was also football time, so Waverley watched from the workshop window while Hanley led the rest of us in cheering for Stoke, who managed a draw against Huddersfield despite having a man sent off.

It was very quiet at first, as a sparrowhawk had flown over just before he started counting (Grizzly saw it), but then Waverley saw more goldfinches, as well as the flock of sparrows and the blue tits, chaffinches, starlings, blackbirds and a coal tit.

Waverley enjoyed his birdwatch and was keen to do another one, so he and I decided to get up very early on Sunday morning and see what early birds were about.  We were glad we did, because the sunrise was very pretty.

We thought there would be lots of birds coming to get their breakfast between 8am and 9am, but actually it was surprisingly quiet.  We saw chaffinches and sparrows, including one sparrow who has lots of white feathers - Polar says that is called 'leucism'.

'Humans have a saying: "The Early Bird catches the worm," so I suppose most of the birds must be out in the fields worm-catching," I suggested to Waverley.  'I wonder if they will have come back when Hanley and Endon do their next watch?'

Hanley and Endon took over for a 10.30 to 11.30 watch, and they saw more birds than any of us - 39 in total - adding a dunnock and a wren to the list of different species.  

 

'It looks like Elevenses is the best time for bird-watching,' said Endon.  'We've seen eleven different types of bird!'

Endon and Waverley did a little watch together after Sunday dinner, but didn't see any exta types of bird, although the squirrel did drop in for some peanuts and sunflower seeds from the bird table.

We decided that the 'Elevenses' watch was the best one to report, so we did that on Monday, and we are now waiting to see what the results are across the whole country.

Polar says the most unusual birds tend to turn up after birdwatch weekend.  In previous years she has seen long-tailed tits, bullfinches, siskins and even a couple of fieldfares in the garden during the winter, but never on official Big Garden Birdwatch days. 

We think they know and hide!

Garden Bears' World - Flowers in January

 Hello everyone, and welcome to another Garden Bears' World post from me, Endon Bear.

Before all the snow melted last week, I decided to see which flowers were out in the garden.  One of my favourites is the Christmas Box, Sarcococca humilis, which is a neat, small, evergreen shrub with very glossy leaves and tiny white flowers with a lovely vanilla scent.  Polar has planted several of them near the back door so we can enjoy the fragrance.

From the Sarcococca, I could see a bright splash of yellow near the birdbath, so I set off down the path for a closer look.  It was the Witch Hazel, Hamamelis x Intermedia which shows up very nicely because Polar planted it in front of the dark green leaves of the Rhododendron and Mahonia (which still has a few yellow flowers of its own).

The flowers are like little fireworks!

There are snowdrops coming up all over the garden.  Since these pictures were taken, some of them have started flowering properly.  There are two types, one taller than the other, all of them propagated from two little clumps found at the very bottom of the garden when Polar and Grizzly first moved in.

I found a very pretty double pink hellebore in the flowerbed near the bird table and a white cyclamen in the little border under the espaliered pear tree.

Out in the front garden, there are a few more snowdrops and some smaller hellebore plants, but the bed nearest the window is quite dull, even when the snow has cleared.

Polar and I ordered some shade-tolerant winter plants for this bed and, soon afterwards, a very big box arrived with all the plants' containers securely stuck to the bottom!  

 I helped Polar get to them by nibbling holes in the cardboard so we could tear off the top part of the box.

Inside were some ferns, two different Bergenias (Elephants-ears) and a Skimmia.  Polar said we shouldn't plant them while it was so cold because, although they are very hardy plants, they might have been growing in a warm greenhouse or polytunnel, so need time to get used to cooler conditions.  She also explained that plants need to drink plenty when they move to a new home and are settling their roots in, and they can't do that if the water in the soil is frozen.

So we took them down to our cool greenhouse.  While Polar finished unpacking them, I checked on my sweet pea plants and was pleased to see they looked very healthy.

And here are the unpacked plants for our winter garden by the front window.  Polar says we can transplant some Christmas Box plants into that bed too, and some more snowdrops as they always need splitting and replanting after they have flowered.  

 She says it's too shady for the dogwood plants with colourful stems that I like, but that if we grew some somewhere else, we could always clip some stems off to push into the ground in our winter bed to add some extra colour, and no-one who didn't look very closely would be able to tell they weren't growing there!

I hope we'll be planting all our new plants soon, then I can tell you all about it in the next episode of Garden Bears' World!