Trip to the seaside

Julia definitely has a mind of her own. In the summer, we took her to Hunstanton for the day. We envisaged running on the beach, paddling in the surf, building sandcastles …

Julia wasn't keen on sand, she hated the feel on her feet and she was no happier with shoes on. She viewed sand as you or I might consider dog poo – something to avoid stepping on at all costs. The fact that hundreds of other children were having a great time counted for nothing.

She was carried to the sea a couple of times, but paddling was out as there was clearly sand under the water. We did collect a few shells, which are now something of a treasure,

Much later in the year, in December, it snowed heavily in Thorney and Tom and Lucy bought Julia up to enjoy this rare treat. Julia puts snow in the same class as sand – not to be trodden. She didn't mind looking at it from the safety of my arms, she thought it quite funny to throw a snowball at dad, but she yelped when a snowflake went down her neck.

I'm sure, in time, Julia will enjoy a day at the beach and (if she gets chance) will love to make a snowman – just not in 2017.

Aureliano was so impressed by Hunstanton that he fell asleep and I kept
him company.

Do you speak Julia?

It is interesting hearing a child learn to speak and particularly interesting for me as I am learning a language (Spanish) myself.

Julia has two languages to learn - Spanish from her mother and English from the rest of her current world.

She also makes up words of her own to fill in the gaps, so the result is a blend of Spanglish toddler talk. It’s quite creative and often quite funny.

Here are some of her words:

Buo - is milk (hot or cold). I don’t know where this one came from. The Spanish for milk is ‘leche’ so there’s no obvious link there.

Wei-wei - that’s her word for me, grandad. I think it came from ‘abuelo’ the Spanish word for grandad and I think she picked up on the ‘welo’ sound within the word. I rather like being Wei-wei

Ma-ma, not to be confused with Mammy  - is what she calls Margaret. The ‘ma’ sound, obviously comes from the ‘ma’ in grandma. Often Julia shouts it very loudly indeed.

Wei-wei - Nina - is her word for grandma Nidia and (just recently) Wei-wei Lala for grandad Carlos. Wei-wei is now her word of choice for grandparents.

Memes - are socks. The Spanish for socks is ‘calcetines’ but in Latin America they are medias (as in halves) and memes is obviously a corruption of medias.

Tu - is you (of course), but Julia uses it for ‘me’ (as herself). Lucy would refer to her as ‘tu’ and she thinks that’s her name. I tried to get her to say me, but it’s far too confusing for a toddler (or a granddad).

Ollybolly - is Holly, our dog. She does call her olly when issuing a command, which she has started to do. “Olly, no!” is a common one.

Oh-Oh - means there’s a problem and it’s such a useful word. Anything from a pain in the foot, a lost item or something dropped on the floor. There was an incident when Julia was climbing on a chair and grandad told her to be careful and come down. She didn’t heed his advice, slipped and banged her ear. This incident was reported to mum and dad with the damning sentence: Oh-oh, wei-wei ear.” Recently, she has had a cold and this was called ‘oh-oh nose’.

Bee - this is a bee, but also any other insect from a fly to an ant, although I think I’ve now taught her ‘ant’.

Beeba - is bib, the thing you wear for dining when you’re two. She is very fussy about her bibs or beebas and many have names. Plane beeba is a freebie from KLM. It is also a hairclip, from the Spanish ‘horquilla’ and ‘bedcover’ from ‘cubrir’.

Dada isn’t dad (that’s daddy) but is does mean poo, house and spoon. Tom told me about the first one and I haven’t heard it. Normally when it’s a No 1, she gets anxious and points to her belly. That’s the sign to run for the potty. She was saying ‘caca’ so perhaps that’s corrupted to dada. House is ‘casa’, so close-ish and spoon is ‘cuchara’. A lot of words are picked up and used because they sort of rhyme - I guess they sound right. Bee dada is one of her favourite spoons - it’s a spoon with a big yellow handle and a picture of a bee on it.

Mano is brother, from the Spanish hermano.

Babbies - are strawberries or raspberries.

Welcome to the world, Aureliano.

May 25, 2017 saw my third grandchild arrive.

We have been waiting for him for quite some time. Lucy was convinced he would be early (like Julia) but it turns out that we was very happy where he was and in no hurry to make an appearance.

There was some excitement about four weeks ago, but it turned out that it was just back pains. Lucy was finishing some essays for her first year PhD and had been sitting in the same (bad) position for too long.

So the pregnancy term of Julia came and went, and Lucy's official due date came and went, still no sign of action.

On Wednesday this week, six days after the due date, I went down to Baldock to look after Julia for the day so Lucy and Nidia could spend some time together. While we went to grandparents’ playgroup in Letchworth, Lucy and Nidia walked to Sainsbury’s, then to the swimming pool, then back to Baldock to have lunch with us in Dizi’s, then back home. Lucy was too weary to walk to Avenue Park in the afternoon, but she did walk to the chip shop with Tom to get fish and chips for dinner. I think she must have walked four miles that day, plus an hour’s swimming.

In the evening, Tom and I went to the Templars Hotel to watch the Europa League final between Manchester United and Ajax Amsterdam (Man U won 2-0 and qualified for the Champions League next year). Lucy was still up when we got back and I drove home.

At 5am, when Holly woke me up, there was a WhatsApp message from Tom to say that Lucy’s waters had broken and they were at the maternity hospital. For the past five weeks, we had been on standby to go to Baldock to care for Julia when Lucy went in to give birth, but since Nidia arrived from Ecuador just over a week ago, we’ve not been first-line responders.

I made a cup of tea and went to tell Margaret the news. I had a meeting at school in the morning with the head teacher and two prospective new governors, so Margaret went down on the train to help Nidia and lend some moral support. Julia was at nursery until 2pm, so Margaret and Nidia did some cleaning and washing before having lunch and picking Julia up.

Lucy gave birth at midday with the baby weighing 3.7kg (8.4lbs) which was much more than Julia and reflects the fact he was a week late rather than three weeks early. After my meeting, I sorted out Holly and some watering and then drove down.

They were in the Lister Hospital in Stevenage and so I drove Nidia, Julia and Margaret to see them. The new baby - Aureliano Jacinto Rayner Rojas - was doing fine. He had fed already and was fast asleep. He’s quite a big baby, but seems tiny next to Julia or Arthur. Julia is fascinated and was very keen to touch him and give him a hug. She calls him “mano” which is part of “hermano” - Spanish for brother. We will probably call him the same thing as there’s no obvious diminutive of Aureliano. We thought about “Arry” or “Rio” from Aureliano or “Jack” from Jacinto. Anyway, Julia will have the final say.

She was shattered and starving when we got her home and was so hungry (by the time I’d got to Tesco and back) that she needed Tom and Margaret to feed her - one shovelling in the tuna fish and sweet corn, the other doing pasta and pesto.

After dinner, I played with her while Tom went back to Lister hospital to pick up Lucy, Aureliano and Nidia. We’d just got her pyjamas on when they got home and she was very weary - overtired. Aureliano, on the other hand, was fast asleep in his car seat and didn’t wake when Margaret took him through to his Moses basket in the lounge.

Welcome Aureliano, I look forward to watching you grow up and wish you a long and happy life.

Aureliano has lots of hair. Quite dark at the moment

Back home with grandmother Margaret.

In the Moses basket - and still sleeping.

This Jay thinks it is a Blue Tit

The Jay that is a regular visitor to my garden has been displaying some very strange behaviour. He (or she) grabbed a fully-grown sparrow and carried it off last week (he thinks he’s a sparrowhawk) and on several mornings I’ve now seen him eating off the nut feeder.

Jays will take nut chippings put on the bird table in winter and I’ve also seen them bashing at the nut feeder to knock some bits out before swooping onto the lawn to get them.

We have a nut feeder that’s shaped like a ball and made from woven wire. This Jay has been coming to the feeder, grabbing on and hanging upside down to take nuts - just like a blue tit or a great tit. It’s quite comical seeing a large bird like a Jay behaving like a blue tit.

Also the lid has been prised off the feeder several times and I’m wondering if the jay (or a Jackdaw) has worked out a quick way to empty it.

Corvids are clever birds and will adapt their behaviour, so it’s interesting to observe them solving problems and finding new food sources.

Catching up on the allotment

Autumn-sown broad beans at the back and spring-sown
coming through in front.

I have been busy at the allotment and have managed to do quite a lot of work, even if I am always four weeks behind where I want to be.

There's a list of jobs marked 'not done' (and I guess there always will be) but it is looking as well as it ever has and I'm quite optimistic for this season.

My autumn digging never happened and turned into spring digging, which meant the soil wasn't broken down as well as I had hoped. However, I did get almost all my digging done and the bit I didn't get round to, I have covered with black plastic to keep the weeds down.

I have had three or four feeds off my three asparagus crowns, which have been in for three years. I have now left them alone to build up their strength. Most of the tips have come from just two crowns, while the third (a red variety) is proving far less vigorous.

Last year I expanded the bed and added another five crowns of Mondeo, which is a pretty vigorous variety. One didn't survive, but the other four have come through. I'm not touching those until next year.

Leeks were a big success and we finally picked the last ones in April. Despite deer nibbling the tops throughout winter, they did pretty well and were a good size. I grew Musselburgh and I'm doing the same this year. The seeds have germinated in the asparagus bed.

My winter-sown broad beans (Aquadulce) look good. They're a coming up to three feet and have set lots of pods, plus lots of flowers. David Jones, my farmer friend, said I should sow them on Bonfire Night and plant them nine inches deep. I didn't sow them quite that deep (I thought they'd never come up), but I did sow at the beginning of November and they have done very well. I've also got a crop of spring-sown ones (Robin Hood), which have all germinated, so I should have a good crop for several weeks.

I have runner beans germinating in the cold frame and French beans still to plant. Perhaps I'll get those in this week (if I can find any room). I'm growing Butler runners and Blue Lake climbing French beans. I won't eat the pods, the plan is to save the beans and eat them like kidney beans during the winter.

Last year, my peas were a disaster – they were covered in weeds, eaten by birds and mice and a complete waste of time and space. This year, I have been much more careful. I have prepared a good plot, covered it with mesh (to keep out the rooks and the pea moth) and watered well. I'm growing Hurst Green Shaft and Lincoln and they have germinated quite well, so fingers crossed.

Late raspberries are making good growth.

My autumn raspberries gave us a few berries last year. They are primocane plants (cropping on the current year's growth) so I cut them all down at the end of the year and they are now sprouting lots of lush growth, so I'm hoping for a bumper crop. My six blackcurrants and one redcurrant bush look healthy and are setting lots of fruit. I also put in some early raspberries at the end of last year. Most of those canes have some growth, but I won't get any fruit until 2018.

I failed completely with gooseberries last year. I'm not sure if the location was too sunny or the deer came and ate all the fruit. In any event, we didn't get one berry! Last summer, I went to a pick-your-own fruit farm with Tom, Lucy, Emilia and Julia and it was quite an eye-opener. Strawberries were grown in troughs at shoulder height so the berries hung down and were easy to pick. Raspberries were in grow-bags and everything was in poly-tunnels, which had been rolled back as the weather got warmer. I don't plan to copy this type of industrial fruit growing, but I did see that they had gooseberries in large pots, so I decided to try that. I've dug out my four bushes and put them in plastic pots with the bottom sawn off and set these halfway into the ground. I've put them along the back fence behind the cider apples, so they will be a little shaded. So far, they're looking pretty good and there are certainly berries forming now. I'll be able to net them there to stop the deer stealing the berries.

Redcurrants forming (above) and my potted gooseberries (below)

I have decent-sized plot of onions (Rumba, a white variety) and I'm growing these on virgin soil due to worries about white rot on the other side of my plot. They worked well last year and the sets are looking OK at the moment.

I have grown a few potatoes in pots the last few years and my fellow allotment holders think I'm a little strange because I don't have any on my allotment. Some people grow nothing but potatoes and almost all the others have a good section dedicated to them. This year, I said no more South American corn and so the spare land will be dedicated to spuds. I have two varieties Cara (maincrop) and Jazzy (early). The seed potatoes were stored in the garage when they arrived. I thought it would be dark and cool, but it was clearly too warm and when I checked on them, the shoots were sprouting out of the box! I had to rub them off and resprout them in a colder spot. Earlies went in some weeks ago and the lates a couple of weeks ago (with Max's help). Sadly the earlies have been frosted a couple of times (despite being under fleece), so I'm not sure how much that will have affected the yield. The allotment is a bit of a frost pocket, I'm afraid.

Last year, I decided that the allotment should not be just for vegetables and I planted some sunflowers and roses to provide cut flowers for the house. I now have nine rose bushes. They are all older varieties selected for scent – Peace, Fragrant Cloud and Silver Jubilee. The sunflowers were a big hit last year and I'm growing them again, a little later, so we will have a supply of flowers for the flower festival. I also have sweet william at the allotment, which are almost ready to flower.

As I write, there are still a lot of plants to get sorted. I have beetroot, swede, carrots and parsnip to sow in the ground and also courgettes (if I can find room in the greenhouse).

One big job facing me this summer is to move the cynara cardunculus plants, which I had assumed were globe artichokes (they are a close relative), but I now believe are cardoons. These are vigorous, massive plants which look like giant artichokes, but have spiky flower buds which are not edible. I'm going to move them to the side of my plot because they look spectacular (the bees love them) and replace them with some artichoke green globe, which I have in my greenhouse, having grown them from seed (they're almost ready to prick out).

Onions (behind the orange netting) with beans and peas, plus soft fruit behind.
You can see the cardoons in front of the shed.

Plants being grown for the plant stall at the
 church flower festival

My asparagus bed

Early potatoes with protection (not enough)
against late frosts

Birdwatching in the garden

There is always something interesting going on in the back garden.

On Sunday morning, I’d filled the bird-feeders first thing and was sitting in the lounge with some breakfast watching the lawn as it is the start of a new week on my British Trust for Ornithology's Garden Bird Watch.

Each week, I take a note of the different species seen and the total number of birds of that species seen at any one time. The new week starts on Sunday, so I like to spend on hour on Sunday morning to see what arrives.

Last Sunday was bright and sunny and there was a flock of housesparrows feeding on the lawn near to the house. They live at Chris’ next door. He has not had his soffits replaced, so they finds lots of nesting space in his loft by squeezing through the gaps in his eaves. I counted seven and they were having a good time, taking a dip in the bird-bath, sitting in the barberry bush, which is in full flower, and dropping down onto the lawn to feed.

Two jays arrived. A jay is a regular visitor, but two together is unusual. I’m always pleased to see them because they are beautiful birds and these hopped onto the pots next to the barberry bush, so I got a really good view. One flew off and the other flew into the barberry and sat there, so I had an even better view.

All of a sudden, it dropped onto the path, grabbed a small, female housesparrow by the wing and gave her a shake. It then flew up into the corkscrew hazel and did its best to finish her off by bashing her against the branch and stabbing with its beak. It then flew off fowards the windmill with three excited jackdaws following.

I know that jays will take small mammals and fledglings, but this was a fully grown (if small) bird. I’ve never seen anything like it before and the flock of sparrows looked rather surprised. They all flew into the barberry and sat there looking at each other as if to say: “what the hell happened there?”

That was quite a violent incident, but I guess the jay had hungry chicks to feed and the loss of a sparrow is the gain for a jay.

Yesterday, I was sitting on the bench, cleaning some gas rings with a bowl of water and a Brillo pad and I could hear a gentle ‘chuck-chuck’ overhead, followed by a gentle ‘mew’. I looked up and, just overhead, very low, there was a buzzard passing slowly over with a rook shadowing him. There was no attempt to mob the bigger raptor, the rook was flying alongside and ‘chucking’ quietly as they flew eastwards over the village.

Last year, I wrote about the rooks and their aggressive interception of a buzzard that got too close to their rookery. That was a case of “scramble, scramble - enemy sighted, engage immediately.” Last year it was Battle of Britain, this year seems more like a Cold War response, fly alongside, let them know we’re here and leave them alone unless they pose an obvious threat. The odd thing was that they were certainly communicating with each other, it was almost a polite negotiation.

Storm Doris does for my greengage

Storm Doris is sweeping across the UK today with wind speeds of 50mph and higher gusts here in Peterborough.

Margaret and I went to the allotment at lunchtime to lop the new growth off the pollarded willows, but the wind was much stronger than we’d anticipated.

Margaret was carry some branches across to the side of the allotment and I was trying to balance on top of the compost bin to do the top of one tree when she called for me to come.

I thought she’s seen a strange bird or found a creature of some kind and I was a bit grumpy. When I got across, she was standing near the greengage tree and as the wind blew, you could see the roots pulling the earth up out of the ground. It was going to be uprooted any minute.

I rushed to the shed to get a saw and managed to lop off a couple of branches and then get the loppers to take off some smaller branches to reduce the drag. Margaret went home to get a better saw and then I took all of the big branches off, leaving just the main trunk. I think I’ll borrow Chris Coakley’s chain-saw and take it all down next week.

The problem was that there was a wildling plum (probably seeded from the greengage) that had grown next to it. It had taken light from the greengage and made the tree grow outwards.

I took the wild plum down, but didn’t have time to prune and shape the greengage (it was on my list). I think it was just too leggy and bent to withstand the storm today.

It was a good job Margaret spotted it. If it had fallen, it would have taken out a good chunk of fencing.

My greengage wasn’t the only casualty of the storm – a tree is down in the churchyard, Whittlesey Road is part blocked by a fallen tree and a couple are down along The Causeway (by the Toneham path) although they haven’t fallen across the road. There are also a number of vans and lorries blown over.

The storm should be subsiding now (according to WeatherPro), but it is still blowing hard and gusting harder.

Tree down on The Causeway (above) and Churchyard (below)

Three HGVs blown over at Ring's End