Rainy Foggy Day in Mullion Today

A very rainy night here in Mullion and a foggy old day too . ..but I make the most of it and take the opportunity to dig up the Dasylirion that I had planted back in the Spring to replace to Agave which had flowered and then slowly died .
 I had been growing this Dasylirion  longissimum up in one of the vegetable beds , surrounded with chicken wire .  It was doing really well there and I thought I,d plant it where I could enjoy it even more .

                                      Alas ! It has been nibbled by the rabbits !

 Never in a million years did I think that the rabbits would be interested in a Dasylirion ! Sigh ! So out it came and in with another Agave . I can not remember which variety this one is , but it is going to be a much bigger one than the last one I grew here in this spot . It has very glossy , dark green leaves and I think it is a much hardier one too .

 I arranged slabs of rock around it , as it is the wet that kills these more than the cold .
The rocks are arranged so that the rain will just run away from the roots .
Also the rocks heat up under the sun and pulse it back out over night .
In the winter I will put a large cloche over it .....in fact I put the cloche on later on this afternoon as the heavy rain continued .
  I began pulling the weeds that you can see behind it ...but then got carried away playing with the stones .

                   And then the sun came out ....and off we went to the beach !
Poldhu Cove was very busy with lots of happy families and I can recommend the Poldhu Beach Cafe !
We decided to drive a little further though today and visit Marazion Beach  .

                                                             Marazion .

                                                      St Michael's Mount .

Impatiens tinctoria

                                                     Impatiens tinctoria
 I just love this plant ! It's natural habitat is beside streams  in cooler more forested regions of  central Africa .
  Here in my garden it grows very well in clumps , without becoming a thug .
The flowers are just delightful and always draw attention . It is a perennial  too surprisingly ...it dies down when the frosts come ( and we hardly get any here in Mullion Cornwall ) and comes up again in the spring . I would think in other parts of the U.K it would be an idea to give it a good mulch over winter . I always take cuttings ..which easily root in a jar of water a, pot them up and keep them over winter in my greenhouse .
 They do have large tubers.. I have not tried dividing these ,but I don't see any reason why that wouldn't work too . Anyone tried dividing the tubers ? Why bother when cuttings in water take so easily !
  Sweetly scented too . Ask if you want a piece .  It is my plant of the week !

Bye Bye Blackbirds

                                                   Mother Blackbird ( Birdie )
 Introducing my resident Blackbird family if you haven't met them before on my blog .
That's Birdie up on top , She's been here for many years and this year strangely lost her feathers on her head and hurt one of her feet , we think maybe she got caught by a cat , but  she got away and is just fine apart from that .
I didn't think she'd find a birdy boy to love her , but she did ! And they had two beautiful babies .

I have really enjoyed watching her little family and because she trusts me , she allowed me to get close to take photographs .

                          Here's the Papa Blackbird..he is a very handsome boy !

They have hopped about where ever I am in the garden , sometimes they come to my kitchen for grapes , but while digging I have thrown slugs , snails and they dive in and pull out grubs and other insects ....I made sure the bird baths were full and they had plenty of fresh water to drink .

 We have a pile of old decomposing woodchips and rotting logs , during the heatwave I forked it over so that they could find food to feed the young fledglings .

                                                   Plenty of food in there !

                      I turned over one of the rotting logs to reveal a large ants nest !

 The eggs were huge and Birdie danced about trying to avoid being stung by the ants , whilst grabbing those fat ant eggs .

Later on I noticed that each of the parent birds took charge of one each of the fledglings .

         I can already see that one of the fledglings is much darker than the other .

 This photo shows it better . You can already see that one is a male and the other a female .

                                        Plenty of fruit about now in the bushes .

 But alas ! Since this last weekend they have all disappeared .End of July . This is the time that they keep hidden while they are moult and grow new feathers . They are still there , just keeping a very , very low profile down under bushes ..especially while that Sparrow Hawk is hanging around!

                                                         Sparrow Hawk

I do hope that Birdie gets some new feathers on her head ! She deserves a rest now after all her hard work raising those two hungry babies .

 Hey ! I told you that the sun would come out !  Have a happy and blessed Sunday  .