Lots of geese… The wild geese are still hanging out in the fields around my garden in their hundreds. It is an impressive sight when they all take flight at the same time, though in this picture it’s just a small part of the flock. My guess is the entire flock is close to a thousand when they are all together, but really; counting that many birds is a) impossible and b) beyond my patience threshold. Suffice to say there are LOTS!
My garden has snowdrops by the thousands. This is just one of the patches where they’ve naturalised in the lawn, and on top of that there are more regular clumps of them in the beds and borders. When the flowers begin to go over – but before the leaves die down – I’ll be digging up a few of the clumps to divide, and replant some and pot others up for a few friends who would like some. They can get a few hundred each, I suppose, and nobody will be able to tell the difference next spring.
The dog is not mine; he’s just vacationing with me while his owners are getting some sun in Maspalomas. Tomorrow I have to return him – I think that’s probably the best way to ensure they let me borrow him again in the future… So far I’ve been dog-sitting him three times in 2016 already, so even though he’s a bit of a bratty, 2½ years old springer spaniel, he’s definitely growing on me. And I’d like to think he enjoys my company as well, not to mention vacationing in a garden with loads of wild geese to chase in the fields around!
“Lots” means something different when it comes to my hellebores; they aren’t present in their thousands or even hundreds, but there are 6 good, large plants throughout the garden and they’re all blooming now. I tried growing hellebores (helleborus niger) in the old garden, but they died each time I tried, perhaps because of the damp clay soil. Here, though, they seem to thrive – though of course this is a different variety and a completely different soil type.
I really feel blessed to have taken over a garden that offers up so much for me to enjoy so soon in the season; it is an easy garden to fall in love with, both in terms of what is inside my fence and what lies beyond. I can’t imagine ever tiring of the fact that I have a lake view when I stand in the shower in the morning… I mean, how many people have a shower with a view?
You are lucky to have all these snowdrops. What kind are the geese around your place? Here they have not started yet (at least I have not seen any) and they are Canada geese. In Québec you see also a lot of snow geese heading for the arctic.
It’s a mix of greylag geese and barnacle geese, and they’re wintering down here so will probably leave within the next month and head back up North.
Having snowdrops by the thousands is really nice. They look great in the grass. Thousands of geese though make a huge mess. At least it is good fertilizer!
The geese mainly stay outside my garden, so I don’t get the mess. The fields down towards the lake, though, are completely fouled – which I guess is good.
As for the snowdrops… They look great everywhere, of course, but I also actually HAVE them everywhere. I have never seen a garden with as many snowdrops… Singles, doubles, and also spring snowflakes. And before them come the aconites, and there are so many other spring bulbs coming up, not all of whom I can identify yet…
Not good in lakes though. Raises the pH in water. You are right, the snowdrops do look good everywhere. At my place, they looked good to the squirrels that finally finished off the last of them. I don’t know if they ate them, but they sure left my garden.
On the other hands, geese from Northern Norway and Sweden have been wintering in Denmark for ages, so the ecosystem must have adjusted to this.
I think I’m too far away from any wooded area to ever get squirrels in my garden; I’m not sure squirrels would bother crossing the fields to get to my garden… But then, they CAN be quite persistent little cuties/pests.
Your guest dog looks quite at home among the snowdrops. I had a guest cat for a week recently, which was just long enough that I enjoyed her but was happy when her people returned from Florida and she went home.
Although there are snowdrops blooming in my part of the world, I haven’t seen any sign of buds yet on my hellebores.
My snowdrops will soon go over, I think, but they should last long enough for my mother to see them when she arrives on Saturday.
The dog has been with me for 9 days and is going home today. I wouldn’t have minded keeping him for another week, really, but he’ll be back. One of the owners does a lot of business travel and the other is a nurse with occasional bursts of long night shifts, so at times it’s just easier for him to stay with somebody else so he doesn’t have to be alone for 15 hours each day. – And I’m more than happy to borrow a dog, since I’m not yet in a situation where I think a dog fits into my life on a permanent basis, considering that I’ll be travelling for around 20 days in April!