Happy New Year from London!

On the list of the most stressful things people do in their life, moving house and staying in hospital come quite high up. I had two hospital stays and moved house and garden, all in the space of 6 months between April and October 2015. I can confirm it really is stressful! I am still not finished in the house, but I finally got kitchen curtains up a week before Christmas, after having been here in my new house for 7 months. The garden will take a lot more time and I have no idea when the last plant will be planted in the ground – it’s just going to take as long as it takes. But I am happy I moved and the new house is much more suitable for me as it is a bungalow so no more stairs to climb and no stairs out to the garden.

My garden has not been much affected by the 6 storms we have had the last 6 weeks here in Britain, I am living in the South- East corner and we are protected against the worst of wind, rain and flooding. The weather has been milder than usual, especially at night, and there has been more rain than usual at times, but that’s all here in London.

The mild weather has made some of my plants rather season confused, this is a pot of oriental lilies, well on their way up – about 4 months early!

And the mice on the mouse plants are usually not seen until April, late March is probably the earliest I have ever seen the flowers in the past.

The lilac is just about to flower. Have you ever seen lilacs in December??

With all this new lush growth going on you should think there would be plenty for birds and animals to go round without them having to raid my plant pots....but no, the squirrels keep attacking my pots and eat whatever they deem edible – and throw on the ground anything not to their taste.

As a peace offering I have therefore started to feed them peanuts, in the hope that a full belly means less damage to my plants and bulbs. I have never seen more than one squirrel here in my new garden so for all I know it could be the same one coming all the time. But the squirrel is not in for a free meal for life, I will do the feeding until the spring bulbs have finished flowering, but that’s it – and if the squirrel brings all its cousins and extended family into my garden I might have to stop the peanut bar sooner than planned!

Taking photos of squirrels is relatively easy since they are not much scared of humans. But I have had a wish of taking photos of some of the smaller birds in my garden and they are not as easy to photograph. Small birds will typically fly away as soon as they detect a movement and they can even see movements through a window. Here in my new house it is better to watch the birds as my living room is facing the garden, but it is still difficult to photograph them as I often scare them away before I even get placed in the right direction, let alone get my camera up.

I decided I really wanted some photos of birds eating on my fatball feeder and I set up my camcorder to record anything and everything until the memory card was full. I just left the camcorder to it – and got 4 hours of two small flies having a feast on the fat balls!! But I did get some bird footage too, a few minutes - and I have finally been able to identify what kind of birds that come visiting here. On my End of Month View movie for December below, there are some glimpse of the birds, from what I have been able to see online I have a pair of Blue tits and a pair of Great tits in my garden. The movie is a mix of video and photos from the year we have behind us, starting in the garden I left and then moving on to the new garden.

For best view, change the settings in the bottom right corner to HD (720p or 1080p) and choose full screen.

The music was Cantique de Jean Racine by Gabriel Fauré.

I am linking today’s post to Helen at The Patient Gardener’s Weblog.

I would like to wish you all a happy New Year and all the best for the new gardening year! Until next time, take care.