A baby bird found its way into the greenhouse today. I'm not sure how long it had been in there or how it had got in. This is particularly confusing because of a new addition I've made to the greenhouse to try and prevent a repeat of last year's red mite invasion:
I bought a magnetic fly screen door online and put it up over the door last week.* This afternoon I noticed a little bird was sitting in the window on the other side of the sealed fly door. It didn't seem particularly distressed, but there was no clear way out (or in, for that matter). So we decided to help it on its way.
We pinned back the fly doors with pots and my other half went in to usher the bird out. But the bird didn't move. So my husband very gently moved his hand in around the bird, where it was sitting on the window sill, to pick it up. His fingers were millimetres away from its feathers when the bird fluttered up and out of his grasp. He froze and the bird fluttered back down and alighted on his hand. His hand held out in front of him, he walked out of the greenhouse with the bird perched on his finger. I wish I'd had my camera, but we'd been anticipating frantic fluttering and panic, not the calm poise of the little birdie. Outside the greenhouse, the bird sat for a moment, then flew up to the roof of our house before finally returning to next door's lilac tree.
The fly screen isn't the only improvement I've made to the greenhouse. I've also painted its floor with yacht varnish. I was doing very badly at not watering the floor, so the wood in it was beginning to turn black, which did not bode well. I've given it three coats, along with the wooden shelves, and hope both will now cope better with spilled water.
In other news, as I mentioned in my last post, I've been a bit behind with the gardening, because I've been busy. Also, a lot of my seedlings died as a result of not being able to keep them in the dining room while we got the floors restored.
I have now more or less caught up, and at less cost than I feared. My beans all went in the ground last weekend, as did my brassica seeds that could still be planted at this time of year. I've been watering more or less daily ever since with water from the water butts. The first beans are already coming up through the soil.
This weekend I planted out my squashes and courgettes, after hardening them off in the greenhouse, then outside. Lesson learned: do not leave outdoor plants in the greenhouse during sunny days when hardening them off. Some of the leaves shrivelled and burned.
I started them off late compared to usual, but they seem fine so far.
I also bought some purple sprouting broccoli seedlings from the local garden centre to fill in the gaps in my brassica bed, and some tomato and sweet pepper seedlings from the greenhouse to make up for the ones that died. I originally thought I was going to have to buy far more seedlings than that, so I'm pleased it wasn't that bad. The garden is definitely less well planned than in previous years and my seedlings aren't as far along, but I hope I should still get a decent crop, especially if we continue having such lovely weather.
*Edit: this screen turned out to be a really bad idea. I managed to keep all the pollinating insects out, while still letting aphids in. I removed it at the beginning of 2019
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