Plants Gone Wild

Everything in the garden went mental during the hot weather. We came back from holiday to find that the ivy in particular was making a determined effort to take the roof off, and the unidentified climbing bush thing at the front was no longer under the window but over it and, indeed, over the roof.

This meant that Seumas got to break out a new toy. I must admit I was a bit concerned about letting him loose with the power tools, and I was even more concerned when I saw how happy he was rampaging round the garden like Bruce Campbell from Evil Dead.

The pile of branches came off the plum tree, which is dangerously unstable due to the amount of ivy strangling it, and yet still managed to produce a fine crop of small, bullet-like plums, most of which bounced off my head while I was holding the ladder.

I get all the fun jobs.

The tree will probably come down in the winter, but for now it's a popular shelter for all the juvenile songbirds in the garden, so it stays.

Speaking of songbirds, we found this lovely little home in the rafters of the garage. 

It held four robins, two of which hung around the garden for ages entertaining us. Robin fledglings have a particularly gormless look due to their yellow gapes. This one had a habit of sitting squarely in the middle of the garden path and doing a good impression of a rock. It must be a valuable defence mechanism in normal circumstances (Thomas never spotted him), but it did make for rather cautious trips out to the bins for a few days!