Changes of seed

My mini-orchard is growing! I am so excited I have upgraded them to Premium seating and am even remembering to offer them a drink several times a week.

The middle pot is still winning. However, I am loathe to prick them out in case I kill them all in the process; their roots may prove to be too close so we’ll have to wait and see whether they survive in the long run. If you know anything about this, do leave me a message. I am already aware we are unlikely to get edible apples, but as a green experiment it is fascinating for me and occasionally the rest of the family too.

Joseph enjoys helping me find new things for the guinea pigs (hay in this weather, particularly) and I’m sure it was my dad’s influence on him that led to this happening today:

Apologies for the poor photo quality (especially to my cousin Pete, whose blog here explains how to do it much better). I will need to keep it clean and well seeded, but after some very fat pigeons took all the seed I left out on the ground this morning while numerous smaller wild birds skittered around fruitlessly I decided enough was enough. I’m not even sure what the pink thing is, but Joe found it and hopefully our local passarines will like it. Berry and bug flavour. Yum.

Just in time too, for the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch on 26-27th January. By then I intend to have learnt a few more names of birds. Perhaps I should use twitter to update you as I go. I do have a twitter account which now feeds here, but don’t tweet that often yet. Here is the sheet to use if you are interested (it links to the actual one):

Birds not shown actual size