The seasons have rolled on and the meadow is looking good. We only had a few mini-cowslips, the smallest I have seen since I lived near the North Downs in Kent. The orchid experiment seems to be destined for repeated failure, both the Bee Orchid and the Green Winged Orchid are looking decidedly sickly, half eaten and have not shown any signs of flowering. Interestingly the third orchid I set out to try, the Marsh Helleborine, which was faring poorly so was rescued, now seems to be doing better in a pot. If the others do not improve I will dig them up and rehouse them, and forget about gowing them in the meadow. The overall effect of the meadow is one of exuberant full on growth and many of the planst are now wel established. I really need to uploadsome pictures, when I get time.
The pond is doing well it is full of life. A little too full in fact, we had to pull out a mountain of algae in March as it was getting so full. I had wanted to just compost it but Nicole, being such a lovely woman, wanted to save everything, so we spent a whole day picking through it pulling out hundreds of snails, dozens of dragonfly and damselfly larvae, beetles, water boatmen as well as vast quantities of plankton as well as a couple of smooth newts. The tadpoles are thriving and we have had a load of toadspawn as well. Sadly a week after we had removed the blanket weed it was back. After clearing it out again we popped some barley straw squares in. To help aerate the water we have also installed a small solar powered pump. To be honest this does very little and I think that short of having a huge rig costing a fortune it will not have much effect. The weed is gradually encroaching (even with two of the squares).
After the hottest April on record the water level in the pond has shrunk by about 10cm and it is already looking very sorry for itself. The hemp sacking we placed around the edge to protect the plastic is already breaking down (perhaps feeding the blanket weed...) so the liner is at risk from UV degradation and the edge looks rubbish. But the pond is still so full of life, with up to 10 frogs and 4 newts in it at any one time.
Plans to get the PondCam up and running are still afoot, Steen, my technical advisor has got most of it sorted out with only a small detail regarding the wireless connection now holding things up.... watch this space for more details.