The unofficial National Ivy Collection of Wales

the unofficial National Ivy Collection of Wales .

Moles eat plants and rabbits eat plants, but both avoid the ivy.

Tackling a garden surrounded by wildlife can be tricky. Trying to avoid molehills and stepping out of the way of landing wood pigeons seemed the right thing to do on arrival at the HoBB as we were the newcomers. But things were not in balance.

As soon as we started to supplement the plantings with new flavours we unwittingly created an a la carte restaurant for hosts of new wild customers from caterpillars to crows.

This new ‘open invite restaurant’ was particularly popular in winter when a lot of the wilder natural growth had the good sense to die down and hide in root form. We noticed families of rabbits at first then, as we were composting everything, the moles descended to feast on the resultant earthworm breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

Only the box bushes, ferns and Ivy plants remained uneaten.

We needed an action plan that did not involve the building of a walled garden. And so the unofficial National Ivy Collection of Wales was started with over 180 varieties of Ivy (Hedera.) Most have done well and by careful planting I think the word has got out to the local rabbit population that THIS Country Restaurant serves ivy with everything !

The caterpillars? Well this is another story. We love butterflies, so as it is the Vegetable Plot that gets the worst of it, we are going to construct a screen house with a fine screen that should stop such colourful visitors. I have not found an ideal screening material so if you have a screen house that it working well, please contact me and pass on the details of your screen supplier. thank you.

Waves from Grant ~~~~ <+))))))))>< ~~~ amidst the Ivy

E-brain Book Discovery of the Year Prize

Ebrain BookMy book of the year prize goes to the ‘EBAIN’ because it is practical. It might also help forge the way to better global relations and at the moment, this is what we need.

Books have always been around at home. My dad worked for several publishers so you can guess what came my way on birthdays. As soon as you lift the present and look at its shape …. you know the score and pre-book shelf place for it. No wonder we designed a mascot for ourselves called ” BookBod” hey!

With rather a lot of books around here, we sort them out occasionally and some go to friends. One day (and how many of us say “one day ….. ” ) I think I’ll look into one of the options on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, that help you sell off books no longer required to those searching for out of print titles. Or maybe a system where we all view our book collections like personal libraries and we just put a web site that effectively becomes an ‘inter-library’ exchange facility. Is that idea number 4,834 or 4,835? H’m!

If it happens, I’ll pop back to this Log entry and add a link. Any ideas yourself, then send them over and start talking to us (and BookBod of course!)

~~~~~~~~~~ <+))))))))>< ~~~ waves from Grant