Sunday Selections ~ How I spent my Birthday ~ Thankful edition

Søndagsbilleder ~ Haveglæder på min fødselsdag

My birthday this year was sunny and nice. I longed for work in the garden, some fresh strawberries maybe or other garden delicacies after weeding a bit.

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But ... first I realized that my old nemesis - the wax scales - had once again returned with a vengeance on my bay laurel bush.

I am thankful that I quickly found out that when you have a major infestation like this one, the wax scales also live on the topside of the leaves ...

... and on the stems. My pink toothbrush from earlier seasons had disappeared, but I found a new, old toothbrush, this time a blue one.

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Inside the dome more pests had been living the sweet life. Some of the poppies were totally wrapped in webs from some smallish mites - they were thrown to the hens to eat or not - they did.

They look strange, don't they? Almost like wrapped in cling wrap.

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I was given a common spindle in exchange for some walnut husks last autumn. It survived first the transplanting, then the winter, then the wet spring. But ... someone has been eating it, and wrapping it in webs too. I read up on it, found that it was Spindle ermine, a common moth, and that it would not kill the plant, only cause a setback.

Here are the sad remains.

A closer look revealed that the stem - or is it a trunk? - was almost broken. An Owlet admitted to the deed, an accident, and "isn't this just a weed, MotherOwl?".
"No it is SO not a weed, dear Owlet," MotherOwl answered and grabbed the Gaffer tape, remembering the old adage 'If you can't fix it with gaffer tape, you did not use enough!"

Fixed spindle tree.

And on a closer inspection, it did indeed survive the attack of the Spindle ermines.

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Farm engineering works in the Owlery too I hope.

Then I continued the the strawberries, I found ONE ripe strawberry, the blackbirds had eaten the rest, just as they - and the doves - are eating all my redcurrants - Stupid birds!

But the elder was full of flowers, so I made us half a bucketful of elder cordial

Like this!

And I picked rhubarbs, around a kilo and froze in two bags for rhubarb pies in the months to come, where we celebrate a lot of birthdays.

Huge thankful for the gifts of the garden - and for one of my birthday presents; a "bouquet" of steel posts to hold up the nets that keeps the blackbirds away.