Asian tiger mosquitoes

When we first moved here in 1993, we didn't have many mosquitoes. Our house is on a gentle hill, and there's not any standing water nearby, so our native mosquitoes weren't a problem.

The advent of Asian tiger mosquitoes, however, as a problem throughout the Southeast has changed that. These mosquitoes are day-fliers, unlike our native mosquitoes, and can breed in damp soil, moistened by relatively small amounts of rain (think damp mulch) or in plant saucers, pot edges, etc. and love to hang around vegetation. Their bite stings quite a bit initially, but doesn't (yet) produce the itchy welts that native mosquitoes do.

Deet-based repellents are effective, but it's so unpleasant to spray just for a brief garden check, I find it hard to do that, unless I'll be out there for awhile.

This photo (from an excellent article about mosquitoes in National Geographic) shows the distinctive markings of the Tiger mosquito.

I'm thinking I need to get rid of ALL the empty pots, broken dishes, etc. that are behind the potting bench; they don't harbor standing water, but certainly could have a few tablespoons of moisture available on a saucer edge. Even the rimmed edges of traditional hanging baskets are probably enough to support their reproduction.

An article in NC Wildlife magazine first alerted me to their advance, as we wondered why we had started being bothered by mosquitoes.

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Interior Design magazine

Interior Design magazine

I was away for the holidays and forgot to mention Interior Design magazine’s Best of the Year 2008. There are so many talented architects and designers that were featured.

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Interior Design magazine

Interior Design magazine

I was away for the holidays and forgot to mention Interior Design magazine’s Best of the Year 2008. There are so many talented architects and designers that were featured.

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The oldest Mulberry tree in England?

Last week, Jools of My English Country Garden wrote a post about her Mulberry tree, and it reminded me that not far from here we have what is reputed to be the oldest Mulberry tree in Britain.

The thing I love about this area is how many large parks, heaths and woods there are close by - despite being in London we are literally surrounded by green areas. One of these, and the one which is home to the Mulberry tree, is Charlton Park.

The focal point of Charlton Park is Charlton House, a large Jacobean mansion built between 1607 and 1612 for Sir Adam Newton, the tutor of the eldest son of James I. (The boy died, leaving the throne to his younger brother Charles I). Up until the 1920s the house continued to be a private residence, but was then acquired by the local council to be turned into a community centre, while the land of the estate became three parks.

The Mulberry tree at the side of Charlton House dates back to 1608 and was planted on James I's orders. The King was keen that England should cash in on the silk industry, which was by then booming in other European countries such as Italy. The caterpillars which produce the silk feed on mulberry leaves and James therefore imported 10,000 saplings from Virginia, and "encouraged" his courtiers to plant them on their estates. Unfortunately for James, he'd not done his horticultural homework quite well enough - silkworms feed on the leaves of the White Mulberry (Morus alba) of China , and not the Black Mulberries (Morus nigra) of Virginia. Whoops.

So England ended up with 10,000 Mulberry trees - but sadly, no silk industry. One of the greatest gardening mistakes of all time?

And they are incredibly long lived. The Charlton House Mulberry is by no means the only tree surviving from that period. In fact, there is even one in Suffolk which claims to be older - but locally we tend to ignore that one. Undoubtedly an impostor.

The tree is still producing large quantities of fruit, and I don't think there are many people who walk past it in August without tasting. I remember that when I was a child, we'd always make a detour on our way to the local library, which is inside Charlton House, in order to pick whatever berries we could reach.

And if you want to know what it tastes like, you don't have to come to Charlton. There's a cultivar called Charlton House which you can get for your own garden... I wonder if I could grow one on the balcony?

On the other side of the house from the Mulberry tree, and behind what used to be the stable block, are a series of walled gardens, each leading on to the next. What could there be beyond that door, I wonder? But it's late. They, I'm afraid, are going to have to wait for another post.

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My Memories Of Sodyba.

It was another early start for me today. I got up at 4.30 and was on the road by 5.30. After some initial fog as I made my way eastwards across Devon to the motorway the weather conditions were perfect. Peter's car is new with all mod cons and is very comfortable to drive. As the roads were almost empty I have to admit to breaking the speed limit at times. Also I carefully counted the exits on every roundabout sign and and didn't go down any wrong roads. So I managed to shave an hour off last week's journey time.

On Sunday mornings there is a very large car boot sale (twice the size of the biggest one down here), about a mile from scout camp so before I call in at camp I have a leisurely stroll around. Today it took me 2 1/2 hrs to go round the sale. I didn't buy that much, a bag of toy cars for my next years' class, a bag, some beads, a hand mirror and some penguin Christmas tree decorations for Vytas' Kate (she likes penguins).
Once I got to Sodyba I found Vytas and Romas helping with the final clear up. It was lovely to see Vytas as I don't see him often. It's not unusual to find others called Vytas at camp but this year the other Vytas was also tall, had a beard and long brown hair in a ponytail , freaky. Romas had actually been camp Commandant and was very tired after doing that job and a lot of the programme organiser's job and fitting in a lot of socialising (partying) as well. I'll wait until I can pull some pictures from facebook to show the things they got up to.


As this might be the last time I visit Sodyba I decided to go for a walk and relive a few memories.


The track from the road is very rutted. I had no problems when I used to drive my landrovers up here but I don't take the chance with Peter's car and leave it in the car park by the house.

I only started coming to camp once the boys were little but I still got to camp in the woods in the Ateitis Camp (family camp). Usually in a tent but for 2 glorious years we had a caravan which was wonderful despite the hard bed. A whole week of only having to make sure the boys had dry and reasonably clean clothes to wear. When they graduated to sleeping in the boys' camp I would get them to give me their dirty clothes each day by including a small packet of sweets (something they didn't get at home) with their clean clothing.

Each evening as darkness fell we would walk down this track to the lauzas (evening camp fire)....

.... set in a natural amphitheatre. As well as songs and jokes the youngsters would also do skits. One year when Romas was 4 , he and his pal Leo did a Jurassic Park based act with lots of roaring and shaking of the bracken. That was the year he decided to be a stand up comic and tell long indecipherable jokes with his dog puppet. And the year he and Leo decided to tell jokes together and came to blows over who was going to say the first line.

This rabbit was feeding on the path today as I walked around. When the boys were doing scouting activities I would go for walks along the many bridleways and over areas of heathland and there would always be many rabbits around even during the daytime.

I have many memories of sitting on the stone steps on hot days nursing a hangover (pre-kids) or watching the youngsters play sports on the grass. The grassy banks make fantastic water slides with polythene sheeting and a hose pipe.

Although Sodyba is now a country club open to anyone it was originally bought by the Lithuanian immigrants and is still run by Lithuanians. A bit of a problem as most Lithuanians believe that they know the best way to do anything. That is probably the reason why the swimming pool in the woods, now totally rebuilt, didn't have a deep end and a shallow end but 2 deep corners diagonally opposite to each other.

My earliest memory of Sodyba is going up on a coach from London from the day with my mother and catching tadpoles at the side of the fishing lake. That was about 45 years ago.

The lake has great rafts of water lilies. I can remember camp closing ceremonies where a sea god was installed on a home made raft and paddled around the lake usually with rather watery consequences.

While I was walking around the lake a Brown Hawker was whizzing about. At nearly 10 cms long it is the biggest of our dragonflies. While I was trying to work out it's patrol route it buzzed up behind me and hovered about 3ft from my face looking at me. It was rather disconcerting.

When I was a youngster I really hated living in London away from any wild spaces and whenever I came to Sodyba I would go for long walks through the woods around the lake.






Not much has changed in the woods apart from the swimming pool now being surrounded by a high wooden fence. (No more midnight swimming.) Also the 'haunted' mill down by the trout river seems to have completely disappeared.

I can imagine that after the war this must have been a haven for the emigres, many of whom would have come from rural backgrounds and were then having to live and work in dismal conditions in the East End of London. They would come for the day or to camp for a weekend or longer and those with more money stayed in the house. Whitsun weekends used to be one long party with marquees set up for people to sleep in. There would be drinking and singing and dancing and more drinking. I went to one of those weekends with some friends from the dance group when I was 15. Say no more.

And now I'm off to bed because I am so tired.

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Succession plantings for vegetables

Those of us in warm climates have LONG gardening seasons, and fall vegetable gardens do wonderfully well, with the hardiest kales and cabbages overwintering for spring harvest. Often winter varieties of lettuce and spinach overwinter, too, providing a head start on late winter and early spring growth.

It's hard to imagine on a hot, humid August day, when parched plants are grateful for the hose.

My second round of squash and tomatoes are doing well, although the dry weather is encouraging powdery mildew on squash leaves.

Not surprisingly, the root-knot nematodes problems in the main vegetable garden weren't vanquished by the supposed predatory nematodes, but I did get quite a few squash and beans from early plantings before they went into decline (and show the definite knobby galls of root-knot nematodes on their roots).

But fall is not far away, and I'm thinking about the different varieties of kale, spinach, and lettuce (as well as beets, chard, and turnips) to sow in the coming weeks. And maybe I'll put in a round of fall edible flowers: calendula, borage, nasturtiums, and violas.

This time of the year is definitely trying for Southern gardeners. A friend who writes the weekly garden column in our main regional newspaper had a great piece today that describes our August gardening dilemmas. It's hot, it's humid, and we need to be out there early in the morning or in the evening. And those darn Asian mosquitoes that have invaded the Southeast in recent years are really annoying (they fly all day long and reproduce in a drop of water). So even those of us who never had mosquitoes before have these, making repellents (however nasty) an unfortunate necessity.

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Swallows And Amazingly Loud Wasps.

It's August and guess what, it's raining. Peter left early this morning to drive down to Cambourne for another CISCO training day. He's just got home and although his knee is fine his elbow is causing him trouble.
I used the wet morning to do some school work, more progress tracking and I stuck the children's names on little cartoon cars which will be used on the class 'well done' chart. This time it's going to be a 'road' with the numbers 0 - 20. Every time we want to reward a child they move their car one space along the road and when they get to 20 they wear a badge and get a certificate. Last term they had balloons moving along clouds to the rainbow at no 10. It's a great way for the children to learn their numbers and number bonds and once the initial chart is put up it is very easy to use. As we are going to be learning about the local area I'm also going to put local photos at each of the even numbers, (more maths being slipped in). I also did a little DIY in the kitchen, filling in a channel which had been cut into the wall when we replaced all the copper water pipes with alkathene pipes. Next week I can replace the tiles that had to be removed ,up till now I've been hiding that messy corner with a wooden chopping board.
By mid-day the rain eased off and the temperatures started to rise. Back I went to the scree garden to carry on cleaning the slabs. I've found that Peter's wire brush that he uses for his barbecue is perfect for getting the moss off the slabs. The swallows were busying away and making a lot of noise so I decided to have another look at the nest. Today the youngsters were out of the nest and sitting on the beam next to it.

You can see that they are rather messy birds. The state of the floor below the nest is pretty nasty.

The young birds still have their baby mouths and the parents are kept busy flying in and out to keep their brood fed.

I had to use flash to get these pictures so they are probably rather dazzled by now.

I got a decent area of slabs cleaned up. Unfortunately the slabs were in the shade and I missed out on the bright sunshine that shone for a while. When I did call a halt to my work for a 'reading' break it wasn't quite so sunny. As I sat reading I heard a familiar scraping noise. I used to hear that noise in our London garden from the wooden fence 6 -8 ft away. It is amazing how loud one little wasp can be, scraping away the wood to make the pulp for a wasps' nest. Sure enough when I looked around I found a wasp scraping at a dry flower stalk. I'll have to send Romas to look around the outbuildings to make sure they aren't building a nest where it might prove a nuisance.

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