Didlington Nursery & finding GOY
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I have remembered how I discovered GOY now. I was googling local nurseries to visit, then remembered Didlington. Googled that to find out whether they had a website, which they don’t.
While all this was going on a blog came up about Didlington by nosypotter in 2009, about how great a place it was – which it is!
When I got back from the nursery with loads of plants was when I joined in!
Today has been overcast with just a few bouts of tepid sunshine, but this suits me fine as I am not a sunshine person, lovely to look at but not be out in. Tend to find jobs in the garden in the shade, there are always a load. Spent one whole afternoon and most of the evening pulling up nettles round by Boris and the girls’ shed.
One thing always leads to another here. I ventured that way to tip some bricks on the rubble heap and pick up some sandstone from the heap.
The nettles had covered the sandstone so had to clear those to get to it. Of course I still had the barrow load of bricks to dump so had to keep going to uncover that heap before I could tip those.
Hubby helped me finish when he got home from work!
In the process found lots of holes, too small for rabbit, possibly weasel which we have had about, but turned out to be more likely rat, of course.
Since putting my foot down holes and sinking into runs I have seen two or three young rats, which was another deviation on what I was doing while I found the rat poison to put in the boxes and locate under the wood pile. I was putting some burnable rubbish on the heap we keep in the lean-to before it goes on the bonfire when I heard things moving about in it. Moving a few pieces a young rat ran out and under the wood pile, chucking the stuff back I disturbed another! There’s always more than you see and we had already found two young dead ones! Perhaps Mum will come and eat some of the poison as well, need to get rid of them now and keep on top of them as we have sugar-beet in the fields both sides of us this year which is always a big draw for the rats when the weather gets bad, then when they are cleared off the field – they head for the nearest food source – our chicken run. They have usually taken to the fields by now, which is another indication that the season is behind the times.
I have been working on the alteration to the front garden (one side at a time!). We have lots of grass, full of weeds and holes, the clay cracks here in the dry and doesn’t seems to close up again when it’s wet, I think the water just pours down these huge holes and disappears! We had a huge heap of soil, proper soil, which is a novelty for here instead of solid clay, lumped beside the grass for filling holes. This of couse got left and sprouted a wonderful array of weeds, nettles and the dreaded ground elder. This has now been dug over, has a mini rockery corner and the extension of this into the other garden. I will post some photo’s of the work in progress tomorrow.
9 Jun, 2013
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Comments
It is the same here with rats, constant battle to eradicate them, fields and woods and they come in to feed where all our animals are too. We are forever putting down poison bait hopefully it works, but a word of warning, they do get resistant to the same poison bait so change what you use every so often. Some work better than others too. Horrible creatures and have loads of young every few weeks if you do not keep on top of them. I can remember years ago digging up a stone pathway and digging into a nest of very young rats, gives me the shudders now thinking about it still. They do say you are never more than a few feet away from a rat think it meant the four legged ones lol but you never know. Hope you are soon rid of them - pleased you found GoY too great site and lots of interesting things to talk about too. :O)
10 Jun, 2013
Thanks for your comments Ladybug47 and Oliveoil and your sympathy with the rat problem. I have always lived in the country and mostly had livestock of one kind or another, so there has always been the odd rat about.
When we were children, decades ago, my parents kept chickens, pigs and rabbits, but also had cats and dogs. the cats fended for themselves apart from scraps from the table, nobody bought pet food then! My Mother bred dachshunds, small and lithe and fast with rats.
My Sister has Jack Russell dogs which are avid rat catchers, but we have peacocks which loathe dogs and create hell when one is about, same for cats, they hoot and yowl until you go and chase the cats away, they have been know to chase them across the fields, then you have to go and get the peacocks back!
When we moved here the owner said "We do have a few rats because of the chickens". Yeah right!! They were so tame you could get to within about six feet of them before they moved. My Son shot over thirty, we poisoned and trapped goodness knows how many. What the owner failed to mention was they were in the attic of the bungalow, or at least visited as you could hear them tramping about at night. We got rid of those but it was disgusting when we cleared the attic to lay new lagging.
We had pet rats when my Son was young and I do admire them for their adaptability, just wish they lived somewhere else.
10 Jun, 2013
Welcome to GoY :o)
I hope you get rid of your rats ...
10 Jun, 2013
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I hate rats(even tho the kids had them as pets)when I moved into my house there was a big rat problem(nxt door had them in the house)luckily I have three cats and two of them are big rat killers(Ophelia is a lady and prefers to sit and watch things go by in her gentle ladylike way)now two years later we no longer have this problem and the neighbors thank me and the rat team.it sounds like you have a lot to do in the garden,it seems like you have more clay than me and I thought I had lots.
10 Jun, 2013