Read Iona's diary from her garden in Kendal. New bloggers .... This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it your wildlife news and photos. 

Iona’s Spring Blog

Crocuses and daffodils
I have seen crocuses and daffodils this year. I have seen purple crocuses and yellow daffodils. Daffodils and crocuses came out quite late this year. I mean aren’t daffodils supposed to come out in March and they didn’t come out until April. We always have crocuses in our garden mostly purple ones. But this year my little brother rowan squashed all but one clump of them.
Our caterpillar
We are looking after a caterpillar at the moment. My brother Jacob found him in a hedge. He is called April because we found him in April. He eats privet hedge leaves. We collect the leaves every morning from a privet hedge just down the road. We don’t know what sort of caterpillar he is or what butterfly he will turn into, but it’s fun feeding him and watching him grow.

Iona's December blog

TREE PLANTING ~ I went tree planting at Keswick, for a wild world record. We planted 5 trees. It was very muddy, All of us (there were lots of other people too) planted 383 trees.

WEATHER TREE ~ I got a tree at Christmas  time – not any old tree – a weather tree. I also got a thermometer. We  used my  thermometer to find the temperature at 5:00 clock every evening. Then we plot it on the weather tree. The  tree is a poster.  There is a leaf for every day of the year and 12 branches for the months. I colour a different colour on the leaf to show how warm or cold it is. So far we have been up to 8:5 degrees and the first days have been very cold.               

THE SNOW ~ This winter we had lots of snow! It was very fun. -   but  I was  worried about the pond we built  in July.  We did not need to worry because we found a very strange thing in it. Have you heard of a freshwater hog louse?  Well we found lots. I caught a male and a female. We fed the birds too. We saw male starlings – they are beautiful. Black with light brown spots and the edges of the wings were light brown. We saw two big fat wood pigeons.

Iona's November blog

It's autumn now and I have been helping my Dad to plant fruit trees in the garden. They are easy to plant. Shall I tell you how?

1. Buy a tree and soak the roots for a night
2. Find out where you want to put it in the garden
3. When you have found a place dig a hole 6 inches deep
4. Loosen the soil in the bottom with a fork to make it nice and soft so the roots can dig in easily
5. Put in blood and fish bone – a special food for plants
6. Then put the tree in and make sure the roots are well covered by the soil
7. Water it and wait until the summer, then you will have some fruit. We should have plums, apples, pears and cherries.
8. What would What would you do with that fruit in your garden. When we have the fruit next autumn we will make jam and pies – plum jam and apple pie - yummy!

Iona's September Blog

Picking summer fruits

Hello! We went wild damson picking the other day. It was very wet and rainy. The damsons were purple and big. Now there was one thing. I am allergic to mosquito bites. Can you guess? There were mosquitoes everywhere! I was wearing shorts so I got bites all down my legs. But they have nearly gone away now. We made ice cream out of them. Yummy! I really like it.

Afterwards we went bramble picking. They were big and black. We picked a lot – two tubs full. We made bramble curd out of them. Delicious. That was nice as well. I had some on my toast.

My garden

You've maybe read about our garden in my blog before. Well is has been hard work this summer. I mean all the caterpillars and the slugs and snails. Phew what a lot! They were eating the vegetables so we picked them off and threw them over the fence. But we had cabbages, carrots and beans. Yummy, they were very nice.

Iona’s July and August Blog

Pond dipping

It was my birthday on the 22nd July. I was 9 and I went pond dipping because I had got a pond dipping kit. So off we went. I went to a big ditch thing. Dad fished and I watched. Dad first caught a water scorpion and then he caught a can you guess? A…..newt! It was green with brown spots but small.

Pond building

Hello! We have made a pond! I shall tell you how you make a pond:

1. you dig a big hole.
2. then you put a plastic sheet in it, and put big stones around it.
3. you put sand and gravel in it make sure you check there are no gaps in the sides. Because when it rains the rain will go under the pond and mess it up.
4. of course you put in some water in it and plants
5. There’s a pond! Now you wait and see what animals and plants find your pond.