It seems I was a bit premature when I made my last post, because as soon as I stood up from the desk I found myself surrounded by a mob of over-excited children. I was just in time to help with the garden-dismantling process known as “nature bling” – making jewellery from flowers and leaves. It’s an activity better carried out in the wild in my opinion as they took far too many wild strawberry flowers from the plants in pots and even picked some of the day lilies that I’ve been forbidden to eat on the basis that we don’t have many.

We call it “nature bling” to be down with the kids, but in fact it’s using double-sided tape to stick flowers and leaves to bits of cardboard which can be used as bracelets. They look for flowers, and they learn to avoid bees, so it’s quite a useful exercise. Unfortunately it doesn’t teach them to sniff the flowers, and when you suggest they do they often just say “it smells of mint”. Seeing as it’s often marjoram, thyme, sage or oregano, it doesn’t actually smell of mint.

They are a little better with lavender, quite often describing it as smelling like “soap” or “grandma”.

Anyway, there I was in the garden when I looked across at a buddleia bush and saw a Comma.

For some reason it didn’t fly away when I moved closer. I’m not sure why because stealth isn’t my forte, maybe it just felt sorry for me, but here’s the picture, taken about 20 minutes after I’d posted to complain I could never get a good picture of a Comma.

. It’s never going to win any prizes but it’s one of the better shots I’ve taken of butterflies, and certainly the best shot of a Comma.

The Big Butterfly Count starts tomorrow so I’m hoping for a good showing – we’ll be counting several times with different groups and with any luck we shopuld end up with a few extra butterflies compared to last year.