Well, there will be no more pictures of wildlife on the giant thistle because we’ve been ordered to cut it down.

Isaac Newton, who was born around here,stated that to every force there is an  equal and opposite reaction (I paraphrase slightly – what he actually said was A”ctioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.” but I’m close enough).

He never married but despite that seems to have given a fair summing up of what happens when a married man gets it in the neck from his beloved. The farmer’s torrid time on Saturday translated into a miserable Monday morning for us. The thistle must die and biodiversity must suffer.

In truth we were going to cut it down and use the space for winter veg anyway, but it’s the principle.

Otherwise we’ve had a productive day in the garden, preparing some of the raised beds for brassicas. It has to be the raised beds because they will be easier to net against pigeons.

We’ve also done a butterfly count – 11 small tortoiseshells, 3 Large  Whites, 3 Peacocks, 1 Comma and 1 Meadow Brown. It may have been the same Comma I spotted last time – it was on the same bush. The tortoiseshells were out in force, as you can see, and I’m fairly sure I undercounted them because they kept moving.. There were plenty of nice fresh specimens and a couple of really washed out pale examples. For some reason I identify with them.

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It’s good to see the Comma around again – we’ve seen them in the lane before but never in the garden area. Now I just want to tempt some of the Common Blues down here.

Finally, we have completed one of the small wildlife ponds. It’s a washing up bowl with 2″ of washed gravel in the bottom (if you’ve seen pictures of the cafe area you’ll know where we got the gravel from!). There are two broken bricks inside to act as a step and some bits of stone, brick and concrete around the outside. It’s not pretty but it’s a start. We’ve been promised some plants so once we have them in place it should look less stark. Total outlay – £1.60. The next two will just be £1 each, which is even better.

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And just as I was going, we spotted the Hummingbird Hawk Moth. I’d seen one on Sunday, trapped in one of the polytunnels, but it had been very fast and frantic and I’d had very poor views. The more leisurely one tonight was browsing on buddleia and gave us much better views, so I’m now confident in claiming it. It was still too fast for the camera though.