Tag Archives: butterflies

The Morning so Far

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It is grey, I can see parents taking children to school, but at least it isn’t raining.

I had a strange dream last night, involving stone-built houses, planning permission and failure. The first two came, I think, because I had fallen asleep in front of the TV during an episode of Grand Designs.  The feeling of failure, on the other hand, seems to have been creeping more and more into my thoughts recently.

It’s strange how negative thoughts are the ones that seem to persist. Yesterday I thought about plans for earning a living, new sweets for Bassett’s Liquorice Allsorts and, by association, growing liquorice.  I then thought of other exotic crops, how James Wong has always disappointed me and gave serious thought to a seed bombing campaign.

I have no personal animosity towards James Wong, in case you are wondering, it’s just that when I’ve tried to grow his alternative crops they have never seemed worth the trouble.

I bought, for instance, two kiwi berry vines when we started Quercus Community. They are hardy, prolific and vigorous to the point of being invasive. Not mine. Mine are like a couple of stroppy teenagers, sulking and refusing to cooperate. When we did get fruit, which was not often, we didn’t get much and my dreams of selling bags of unusual fruit to boost our funds all came to nothing.

Peacock at Mencap gardens
Painted Lady on Red Valerian
Small Tortoiseshell

I keep telling myself that seed bombing is not the way forwards for my dream to make Nottingham the Butterfly Capital of the world, as it will invariably involve a lot of buddleia and make the locality look like a bomb site. Somehow I always come back to the idea though…

So there you are – my morning has consisted of blogging about yesterday.

 

Fortunately it is only ten o’clock so I still have time to pull things round. Has it really taken an hour to write this?

I must learn to type faster.

Spiders, Shopping and Dead Butterflies

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A couple of days ago I noticed something fluttering in the front garden, It turned out to be the remains of a Small Tortoiseshell, enangled in a sider’s web. It was past help, but I thought I’d take a few pictures. If I ever need a picture of a dead butterfly with a spider I now have one in stock.

It was quite a cunning plan on behalf of the spider, stringing a web between the Red Valerian flowers and lying in wait for a passing pollinator. I imagine that it wou;d have preferred a nice juicy bee, but it got a butterfly. There must be plenty of food in a butterfly, but the wings are a bit of a waste.

I  tried to get some close-ups, but must have touched a web, as the spider made a rush for me, defending its lunch. In such a David and Goliath situation we were always going to have a non-traditional outcome. I was never going to fall over after taking a rock between the eyes. Fortunately the spider didn’t push its luck and, after a sneer, it went back to eating.

Moving forward to Bank Holiday Monday,  we went to the garden centre so that Julia could buy more plants. We always seem to be buying new plants. After the first half of the trip I hobbled back to the car, making much use of my walking stick, and allowed her to enjoy the centre without me holding her back. I am so noble.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with me, apart from laziness and the inability to put up with heat. I’m just a very bad husband. However, I was able to sit in a car in the shade and enjoy the breeze instead of sweating round a variety of converted polytunnels masquerading as a shop. I feel a little deception was good for my health.

Whether or not it remains good for my health if Julia reads this, we will have to see.

As I sat in the car I took a few photos. There wasn’t much to photograph, but when in doubt take a picture of things that look like a pattern. That’s why I took the pots and compost bags.  They aren’t good photos, but they look like they could be. The one with the pots would have been better if they’d been stacked on the level. Or if I’d noticed they were sloping when I took the photo.

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It was nice day, even if it was too hot for me, and even better when we were able to drive round with the air-conditioning on.

At least we weren’t disappointed by this garden centre.

What is this life…

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What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

“Leisure” – W H Davies

I have, as I have said recently, been seeing more butterflies in the garden this year. It’s not due to good weather or better plants, just that I’m finding more time to stand and look at our garden. For the last couple of years I’ve hardly seen it.

I was reading a copy of Garden News from last month as I waited for Julia to leave work this afternoon. The head gardener from Helmsley Walled Gardens makes a good point towards the back of the magazine – make time to sit in your garden, consider improvements and enjoy it. She also suggests not over-gardening, but letting nature do the work for you. That’s my kind of gardening. I like her approach.

There’s a useful bumblebee ID chart on the garden website, though it’s slightly confusing that a buff-tailed bumblebee  has a white tail, as does the white-tailed bumblebee, and the garden bumblebee and heath bumblebee.

I have to ask about the wisdom of calling something white-tailed when it’s a common featureI also feel slightly cheated that the early bumblebee has a red tail, an ID feature it shares with the red-tailed bumblebee.

Anyway, enough of that, I’m going to sit and stare, at ebay, as W H Davies, may have said if he had lived longer.

Though I’ve just noticed Cockneys vs Zombies is on. It’s not the finest work Richard Briers and Honor Blackman ever did, but it’s not a bad film, and it’s streets ahead of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. If only Jane Austen knew, she’d be emerging from her grave…

 

 

A Painted Lady Comes to Call

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I’ve had a few problems with WordPress today, including the complete loss of a post. This was annoying as I’d spent a significant amount of time looking for links and photos.

Julia picked plums in the early afternoon and saw a Painted Lady in the garden – another first for the garden. Added to the Small Copper and Hummingbird Hawk Moth we saw earlier in the year it’s all coming together nicely.

Small Copper on castor oil plant
Hummingbird Hawk Moth

When we left home to do some errands this afternoon we spent a few minutes watching the front garden and were rewarded by two small brown butterflies hustling past in the swirling wind, then a larger one, which proved to be a Painted Lady. It took some photographing, as it was quite skittish and there was a stiffish breeze once it left cover.

Painted Lady on Red Valerian
Painted Lady – Sherwood, Notts

We’re not doing too badly for butterflies in the garden, partly due to looking a bit more than usual and partly due to a good showing of Red Valerian. We’ve also had Mint Moths on the marigolds, which is a first, as I’ve always seen them on mint or oregano before.

As for the plums, Julia has picked over 200. As usual, it’s a case of picking them when ripe and then using them quickly before they start to go over. We’ve given some to Angela Across the Road, who gave us figs and tomatoes in return. We’ve also given some to the Young Couple Next Door, because they give us cake.

I’m going to make sure we feed the tree properly next year, and ensure the pruning is done properly. I’ve been a bit slapdash with pruning recently and it’s turning into a biennial bearer. This is my fault, not the tree’s. If the feeding works it should fruit moderately next year, which will take some of the vigour out of it for the year after. If not, it looks like I’ll have to remove fruit buds two years from now.

I think this all started about six years ago when we had a bad spring that killed all the blossom. The next year was a bumper year due to all the stored energy and the one after that we didn’t harvest any fruit at all. I should have got on top of it when we had the first bumper year, instead I added neglect to the problem by letting the pruning slip by.

We are having Plum and Apple Crumble for tea.

All in all this has been a good day.

Butterflies, Moths, Buddleia and Mint

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The Butterfly Count is upon us for 2017 and Julia is preparing  the materials for the group.

We had a preparatory look in the garden on Friday to get some idea of what was about, and had a good result, considering it was a cold day. The buddleia didn’t attract much (possibly because it’s planted in a shady spot) but the mint attracted a lot of pollinators and the Mint Moths. (Mint Moths are only about quarter of an inch across (6mm) in real life – don’t go looking for something the same size as the photo). I didn’t see butterflies on the mint, but they were mainly seen in the area around the mint.

Comma

Mint Moth

Painted Lady

Red Admiral

Speckled Wood

White, Large

There was also an unidentified white, an unidentified brown (probably Meadow Brown or Gatekeeper) and an unidentified brown Skipper.

Speckled Wood
Red Admiral

We need to add a few more plants around the place – more buddleia would be good, and oregano used to attract a lot of butterflies when we were at the Ecocente. Although the Mencap garden isn’t anywhere near as good as the Centre garden for attracting butterflies, it’s still as exciting to try to spot new species and plan to attract more. We have a few buddleia seedlings to donate and I’ll have to persuade Julia to grow oregano.

The last week has been reasonably good in the house garden (which is a bit of a butterfly wasteland), with Small Tortoiseshell, Large White and Orange Underwing moth all seen this week. There are Mint Moths in a herb garden along the street and I live in hope of seeing another Hummingbird Hawk Moth on the Red Valerian like we did (twice) in 2015.

Time to start giving some serious thought to our own garden, after a year of hacking back in 2016.

I’m slightly ambivalent towards buddleia as it’s a non-native species and can be considered a pest. I think it’s best summed up here by Butterfly Conservation – it’s a valuable source of nectar and is OK in gardens. However, it doesn’t feed caterpillars and it can be invasive in the wrong place.

There are other plants to feed butterflies and caterpillars, as this list shows.

Bee-eaters and Bad Photos

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We went to see the Bee-eaters at East Leake Quarry today. I had been planning a visit to Bempton to see the Puffins but Julia persuaded me that we really should visit the rarities. My experience with rare birds is that they have normally gone by the time I get there, or if they are still there I wouldn’t recognise it if it pecked me on the bottom.

Bee-eaters at East Leake
An unusual sign
The viewing area with Bee-eater tree in background

Take Richard’s Pipit as an example. They turn up regularly and excite twitchers. To me they’re just a brown bird, as are most of the other pipits.

The postcode is LE12 6RG if you want to pop along. Parking is £5, split between farmer and RSPB. The car park is 385 yards from the viewing area, according to the volunteers at the car park. These things are important when you have a bad knee.

The meadows on the way to the viewing area were full of butterflies, including Ringlet (hundreds of them!), Meadow Brown, Comma, Small Tortoiseshell and Large Skipper. There were some Whites too – but at a distance they all look the same to me. I need to get my eye in again. I didn’t manage many photos as they kept fluttering about instead of settling.

Two Large Skippers at East Leake
Comma at East Leake
Large Skipper at East Leake

Eventually we arrived at the viewing point. The birds proved to be very obliging, using a selection of dead branches to perch on when eating bees. Julia managed to watch one eating a dragonfly., which I missed because I was watching one posing in the sunlight.

They are bright and exotic birds, but in truth just a little bit garish, like a bird designed for a Primary School project. Still good to see though.

We only saw three against the maximum of seven that have been seen, but with any luck the others are off nesting. There are records of successful breeding in the UK, as detailed in the links at the beginning of the post, so there is no reason why they shouldn’t be breeding. They like to burrow into sandbanks and this is a sand quarry with an active population of Sand Martins, who also burrow into the banks.

Meadow flowers at East Leake
Poppies at East Leake

Sorry the photos aren’t very good, but the birds were a long way off. It wasn’t just me having problems – the people with the big expensive lenses were having problems too. When the day heats up, things start to get hazy, and this spoils the photo quality. I don’t feel as bad about my photos now…

Hospital,taxis and optimism

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What did I do today?

I’m having difficulty working it out, to be honest. I did spend several hours in hospital having tests and filling in forms. I was also weighed, bled and patronised. The good news is that I am lighter than I was when I was weighed before Christmas and I will be able to replace the blood. As for the rest of it, they probably interpret it as me being irascible and curmudgeonly. They aren’t wrong.

The diagnosis is that I’m riddled with poor health, if not actually at Death’s door, and I need lots more pills, tests and treatment. This is strange, as I’m feeling pretty good and doing more exercise, so you’d think I was OK. It’s just that if you give doctors equipment they are going to look for a reason to use it.

Worst bit of the day was the taxi service. Their new automated system locked me out twicwe and I ended up being late, which raised my heart rate and blood pressure despite my best efforts.

On the way back it cost me more than the journey to hospital. I’m not sure why this should be, maybe it costs more going up hill.

The photos are from last year, just to remind us of what is to come. Unless you’re in the Southern hemisphere.

Peacock on the roof
Day Lily
Poppies in wheat field
Grasshoppers
Red Admiral
Puffin and Kittiwake
Wild flowers
Comma
Mint Moth
Ringlet

 

 

 

Worms, Cookery and Bread

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For tea on Wednesday we had chicken, mushroom and bacon pie with tarragon. Yes, we’re in “tea” territory here, and even if we weren’t I spent my early years in Lancashire, so it will be “tea” wherever I go. On the side we had baked potato and sauteed kale. (It’s stir fried really but people always seem to call it sauteed). Of course, those people know how to access the French accents on their keyboard; I don’t and on my screen the word is underlined in red. We had a proper meal because we left work as early as we could and got home in time to do some proper cooking.

That’s what we’ve been missing recently, time.

We did a bit of easy cooking with the group -jam tarts using ready-made pastry and the jam we made on Tuesday from the blackberries we picked on  Monday. It’s known as Any Berry Jam. I would include a link, but I can’t find it. I’ll try later. There was very little washing up and we had very little inclination to stay longer, so we went home, where I cooked again.

Joy.

Tonight, we will be having soup and a sandwich because we tested sausage rolls for the food blog. I am putting weight on in my capacity of pie tester.

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Quick blackberry jam tarts

It was a very pleasant day, and there were several butterflies on the wing as I drove down the lane. I snapped the two Red Admirals just behind the centre and the very tatty white on the verbena is by the polytunnel.

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The marigolds are having one last hurrah, whilst the Cape Gooseberries (or physalis, ground cherries or Inca berries if you prefer) are still struggling to ripen. The ones that were left from the vicious attack last year are a little behind the ones we grew from seed.

The last wheatsheaf loaf broke. This year they all seem to have deformed as they dried out and have actually broken instead of cracking as they normally do. I think it may be because I should let the dough rest more before use.

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Sad fate for Wheatsheaf Loaf

The wormery is going well, though we will probably release them after tomorrow’s session. They have produced tunnels, they have dragged bits of grass down and they have even moved a paper triangle, though not as impressively as in Darwin’s original experiment. In their defence, my worms are smaller. 😉

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Wormery, with paper triangle showing

 

 

Could do better…

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Sorry, I seem to have lost focus this week.

I have written several thousand words, but none of them were suitable for a blog. It’s interesting to me to indulge in biographical musings and a polemic about the waste of time and trees involved in the typical grant application, but it’s not so interesting for the people who have to read it. (I’m just having to print out a load stuff for a grant application that could easily just be submitted as links to various internet pages).

Similarly, the new outbreak of hostilities between me and the Farmer’s Sister, whilst giving me a great arena in which to indulge my sarcasm and vitriol, is not a fit subject for publication. Quite apart from the possibilities of a suit for defamation, it’s rude to talk about people behind their backs.

So, in the absence of masterly prose, I will bung in a load of photos.

Swan at National Arboretum
WLA and Timber Corps memorial – National Arboretum
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It’s also bad policy from another point of view;  if I ever describe how to make a bomb from agricultural chemicals it won’t seem so funny as it comes up in court and moves from being “a blog” to becoming “the evidence”.

Even my email box fails to inspire me, with the same old ungrammatical notes purporting to be from banks and credit card companies, and one very persistent accountant, all wanting details and money. Come to think of it the accountant could be for real – as he keeps lecturing us and adding more penalties each time he writes. Ah well, he should write a more convincing letter.

Once in a while I did get an imaginative letter from the widow of an African politician, but they seem to have dried up lately.

Puffin and Kittiwake
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Poppy and chamomile

Instead of agonising over my lack of output, I’m going to promise to do better next week.

I usually manage to get out of trouble by doing that.

Let’s see if it works this time.

(The title, in case you haven’t guessed, is a quote that appeared in many of my school reports over the years. They probably have to be more upbeat these days but in the 1970s teachers were still allowed to be cynical.)

 

 

 

 

It all ended well

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Another Monday, and just when you think you are immune to surprises we walked into several.

Number One, a note asking me to clean up the desk and trays.

After biting back several terse and witty retorts I have cleared the desk and trays by putting every bit of paperwork that isn’t mine and filing it in a bin bag.  It’s a lot tidier now, I’ve done as I have been asked, and I’ve now made it someone else’s problem.

Number Two, a continuation of the tidying theme. I walked into the kitchen and found all my ingredients had been tidied away. Again, I thought we’d moved beyond this obsessive tidying behaviour. It isn’t cleaning, it’s just a compulsion to move things. So, as I got ready for the visitors I had to re-stack the shelves so that my ingredients were all to hand, just as they had been on Saturday night.

And finally, Three. Vicki was walking past the chicken coop in the barn (the one where we’d previously found the keets) when she heard cheeping. This time it seems to seven chicks. Seems like someone else decided to lay eggs on the top again. During the rescue mission two of the chicks fell to the floor and were promptly set upon by the chickens who live there. Fortunately they weren’t injured and all seven are now under a heat lamp.

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Yes, it’s been a day of unexpected happenings…

After all that the visit from the Guides, the pizza, the Butterfly Count and the climate measuring all proceeded according to plan.

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