Update for June 2011

Hi , things where all abuzz this month and there was excitement at the plot .  Flowers are out every where and the crops are growing well despite the very low rain fall.  Of course once Wimbledon started so did the weather. So here are some pics for June.

The Limnanthes or Poached Egg plant is now flowering all down the borders where it self seeded last year and doing its job well as a pollinator attractant.


One of my all time favourites is the Pyrethrum especially this deep shade with the contrasting centre.


A similar shade but different Style is Knautia macedonica. I love the airy feel of the plant and the way the flowers dance. The bumble bees love it too.


The Bumblers Also like The Comfrey flowers. I have quite a strip of this now and cut it in rotation for making concentrated plant food and layering in the compost heap as an activator.  This bee has actually chewed a hole through the side of the flower to get to the nectar.  Just as well i have the Russian clumping comfrey and don't depend on seed for next year but this behaviour will also give access to insects with shorter tongues than this bee.


While transferring some comfrey to the compost heap I was lucky to catch sight of something quite unusual. Not so much rare exactly but all the same seldom seen

Mr Mole! I guess he wouldn't be here if there wasn't plenty of worms.

Also providing food for the insects, but this time in the form of pollen are these gorgeous Oriental poppies.


Seemingly of more interest to flies than bees are my three or four clumps of Ox-eye daisy.

And as for the excitement I mentioned....The beekeeping course has now finished , i enjoyed it so much an learn a collossal amount, but, just as I had resigned myself to  a winter of slow construction and, due to poor local availability,the dim possibility of obtaining some bees next year i got a call. Cue frantic activity and a new page to record it .

July Animals update for 2010

At the time it was hard to tell who would win the staring contest.  In the end it was the Common Emerald moth.

The Small Tortoiseshell is a more frequent visitor though this one may need to find a larger Nettle to lay it's eggs on.

After some research I found that this slug found hiding under a rubble sack is actually a good old black slug.  More correctly it is a colour variant of Arion ater.

With all the flowers thers seems to me to have been a lot of bumble bees this year, at any rate their numbers on the plot seem tho have been rising since I took it on.  Bee identification seems to be not as simple as I first thought ... The one at the top on the Lavender seems to be a Common Carder Bee (Bombus pascuorum) and the one in the lower pic on the Origano could be either a Small or a Large Earth Humble -bee (Bombus terrestris / lucorum). Ill take corrections on these.

Straw Flower

I was amazed how late these went on flowering last year, well in to October. Asyou can see this was handy for late foraginf Bumble bees as well as Peacock and small Totoiseshell butterflies. In future i shall see if i can get a patch of these to self sow.

Jacobs Ladder

More formally known as Polemon this perennial has a quite strong scent that is certainly attractive to Bumble bees. To me it seems familiar but i can never quite place it.

Borage for Bees

The bees love this. Although its an annual we pretty much have it here on a perennial basis. To favour the Bumblers i just remove the ones that are crowding the veg. The kids like to eat the flowers too.