I've been hearing media reports about there being a shortage of Daffodils this year.
There's no shortage here.
We're awash with them - they're in the borders, under the hedges, in the lawn, under the tree...
Archive for the 'In the garden' Category
Black and White
Outdoors toilet-training can't be much fun when the snow's up to the top of your legs:
I get the feeling that Elvy didn't really enjoy her introduction to the garden yesterday.
Bad to the Bone
This little furry fiend had been hanging around the Close for at least four days and nights, hiding from fireworks and trying to scrounge titbits. Yesterday we relented, caught it* and took it in for the night. I've never seen a cat so hungry - it had no problems snatching the feeding-fork from my hands in order to glean the last morsels of food from it.
The local cat rescue folk have had a good look at her and have pronounced her to be about 10-weeks old and healthy... the vet considers her to be just over 8-weeks old and full of worms.
Anyway, it looks like we've been adopted by her. If she's not claimed in the next two weeks I suppose we'll be keeping her.
* We tempted it from a garden by offering it some cat-food, but during the grabbing operation it decided to have a damned good bite of my finger instead. This kitten does look cute and cuddly, but I can vouch for the fact that it has teeth like well-honed daggers - they went in all the way until they were grinding on the bone, and it didn't want to let go. If we keep it, I reckon we'll be giving it the understated name "Nipper".
Butterflies 2010
This year has been a better one for the range of species that have visited our garden. So far, the list of species found is as follows:
- Small Skipper Thymelicus sylvestris
- Large White Pieris brassicae
- Small White Pieris rapae
- Green-veined White Pieris napi
- Common Blue Polyommatus icarus (these have been so vividly blue that I thought that they were the rarer Adonis Blues)
- Holly Blue Celastrina argiolus
- Comma Polygonia c-album
- Ringlet Aphantopus hyperantus
- Small Tortoiseshell Aglaise urticae
- Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta
- Peacock Inachis io
- Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria
- Wall Lasiommata megera
- Gatekeeper Pyronia tithonus
- Meadow Brown Maniola jurtina
- Small Heath Coenonympha pamphilus
Again, that's not a bad list for an urban garden in the Midlands, but there are still notable absences - here's a list of species that we usually see here but which haven't put in an appearance so far this year:
- Large Skipper Ochlodes venata
- Brimstone Gonepteryx rhamni
- Painted Lady Cynthia cardui (we had lots of these last year but none this year)
- Orange Tip Anthocharis cardamines
- Small Copper Lycaena phlaeas
40 pics so far this year, click this one to get started:
Me nuts are falling off!
Autumn has arrived:
Hazelnut clusters - the best I've found so far is a niner
The harvest so far - not bad from just the one small bush
A couple of the many Shield Bugs on our hazel bush
