The photo above is a Peacock butterfly. I first saw it feeding on a dandelion, but then it obligingly moved to warm itself on some gravel. It's the first butterfly I've noticed in the garden, though I'm sure there have been others.Insect life has been steadily increasing. At first there were just a few gnats about, then the bumblebees started buzzing around. Now the place is humming with life: the Japanese Maple is covered in black aphids, there are queen wasps looking about for places to nest, the honeybees have started to gather nectar and pollen and I've seen a few ladybirds, moths and lacewings about the place.
A haze of green is appearing on deciduous shrubs and trees now and further surprises are revealing themselves on a daily basis. In the next picture you can see the blue of forget-me-nots and the yellow of forsythia (on the left and now nearly finished) and Kerria ( a vast clump of suckers from a very old original shrub that's the size of a small tree). We're still seeing new varieties of daffodils - we have so many different types it's impossible to count.
What you can't see in this picture are the black spots in the lawn where John has been fixing the badger diggings! Some parts look like the lawn has measles. Oh well! It's well worth the hassle. We actually had 4 badgers at one time on the patio one evening. One of them seemed much smaller than the others. It could be a cub, but seemed a bit too large for one of this year's cubs. I guess we need to do some more reading to be certain.
On the bird front, today is a red-letter day. We had our first Siskin (a life bird, in fact) and our first baby of the season. It was a little fat, streaky, dunnock chick - chasing its parent and opening a wide yellow rimmed gape for the input of tasty bits and pieces. No pictures of that yet, but John is now the proud possessor of a digital Nikon SLR camera. He also has lots of lenses to go with it from previous film cameras so I'm hopeful that we'll have lots of amazing bird pictures once he learns all its bells and whistles.
Our work at the museum continues on its way. We're both learning about the birds we catalogue. It's nice to have them in the hand so we can study the markings at close quarters. It's also good to get out once a week. We find ourselves talking quite animatedly on the bus going to and from "work" and at dinner afterwards. I think we both miss the social stimulus and gossip potential of having a job.
We had visitors on Friday: Barbara and Dick - old friends from Nuneaton. Barbara's late husband, Colin, was our best man and one of John's oldest friends. It was lovely to see that Barbara has been able to build a new life for herself and find happiness with a good friend. We had a very happy day, eating and talking a lot and taking a bit of a walk round the town. Barbara and Dick are both good gardeners and were able to help me identify a few more things.
I spend a lot of my time poring over gardening books trying to identify things as they come up. I'm enjoying that along with all the time I spend outside wandering along the paths, looking at all the stuff, dreaming about possible changes, wondering what will come up next, etc. Last week I took advantage of some warmer weather to get down on my knees and do some serious weeding. It's good to get up close and personal with your plants and the soil they're living in. Too bad I only managed to do such a little bit of work before I got tired, my back started to ache and I thought up a few excuses to come in!
Stay tuned ..... and send me e-mail: joanarnfield@gmail.com
