Category Archives: Wildlife

Week 25: the frogs have it

The pond and the frogs are a constant source of delight. But this is a super special week because it’s the week some of the tadpoles turn into tiny frogs and start to leave the pond.It awesome because…

The little frogs are amazing. They turn from looking like wet droplets to tiny frogs. What can it be like to change so fundamentally?

This is the best time for looking in the pond. There are frogs at all phases: tadpoles, some with legs but swim with the tails, some have legs and do tiny breast stroke. I love this picture because it’s like one of them is ready to leave and the others are like, “we are too we can come with you, we’re all grown up”, but they’re not..

There are bigger-but-small frogs like little golden jewels in the rest of the garden. And medium sized and big fellas under most of the ferns/ behind the bricks. I realise that all the frogs in the garden are MINE. I dug the pond about 16 years ago – maybe more. And the frogs in my garden must have been born here (or maybe 2 doors up in Patrick’s pond) but certainly all live here because of the way I have made the garden the way it is (it’s why all the mice and slugs live here too) but that makes me proud.

Do NOTHING for Nature

I have loads of lady birds earlier than usual this year. And lots and lots of flying insects, bees; wasps; flies the works.

I think this is because I didn’t clear up in the Autumn/ Winter. It took a huge effort not to, especially in Feb etc, when it looked skanky and dead and almost ready to grow. But I didn’t and it just goes to show that the best thing you can do is nothing!

Gooseberry Dilemma

Luke gave me these for my birthday. I love them. I haven’t managed to get a crop off them. They had tiny gooseberries on them, and then… lots of caterpillars. I’ve never had this dilemma before – caterpillars always eat the things I don’t mind about. You can’t kill baby butterflies but how am I ever going to get gooseberries? It seems particularly galling that the plant is covered in caterpillar poo…

I moved some of them (on a leaf) to the rose they usually eat but I think it was too little too late.

Spiders Everywhere!

I am tidying up a bit so that the garden still looks like a garden for its last phase of the summer. Some stuff I am leaving – like the fuschia – to give everyone a last meal. And shortly, I’m going to stop tidying up altogether, so that fallen leaves can rot back into the soil like last year, as this seems ugly but effective.

But the SPIDERS are stopping me doing this!

They are everywhere! Which I guess is a great marker of how many flying insects we have. But I feel mean if I chop down the stalks they have used as supports. And I feel even worse when I walk through their webs. There is a horrible sound (how can something so silent make such a noise?) and a clammy feeling as the web wraps round my face and then tears. There are some bits of the garden I don’t go into, and some I only go into waving my arms in front of me.

I am very curious about why spiders choose to build their webs where they do. There must be an optimal point – sunshine, breeze, passing traffic? But I wonder what the criteria are and whether they adapt where they spin or is it just chance? I can find lots about how spiders spin their webs but nothing about location. And depressingly, when you put the question into google, the first answer is a pest-exterminator web site, which happens quite a lot when you look up insects. I can’t believe anyone in the UK really needs to exterminate spiders.

Toadaly Awesome

Here is the toad! Or is it a toad? One of many? There is a toad in the cellar – but is it the same one? I saw the cellar one siting on the lawn-mower when I went to get some wine. Next morning I saw this one in the back bed. Same toad? Different toad? They are about the same size – a bit smaller than my thumb – but I don’t get how the cellar toad would get up the very steep steps. I can’t find anywhere that tells me the average territory size.

I kept coming across it when I was doing the back bed and having to stop and leave it. I thought it had gone away but then I thought I had sliced it with the trowel. I hadn’t but I think it was a bit scared!

Wild or messy?

Where’s the line between a wildlife garden and a mess? When does it stop being a garden? I guess it’s like the definition of a weed – you decide for yourself. But I’m still finding where my line is.

When we got back from Norfolk, the garden looked terrible. The comparison doesn’t help! But every thing is too big – I have this problem as a lot of things that survived the kids & the neglect have outgrown their space. And there aren’t many flowers in my garden this time of year, and it has been raining so much, the green has shot up. The fuchsia, which mostly I love so much, has bushed out, and put the whole of the back bed in shade. And in this funny stormy light, it looks a horrid salmony pink.

Turning things from a mess to a garden seems mostly to involve cutting stuff right back, tidying stuff up & killing things. I’ve started in this photo, and also cut the edge of the lawn with shears (I will mow the middle). I like the right-hand side more than the left because it’s still wilder….

So I know like it messy, but I think there is still some way to go to make it look like a lovely garden. The trouble is, as soon as you cut things back, you find things living there. Frogs in the grass, caterpillars in the bushes and the fuschia is so full of honey bees, it buzzes. The old dilemma about gardening for wildlife. When do you stop gardening if you really want the wildlife to flourish?

As I am thinking discontentedly what I need to do to this week to rebalance the garden, I should remember… while Chris and I were sitting in the kitchen today after lunch, a BIG beautiful frog hopped across the garden. It sat by the pots for a bit and then it did a massive jump into the cranesbill. That is worth lots of mess!

The bee goes on

The leaf cutters are taking over! Luke hit a cricket ball into the box and it fell of the fence, but I’m hoping that’s not going to do them any damage. 13 and counting….(you can’t see the top one because it’s all brown but there).

First week of August

Up to 16. Nearly a completely full house. Look at the craft!

Leaf-cutter bees

We have got leaf-cutter bees. I thought they were Willoughby’s LCBs but they might be Patchwork ones – and the Wildlife Trust reassures me that they are very difficult to tell apart.

They nest in the bee house we picked up in the street. I cleaned it last year and there was one that had died still in there. We drilled holes in some logs and they nest in those too, but they need to be sunny. There are 2 bees in the picture at the bottom. One coming out, and one inside the hole to the left of it.

You don’t chose your wildlife

This is what the pest control man said when he came to get rid of the dead rat in the cellar. He suggested clearing away the “overgrown” bits of the garden and when I baulked he said “if you garden for wildlife, you don’t get to chose the wildlife you get.”

We have got ANTS everywhere. I don’t mind ants, tho I believe the aren’t great in pots because the plant roots can come into contact with too much air not soil. But they are now under everything, in the lawn and inside the hammock. I guess it is so wet, any time there is a hint of dryness, they make a nest.

There are also a lot of skinny foxes around at the moment and every night they poo in the garden. I could do without them. Yesterday I saw a mouse run across the bit by the backdoor and I was VERY BRAVE about it but I don’t like that either. And I read that amongst other things, the toad will eat froglets if it gets the chance. I don’t want this, but I do want the toad and I guess it is the circle of life.

  • Fox poo
  • ..Ants in the lawn..
  • … in the hammock
  • and more in the lawn

Caterpillars

I have a rose I don’t much like and can’t grow very well. A couple of years ago, it had a sucker, which is explained succinctly here. I didn’t realise it wouldn’t flower and kept it to see what would happen. This is what happened. Every year, these guys turn up…

The best thing about them – which you can’t see in a photo – is that they freeze when they think you’re looking at them. They curve up and pretend to be twigs. They hold the pose and you feel like you can hear them muttering to each other “has she gone yet?”

That picture above was last week. Now they look bigger and fatter and more insanely coloured, and most of the rose is completely stripped of leaves.

  • Crazy caterpillars
  • Stripped Rose

I feel very happy about this. I get caterpillars, I get butterflies, I don’t “pay” any price because every year, the only plant they eat is the sucker – they don’t eat the real rose, they don’t seem to eat anything around them. I feel even smug about this.

Finches on the window boxes!

I love the window boxes outside our bedroom. They are a wildflower mix. They’re very delicate and look like something properly wild. They sway in the wind and cast beautiful shadows on window film (I’m quite pleased with the windows too but they cost A LOT more than the window boxes).

Yesterday I saw finches eating the cornflowers seeds. I love this!

Tiny weeny frogs

We got these about 4 days ago. You can’t really see because they look like tiny droplets but there are frogs in all these pictures!

It’s easy but dangerous to undervalue the ones that haven’t got legs once you’ve got ones that have so here’s a pic of one of those.

Bugs

This year, we seem to have a lot of big buff-tailed bumble-bees. Not as many hoverflies as last year but I think that is the very wet Spring. When we sat in the kitchen at night with the doors open and the lights on, we got a reassuring number of insects on the ceiling. Will try again later in this summer to see how it’s going.

We got ourselves a toad!

It crawled past us. I’m pretty sure it was a toad. It was dry looking and warty and didn’t look like our frogs and it walked away from the pond and hide under some logs. It looked very cross! I LOVE toads

Tadpoles nearly froglets

They are going strong. There are LOADS of them. They are slightly changing shape so they look more sculpted. They don’t look like black dots, they look like brown geometric shapes. They don’t have stubby back legs yet. Loads of them squish into the shallows under the rocks in the sunny bit (it HAS been v cold).

I don’t love dandelions

Like lots of people, I am taking part in No Mow May Just writing it makes me HAH! like Patty and Selma.

We’ve been heading towards not mowing for a while. On a lot of the lawn, we don’t have grass anyway so it’s not like we have a green sward. We let it grow last May, and at the end of the month, me and the kids measured out our square metre like you’re supposed to and found we had enough flowers to keep one bee alive for about 10 minutes.

This year, we have more things. Maybe because it’s not as hot. Maybe because we let it grow last year. But all the things we have are either dandelions or things that have escaped from the beds (eg; lily of the valley).

And it makes me cross that all the pics (see on No Mow May link above!) are all beautiful meadows and orchids and rare grasshoppers and how you can cut a path through it like a swathe. You can’t do that in a small suburban garden. Actually, I have tried and it doesn’t look bad but STILL…

Also, I am struggling with dandelions. I know I should love them but I don’t. I am prejudiced against them. I have shifted how I see wild flowers. I don’t see weeds. I see beauty and delicacy and tenacity. But I still feel old-fashioned about dandelions. They ARE WEEDS! I understand how most people still see wild flowers when I look at dandelions! They smell horrible, they are deep-rooted bullies and take over all the grass. I know they make bees and hoverflies happy but I just don’t like them. We have more this year and they are a bit better growing in drifts, but STILL….

ps: we DO have grasshoppers (we’ve seen their legs sticking out of the bug hotel when something is eating them) and mining bees that live in the sandy patches so obviously our scabby lawn is rich (-ish) environment but STILL…