Tag Archives: bugs

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Insects on the crab apple

It’s getting a lot of traffic. It’s under the cherry which is all blossom – and it seems to be at a sort of crossroads as the insects come through the back gardens. I could not love my crab apple more.

Tiger Moths

We’ve had these in our garden for two years in a row. We only see them in day if we disturb them. Apparently they are not profuse in this part of the world, but the flowers in the Olympic Park are helping them spread through Hackney.