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.
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.
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.
It’s hard to know if gardening for wildlife is making a difference to the wildlife in my garden. I know it makes me happy, but does it work for the wildlife?
I don’t know if we have more bees, bugs & insects. I think we do but I didn’t look for them before so I don’t know. I know we have fewer birds (we used to have blackbirds, dunnocks, wrens, more robins, lots more blue tits) but I think that’s probably cats and gentrification.
I think my garden is so small, it’s hard to see if it makes a difference on its own. So many external factors affect it. I don’t have the skills and patience to do in-depth bug counts like that lady in Sheffield. But I guess part of the point of recording it here, is to see long term if stuff works.
Today it was sunny for the first time for ages. There were hairy footed flower bees (finally)) and lots of different hoverfies (I have hoverfly lagoon in the back passage); and maybe small wasps, a cabbage white and a speckled brown (which I’ve never seen before). The tadpoles are hatching, and the 4 birds that do visit are eating from the plants not just the bird feeder, and the “waste” I didn’t clear off the beds but left to rot down looks like it’s turned into flowers. So today feels like a good day!
My Garden 