The herald moth, Scoliopteryx libatrix, feeds after dark on flowers and overripe berries, which probably explains why this one is hiding amongst our raspberry canes. Its larvae feed on willows, aspen and poplars.
I’m aware that what to me seems like a neglected corner is home to some of the creatures that I try to encourage in our garden. As I clear the chicory from the mint bed, I disturb a common frog.
Garden snail
The frog is outnumbered by slugs and snails, spiders and harvestmen.
My next task is to clear my little meadow area which is overrun with chicory. I want to make a fresh start and sow a cornfield mix to flower next spring and summer. I’ll clear it again at the end of the season in attempt to discourage the chicory.
After a record-breaking late summer bank holiday with temperatures of 28C in Leeds, we had a downpour yesterday evening. The paving sand that I’d swept into the cracks a couple of days ago has been washed out in places by the overspill from our driveway. The dished concrete channel in front of the garage door can’t cope with the run-off from a rainstorm.
It’s been a good test for a small area. I’ll buy a small bag of cement and make a dry mix – three of sand to one of cement – with the remaining sand to brush into the crevices on the sloping driveway.
Wadi Rum
The swirling shapes of my little patches of washed-out sand remind me of the run-off deposits that are left by flash floods in wadis, as in this Google Earth image from the Wadi Rum Protected Area, Jordan.
Yesterday, after taking out a few weeds, I swept sand into the cracks between the paving slabs by the front door. Already this morning, there are signs of activity. Could these be tracks left by an insect? Or a woodlouse?
Something has been active in the corner. I didn’t notice this tiny snail shell until I spotted in the photograph. It might have been dislodged from a crevice yesterday but I suspect that it’s been introduced along with the sand.
The sand is from Denmark. The grains are small, mostly less than a millimetre, and well-rounded, so perhaps this is windblown sand from a former dune system. Denmark has extensive dunes along its western, North Sea, coast and, further inland, extensive areas of glacial sand and gravel.
In my photograph, the glassy grains are quartz and I think that the larger, fleshy-looking ochre fragments are feldspar.
Danish sand: Dansand No Grow Block Paving Sand
Doorstep Bio-blitz
Garden snail
The seven species that I disturbed as I weeded around the paving stones yesterday come from seven different families, four classes and three phyla, so, within inches of our front door, we have an annelid worm, a gastropod mollusc, an isopod crustacean and a social insect.
I disturbed a large ant as I swept the driveway, which I guessed was a queen. The queen disposes of her wings after her nuptial flight, then sets about finding a suitable site – such as here under the paving stones – to start her colony.
Coincidentally, later, a few yards away, I spotted a worker ant carrying a single transparent wing, which looked like one that had been discarded by a queen.
We’ve had record temperatures for a late bank holiday so, again, I’ve been working in the shade at the front of the house, weeding the cracks between the paving slabs before cleaning up with the masonry brush and sweeping sand into the gaps with a soft brush.
I didn’t use the hand cultivator today, but it was more appealing to draw than the plastic-handled weeder that I had been using.
As I worked around the front door, I was surprised by the variety of life on our doorstep: a garden snail, woodlice, ants, small earthworms, a tiny rove beetle and one green shield bug nymph. The nymph looks like a smaller version of the adult but it lacks wings. This one had to laboriously walk over towards the cover of the hosta to escape my brushwork.
Procreate drawing
One again this is a Procreate iPad drawing and today I used just two of the available tools: the Gesinski Pen and the Round Brush.
If I’d been painting on paper, I would have used opaque gouache to add the light-coloured bristles against the darker background. This time I added them with Gesinski Pen with a 100% opaque light colour.
I was determined not to use an eraser but when I was finishing the drawing, I realised that a false start that I’d made with one of the prongs of the cultivator was throwing the whole drawing out of proportion. I opted for ‘painting’ over it in white, to produce a similar effect to when I used to correct illustrations with a dab of white gouache. The correction is intended to remain visible.
Stripy brown-lipped snails hunker down on ivy leaves in our hedges. I find them even when I’m up the steps, cutting back the top branches.
We’re continuing to harvest plenty of produce from the veg beds – courgettes, potatoes, spinach, rhubarb and autumn raspberries – but we’re taking a break from beans: the french and broad beans are over but the runners, which have masses of scarlet flowers, are taking their time to burst into full flow.
One or two holly blues have been visiting the ivy, which, along with the holly, is one of the food plants of the caterpillar.
Drawing on one layer in Procreate
My drawing was made in the Procreate drawing program on my iPad Pro. For a change, I’ve drawn it all on one layer. I usually keep pencil roughs, ink and colour on separate layers, which keeps the line work unblemished but that means that I’m missing out on all the efforts that the Procreate designers have put into making digital drawing feel like its real world equivalent. In this case, I don’t mind if the pen and ink gets slightly blurred as I add the colour.
One morning last week, after a wild and windy night, we found this nest, which I think was made by goldfinches, on the lawn at the foot of the rowan in the front garden. It’s just three inches (8 cm) across and very light. There were no signs of eggs or chicks in or around it, so I think that it had been dislodged by the wind, rather than raided by a predator, such as a magpie or cat.
It’s composed mainly of frizzy wool-like material, which might be dog hair, wool or even some manmade down. It is too long and curly to be thistle down. The nest is decorated with strands of moss around the outside with a few long threads curled around the inside of the cup, which are possibly horse hair but more likely textile thread. As I went out to measure it just now, a week after it fell, I noticed a tiny rove beetle amongst the fibres in the centre of the cup.
A month or more ago, a goldfinch was singing from the telephone cables near the rowan tree and sometimes there would be a pair of them perching there, so I wondered if they had a nest nearby.
It’s been a good year for goldfinches and garden birds in general, with young bullfinches, chaffinches, blackbirds, starlings, blue tits and great tits coming to our back garden bird feeders, but goldfinches are the most numerous. Yesterday a flock – a charm to use the collective noun – of goldfinches flew up from feeding on the fluffy seed-heads of creeping thistle in the meadow by the wood.
Even by boosting the contrast, I can’t really pick out any definite tracks at the entrance to my animal tracking tunnel, which has now been sitting amongst the long grass by the hedge at the end of the garden for two days. The damp paper along the edges might have been nibbled by slugs.
As I moved in to take a close-up photograph, a vole ran out from the tunnel. It happened so quickly that I wondered if it really had been in there or whether it had been hidden in the grass at my feet but when I slid out the bait tray I could see that half the sunflower hearts had disappeared.
One of the sunflower hearts had been nibbled at one end to expose the seed inside.
In the milk bottle top that serves as a bowl for the bait something has been nibbling away at what I think might be fragments of peanuts in the peanut butter. Traces of slime suggest that slugs or snails have been visiting the tunnel.
I’ve topped up the bait with sunflower hearts, so my tracking tunnel has now become a vole feeding station.
I’ve tied the tunnel down in case a fox, cat or magpie investigates it. Even so, it wouldn’t surprise me if one of them doesn’t pull out the margarine tub lid to investigate.
It’s the final week of the University of York’s free online Future Learn course The Biology of Bugs, Brains and Beasts and for our ‘Beasts’ practical work, we’re using a homemade tracking to tunnel to discover – if it works – whether we’ve got rodents or hedgehogs in our back garden.
I’ve slotted two cut-down 4-pint plastic milk bottles to make the tunnel. Our long-handled stapler came in useful here.
I then covered the tunnel in black sugar paper because small mammals prefer darker places to forage. Black plastic would have been more weatherproof, but I had the sugar paper to hand.
Finally, using one of the milk bottle tops which I’d saved, I baited the tunnel with organic peanut butter and a few sunflower hearts from the bird feeder. That should be more than enough to tempt any passing rodent.
The sponge is soaked in green food dye and hopefully, in the morning, I’ll see a few small footprints on the paper. I’ve left it in the quietest part of the garden at the back of my little meadow area, in the long grass near the hedge. A small hole amongst the grasses at the far end of the tunnel might well be a vole hole.
Links
How to make a tracking tunnel, backyard conservation with Ana.
Still enjoying our broad beans and concocting new recipes every day. With beans and mint fresh from the garden, this is a perfect summer lunch.
3 cups broad beans, podded
1 small courgette, grated
2 spring onions, chopped
4 sun-dried tomatoes, cut into small pieces
4 tablespoons chopped mint
4 thickish slices of sourdough
1 clove garlic, peeled
Cook beans in microwave with dessert spoonful of water for three minutes. Drain and let cool, then slip off the outer skins.
Using a little olive oil (we used the oil from the jar of sun-dried tomatoes) sauté onions, grated courgette and sun-dried tomatoes for two minutes. Add broad beans and mint, stir together and warm them through.
Brush both sides of the slices of sourdough with olive oil and cook on a ridged griddle pan until toasted on both sides. Rub each piece of toast with the garlic.
Pile on the bean mixture and drizzle with a little balsamic vinegar.
Today’s colander from the veg beds: broad beans, dwarf French beans, onions, beetroot (we sometimes use the tops like spinach) and courgettes.
Barbara is using a recipe in the latest, August, edition of Healthy Food Guide, ‘Spicy chicken kebabs with sweet potato wedges’ as a starting point but substituting whatever is available in the garden today, so Maris Bard potato wedges instead of sweet potato and beans instead of cucumber.
In Friday’s Gardeners’ World, BBC2, Frances Tophill mentioned that she’d been growing sweet potatoes in her greenhouse, so we might try that next year. Sweet potatoes might stand up to us neglecting them for a week when we head off for the Dales better than our cucumber and tomato plants did.
We didn’t plant tomatoes this year after two or three years of them being shrivelled in searing summer heat when we went away but in Healthy Food Guide, Jennifer Irvine suggests that it’s still not too late to grow a few:
“Experienced gardeners reading this are probably rolling their eyes, thinking that if you wanted to plant tomatoes you should have done it months ago. If you’re growing from seed, that’s true. But there is no shame in leap-frogging straight to a young tomato plant at this time of year.”
She suggests begging, bartering or – what we’ll do – buying a plant or two from our local garden centre. They can go on producing fruit until October, so it would be worth giving it a try.
