Last year I thought I’d do my bit for the dwindling bee population and plant some borage after nurturing 4 or 5 plants from seed. This summer they came back with a vengeance entirely covering a previously barren plot of dusty lifeless soil. The borage patch is now alive with bees. So I thought of getting help from a lawn service near me and handle the issue at the earliest.

 

Look at them here getting absolutely sozzled on nectar, sucking it in till their little furry cheeks puff out. That’s probably not what they do at all but they seem to be in some sort of elevated state as they dance between the translucent blue petals bumping into each other like inebriates staggering home from the pub.

After attending Pestival in 2009 I vowed to let my garden become a bit more untidy to allow the insect universe to flourish. I let the herbs go to seed and now this small kitchen patch is bustling with hexapoda activity.

I saw this  butterfly jockeying with a bee for the best position on the flowering mint. I’ve had a go at identifying the butterfly without luck – I’ll take a punt that it’s a variety of Skipper.

There’s an element of jeopardy feeding here as it is the domain of a greedy-gutted spider that has spun his super-sticky web across the entire bed. The other day I saw him capture a wasp, wrap it in web then carry it off to hang from the underside of a mint leaf. Such efficient slaughter. My young son informed me that the spider would inject a poison into the wasp’s gut that would liquify it and allow him to suck it up much as the boy slurps down a smoothie.

A ladybird and a flying ant both took a promenade along the wicker arch that supports the sweat peas, largely indifferent to each other each, peacefully co-existing – maybe we can learn something from them (but not the spider perhaps).

These yellow flowers have emerged quietly in the shade of the overhanging ivy. Consulting R.S. Fitter’s Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers (1956) tells me that they’re a Ragwort of some kind I like the idea that they’re  Hoary Ragwort simply because of the name, although they’re most likely Marsh Ragwort, meaning that the seeds could well have come home with us from a walk on Leyton Marshes or Wanstead Flats.

Knowing the name of the plants that spring up in your garden changes your relationship with them – they’re no longer just a weed but have a heritage and a mythology – there’s a popular belief that Ragwort can kill horses (not by sneaking up and strangling them but if the horse eats its own body weight of the intensely bitter leaves).

Apparently Ragwort is a favourite of the stripy caterpillar of the cinnabar moth which I spotted over on Wanstead Flats recently, then when down in Devon last week saw a few of the post-pupa moths themselves marvellous black and red wings lighting up a deep Devon hedgerow.

One of the most surprising things to emerge from the ground this year is a triffid-like pumpkin plant, legacy of leaving last year’s Halloween lantern to rot on the edge of the vegetable patch that has no vegetables (until now). Two grasshoppers have taken up residence on its great bristly leaves – or are they crickets. I haven’t heard them sing yet.