Awful weather - typical Brits talk

YoungBlueEyes

Sorry I meant what were the bugs and should I kill or keep them? I didn’t know if they were a rare something or a bad something (no I know). They were frantically moving round in circles so I couldn’t tel if it was a mama and newborns or something being eaten alive… 

Anyway I needed to get on so I fished them out with a cup and slung them on the gravel *shrug* I just hope it wasn’t a rare something   

Bet the gutter man doesn’t come now 

Farway

YoungBlueEyes said:

Ants here too A few flying but not enough imo. They should collectively decide to go and just all s0d off overnight! 

I’m not into bugs and critters. I wasn’t gonna put this up cos it’s not entirely in focus - but here’s a something on my (pre-haircut) tom leaves last night

 

It looked right at me before it left  *shudder*

It's a grasshopper, chirp chirp! Or with your luck and Global Boiling, a locust

Some very impressive bug pics this afternoon.

YoungBlueEyes said:

It’s bug central round here! I was about to decant my drip-catching wheelie bin so I can get it moved in case the gutter man comes this aft and look what’s in it. Is it having babies or being eaten alive? What will I do with them? 

Forgive the poor pic but I couldn’t get a better one 

I suspect being eaten, AFAIK insects don't have live births, they lay eggs. I'd just leave it to nature to sort out, or the gutter man

Sun came out, so I picked the single runner and the toms. Since the rain, I have loads more runner flowers and could even get to a mini glut.

ArbitraryRandom

YoungBlueEyes said:

Sorry I meant what were the bugs and should I kill or keep them? I didn’t know if they were a rare something or a bad something (no I know). They were frantically moving round in circles so I couldn’t tel if it was a mama and newborns or something being eaten alive… 

Anyway I needed to get on so I fished them out with a cup and slung them on the gravel *shrug* I just hope it wasn’t a rare something   

Bet the gutter man doesn’t come now 

My bad, brain fail  

No idea about an ID, but if it makes you feel any better I feel guilty if a notice insects drowning so often spend some time fishing them out with a bit of grass or something. 

As a kid, I also felt bad about flies struggling in webs (I get that even after 'rescuing' them, they weren't exactly likely to thrive), but now I like spiders too so accept it's nature. 

This afternoon I 'saved' maybe a half dozen knot grass moth caterpillars. They were mowing the verge across the road so I dashed over (and confused the poor person mowing) to scoop a few up and moved them to where he'd already done. Yes, the bloke thinks I'm an idiot, but I can live with that Didn't get a picture (wasn't quite THAT odd!)

YoungBlueEyes

Oh aye, it'd be eggs. And I'd not long since looked at your nasturtiums pic too. Gawd help me! Best you start preparing freezer space then Farway ha haa!

Gutter man didn't come. Naturally :rolleyes: 

Good on ya Arb I'm forever saving bugs, I even get a bit squiggly about stepping on snails! Mind there's some pretty snails in my garden. Slugs otoh get a good sprinkling with salt  

Just to stay even remotely OT, the sun's been out all day, bit of heat in it too. But I've had to close the back door cos the Holey Roamin' Terror has decided he wants to live here now. When they're not being disdainful cats are pure disloyal. You'd never get that nonsense with a dog  

twopenny

YoungBlueEyes said:

It’s bug central round here! I was about to decant my drip-catching wheelie bin so I can get it moved in case the gutter man comes this aft and look what’s in it. Is it having babies or being eaten alive? What will I do with them? 

Forgive the poor pic but I couldn’t get a better one  

I'd make a stab at it being a queen something and drones/workers around still trying to mate/save her.
It's that time of year when bees and ants swarm away from the nest.

Fantistc photographs!! You lot post at such a rate of knots I can't keep up  :-)

Love the grasshopper....they used to be common in my childhood but have vanished in the last few years. I guess your bonus for not cutting the grass.
I had one yesterday when I mowed for the first time in 6weeks. 
Love the sound on summers evenings in the past.

Gorsebush

What a lot of posts, again. All so interesting too. My internet time is wasted reading the online "news", but really, who needs to be constantly told off for just being alive? Yes, I read about the world boiling 🙄 but they keep upping the anti, now we're boiling will they stick at that? What's hotter than boiling? Oh, I know, an electric car battery burning at 4,000°C. 

Google have my area as wet for the next 10 days, there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that I'll have a single ripe tomato before blight comes along. There's bush toms in the garden and Big Boy semi sheltered, lightening up in colour but still not a hint of red. 
The courgettes are loving the weather though, as are the cucumbers. I am already fed up of eating them, but mustn't grumble! 
Climbing frenchies are getting a move on now, I'm having a few each day, which reminds me there's still a jar of salted ones from last year. 

My neighbour is having some work done which involves use of an angle grinder, so while the fellow was noisily grinding away today I thought it a good time to use my very noisy strimmer. So that's the no-mow-May grass cut at last. My garden looks and feels bigger now, but makes the amount of tree work needed look more pressing. 

Garden Express are selling asparagus crowns for a £1 each at the moment. They keep notifying me of their special offers because I've been a sucker for them in the past 😳. I would like to try growing asparagus but there isn't the room unless I sacrifice something else.


Good bug pictures everyone! 
Not the easiest things to photograph.

Blue, your pictures of the tomato nursery reminds me of a summer working in a commercial growers' over 50 years ago! Happy days when anything seemed possible. I too did nothing but de-leafing for ages, I used to arrive home a yellowish green colour. 

YoungBlueEyes

I don't know why it didn't occur to me that it's a cricket, that's not what they looked like when I was a young'un. I've not heard any chirping so I don't know where he lives but it's not here. The rate if pictures is mostly down to me and my stoopid questions... I should prolly start my own thread like wot Arb did should I? 

I remember a lot of swifts and swallows in my childhood, great thick black clouds of them swooshing around. We've a few here, but the most I've counted in one go is half a dozen ish At least there's some up there. How long 'til they're all gone...? In my lifetime I suspect.

2p my grass isn't growing enough to cut, that's a whole thing in itself. I've cut it twice since we moved here (nearly a year ago) cos there's no growth to cut. The only thing it does produce are tall single seedy stalks. Lovely neighbour says previous owner had it all sorted out and flattened and turfed, and then never did anything with it. So it's a tiny bit green in some patches, and one patch of happy green grass, and the rest is a bit dead/long dead/mare's tails+bindweed. Oh and soily wee ant holes now they're getting up and away. It doesn't look too bad from my kitchen window though. 

Gorse I know what you mean about the news. I'm almost ashamed to say it but I only watch the little local news at 6pm now, cos the 'proper' news was doing my head in. I don't take a paper any more and I've no news apps. Thank god my parents aren't around to hear me say that cos that is not how I was raised. "You've a British passport and a brain in your head, there's nothing more valuable in this world. You should be reading and thinking and looking, this is your world, get out there and see it/taste it/experience it and do something about the bits that need help." But it's so different now. BigCo.plc is running the show and they'll please themselves regardless. And the news is all the same anyway. They're starving in Africa, the Jews/Arabs are at it again, another shooting in america, xyz have made record profits, climate change, this will be the hardest christmas ever for retailers, and then - oh wait they had a great christmas.... it's the same old horseship round and round.  Well they can keep it.

Gawd that was dispiriting! So OT - the sun was out earlier and it was very pleasant. Clouded over now but there's a nice breeze getting up. Should be a decent day   

YoungBlueEyes

Postie just delivered this - woohoo! 

Thanks very much pp! I’m a bit giddier than I ought to be really  

Dustyevsky

Sadly, yesterday's excursion to the seaside and a potential garden visit didn't go as planned. The garden was there, but it wasn't open.  I'd a contingency plan for that though, involving a 5-mile jaunt through a forest, up a big hill, down the other side and onto the Coast Path to return. 

Unfortunately,  at the turn onto the forest trail, we met a bunch of noisy people with dogs, so we missed it, and instead, took a path which went directly to the top of the big hill. Heart stopping stuff, but walking partner is trained in CPR, so OK. From up there, we could see they were having worse weather in the Gower than us, but it still rained for 10 minutes. Sheltering under a tree, I realised it wasn't clear which of several paths we'd used. It shouldn't have mattered, but waymarkers were absent.

We spent the next half hour trying to get off the hill, eventually finding one waymarker, helpfully hidden in a sheep-dip corral, so we knew we were on the right track again, but there were no more, so we busked it. Eventually, after dodging bullocks, a way out appeared possible. We found a seat engraved with the words “Sammy's Bench,” overlooking a spring where two enormous metal flowers stood guard. They were the only flowers of any note we saw! 

Now, you'd think spring+ bench+decorative feature would = civilisation, especially with steps leading down, but no. We were back on a rabbit path in a wood full of brambles and an upward slope of 45 degrees. 

I'll spare you the rest. My partner was muttering something about the SAS, but we'd only had to negotiate 4 barbed wire fences. Suddenly, emerging into Narnia, there was a clear path through the pine trees past a farm with a map showing the way to the main footpath. How sensible!  From there it was a doddle getting back, but I got careless, didn't notice a wet, slippy section of rock and went down, right in front of the only people we'd seen for two hours. No real damage; just a strain, but I felt a right wally, and somebody mentioned osteoporosis as the others moved away.

So, all in all, another not so great walk. I've been made to promise the next one will be a 'proper' one, in a book.

Current weather's definitely worse than yesterday with heavy showers, but we're promised some sunshine too. These are very sunny and looking good:

Farway

Damp under foot, but not raining. Up early to volunteer place to water the large pots, this weather I can not be sure, so a good drenching should see them through to next weekend

Picked a lot of blackberries while I was there, they are growing as part of the "hedge" dividing the Health Centre & my volunteer place. I'll freeze them, and they will go into either jam or crumble later in the year when I have more

Not a very pleasant stroll by the sound of it, Dusty, at least it ended OK, if a bit shamed, hopefully the strain will come to nothing. Is there mobile reception around there, or is beyond the clutches of phone companies? Just asking because a mobile map app may have helped, like Runkeeper, Waze or even Google Maps

Nice pic of the crocosmia, I've tried for one of my Lucifer, but I can't seem to get it "right" Just too glaring red so far

Hope the seeds turn out well YBE & PP, whenever I've tried with aquilegia from seeds they always seem to finish up mucky mauve

Gorsebush said:

Google have my area as wet for the next 10 days, there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that I'll have a single ripe tomato before blight comes along. There's bush toms in the garden and Big Boy semi sheltered, lightening up in colour but still not a hint of red. 

Blue, your pictures of the tomato nursery reminds me of a summer working in a commercial growers' over 50 years ago! Happy days when anything seemed possible. I too did nothing but de-leafing for ages, I used to arrive home a yellowish green colour. 

Trigger warning for Gorse , 

The following contains images of ripe tomatoes wot I picked yesterday.

Cherry Falls, outside in a large tub

Limonsa, in conservatory