Month: September 2023

“They think the warm days will never cease..”

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Some autumns come with rain and wind and then blow themselves straight into winter. Some come gently and summer seems to linger in them and the words of Keat’s “Ode to Autumn” echo in the mind.

“Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-evesrun;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease……,”

This is definitely a Keatsian autumn and the garden looks more lovely than it has for weeks. The cosmos are absurdly tall and pink, the blanket flowers are sturdy and bright, marigolds are fizzing with orange and morning glory is spilling purple flowers over the dark hedge.

The Dahlias are still extraordinary and a bowl of scented petunias has flowered for four months straight on the garden table.

The willow tree is white with mildew and the courgettes have given up, so the decay of autumn is in the air too, but there are still wall butterflies in the day and large yellow underwing moths by night, so there is plenty to enjoy still.

Grape pressing for sweet juice.

Some storks are still here!

Silent Sundays: should we swap our lawnmowers, leaf blowers and power tools for peace? | Alan Titchmarsh | The Guardian

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The gardener and broadcaster is calling for a bit of hush so he can go into his garden at least once a week and listen to a blackbird rather than a Black & Decker
— Read on www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/sep/25/silent-sundays-should-we-swap-our-lawnmowers-leaf-blowers-and-power-tools-for-peace

What we are doing it for…..

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What we are doing it for….

For the translucent spider on the garden flower,

For the dragon fly over the newly made pond,

For the swallows feeding over the raggedy lawn,

For the house martins who finally spotted the Martin house that should still be there next spring,

For the fat slow worm in the warm compost heap,

For the insistence that we are not all going to hell in a hand basket,

For the hedge that might still be planted,

For the hawk moth,

For the hornet,

For the h word.

Dedicated to Christian.

400+

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I have just passed the 400 mark today of moth species recorded in my garden.

Some are big, some are small and one or two are wrongly identified, but I have seen them all and pondered over their names, their shapes and their colours. I know the usual suspects by sight and can tell the season of the year by what is in the light trap.

Early autumn is large yellow underwings and swifts and many more besides. I have started taking more interest in the smaller moths, tortrixes and the like and so my total has slowly crept up.

I wonder sometimes what on earth I am doing.

Does my obsessive recording of the nocturnal life of a tiny patch of land on the borders of France and Switzerland amount to a hill of beans? Am I just fiddling while Rome burns or adding to the sum of human knowledge? I dont know the answer, but when I manage to give a name to a new night visitor to this speck of no where I feel as if I have understood a tiny bit more of the puzzle, and so I keep naming and counting and marvelling.

Orache moth
Privet hawk moth

And 390 more!

The little moth on my finger is a flame moth . In latin Axylia putris . The pattern on the wings looks like a flickering flame and it hugs them close to its body to resemble a twig and thus avoid being eaten by a bird.