Monday 21st January 2008

And it rains and rains and rains. And then we have a ten minute sunny spell. And then the wind blows and blows. And it rains and rains. And the wind howls and howls. And then overnight it was frosty! And it is January. And despite all that the flowers are out... including the Forsythia,

Even though I grabbed a space between the downpours my photos cannot do them justice because of the wind. As I am forever mentioning we never used to have Daffodils out in January before the earth started warming up.

It was also a good year when the Snowdrops were out before the end of January but they are all out in the front, even if they are covering their faces.

16th January 2008

While most of the country is under water we are fortunate to have avoided floods this week. There have even been sunny spells between the showers and as a sign of the ever increasing global warming the daffodils are beginning to come out.



Most of the garden looks rather wet and dead but a couple of the larger Hebe are brightening the place up with their colourful blooms.



Most of our garden ferns die down for the winter but one of the ones at the bottom of the garden, in the wild flower patch under the Leylandi hedge, remains green all winter. I am quite poor at identifying ferns and would love to have an expert show me exactly how to differentiate the common ones. I am taking a guess that this the Hay-scented Buckler fern (Dryopteris aemula) but will be happy for anyone to correct me.

January 2008

Regular readers of this blog will recall that a very large Ash branch came down in the gales a year ago. It has provided us with fuel so far this winter but unfortunately it has now come to an end. This is the next to last fire it provided.

Saturday 5th January 2008

Jo and I were at the flea market in Birkenhead today and whilst we found no fleas Jo did see a Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) flitting around the outdoor stalls in temperatures of about 7°C. Unfortunately I missed it but I thought I'd use the fact as an excuse to show you a Red Admiral photo from October 2006.

Tuesday 1st January 2008

 


I was delighted with our trip to Chestnut Centre, Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park on Sunday but I only downloaded the pictures from one camera before doing my blog post. It was therefore with a deal of anticipation that I recalled today that I had taken a couple on my other camera and found this moth which had been perched on the glass of one of the cages. I was reasonably sure when I took the photo that it was a new species for me but such thoughts are not uncommon, only to be dashed when checking the literature shows the creature to be another form of a common species. In this case it was a new one – the November Moth (Epirrita dilutata). This brings my total number of macro-moths to 259 species.