25th April 2009

Some recent garden events:-



A couple of Fantails were added to the fishpond.


One of my favourite flowers is the Welsh Poppy. It flowers almost all year round and is beautiful, easy to grow and thrives in most soils and conditions. What more could one ask of a plant.


I like the fact that my hedge of native species has space beneath it for wild flowers. In this case some Cowslips and Cuckoo Pint. Please note that the rusty spade is ornamental – I don’t really treat my garden tools that badly!


This Cuckoo Pint came from Helen and Ian last year. It has three flowers on it. My original Cuckoo Pint – of which there are about six enormous plants have yet again failed to flower. I’ll give them one more year and then take them up.

The Butterfly House

I went to Chester Zoo on Monday and spent Tuesday in bed recovering from the effort – but it was worth it. I took 763 photos so I have a little bit of sorting and editing to do! Since my last visit the zoo has added a Butterfly House and being a butterfly addict I spent a while in there, walking around with a butterfly on my cap. It liked the pale colour and every time it left it, or another, landed there again. Just about everybody passing through managed to tell me about it.


It’s obviously something the butterfly house is used to – no sooner had this young girl arrived than one landed on her cap.


Fortunately they have a mirror by the door so you can check you aren’t taking any out with you.



This is a Blue Morpho (Morpho melenaus). There were a lot of them about.


This is an Owl Butterfly (Caligo idomeneus ) so-called for its large eyespot on the underside of the hind wings.


The Owl Butterfly rests with its wings closed so you have to be quick to get a photo of its upperside as it lands or takes off.


This is a Citrus Swallowtail (Papilio demoleus).


This is a Papilio species - I haven't worked out which one yet.


A White Tree Nymph (Idea Leoconue ).


A Heliconius species.


This is the Great Eggfly ( Hypolimnas bolina ).


This is a Great Orange Tip (Hebomoia glaucippe).


There were not that many different species compared to a normal butterfly house but that may be partly due to it being early in the season and the fact that the house has only recently opened. What they lacked in variety they certainly made up for in numbers.

Water Features

Apart from the various ponds we have two water features in the garden. This is one I made. It makes a pleasant pouring noise as the water runs from the jug into the stones and down inside the pot from whence it is pumped back up again.


We fell for, and bought, this water feature a few months before we bought the house and the garden centre stored it for us.


This water feature was used by a pair of frogs to lay spawn earlier in the year.



There are now a lot of active tadpoles in it.


The other day there was a Common Frog in there – probably displaying his cannibalistic tendencies. I scooped him out. Can you guess what he’s looking at?


Another frog – but not a real one!



Yesterday a Smooth Newt was in there – no doubt also feeding on the poor tadpoles.


This brave tadpole was playing with fire!

Sunday 19th April 2009

A hot and sunny day in the garden brought a wide variety of insects including dancing Speckled Wood butterflies and Large and Green-veined Whites. This 14 spot Ladybird (Propylea 14-punctata) was on the native species hedge.


A Smooth Newt was fishing for tadpoles in the water feature.