COUNTING BUTTERFLIES

You come home from holiday and the grass has grown - where it has not succumbed to the drought. A little rain has helped. The weeds are rampant and I have been mowing and mowing.

The courgettes in ten days have exploded into marrows.

The rhubarb has also recovered and the hacking back has done wonders - pulling crisp young stems again and topping up the freezer.

My mate the cock pheasant is mooching about under the feeders and looks not too bad despite some moulting. When I refilled the feeders there was no action for about two hours then they were swamped by goldfinches and sparrows with the chaffinches underneath waiting for dropped delicacies.

The scruffy bit of old rose bed into which I threw an assortment of annual seed is looking colourful and not too awful. Some cosmos has taken but is not yet flowering.

In the garden the butterflies have appeared with the flowering of the buddleias. The gatekeepers seem to  like the marjoram particularly. It does well in the garden.

So I have done my first 15 minutes of the big butterfly count - 
https://www.bigbutterflycount.org 

and saw large and small whites, gatekeeper, peacocks, red admirals and a painted lady - but where are the small tortoiseshells?
On the left a peacock with wings folded - difficult to see - on the right a painted lady.

Just finished filling there log shed with the wood for the winter and phew! I need a muscly man to do this sort of work, but then, I had just mowed the steep banking and cleared around the pond earlier in the day in 26C so . . .

The red rose up the holly tree is in full flower - we call this Pam's rose as she gave it to us. There are a lot of things in the garden given to us by friends, some of them special where a friend has since left us like Sue's reedmace and the maple. We also have one or two things that she passed onto us with the statement that she didn't know what it was but bung it in and see.

The magnolia grandiflora has been reluctant to flower this year until R warned it that, no flowers and it was being cut down. At least this was the gist of what she said. This seems to have done the trick (for now). I wish that method would work with everything especially seeds - if you do not germinate I'll - but what?

A couple of superb reds are the zinnia to the left and the alstroemerias to the right. We really want white alstroemerias but the only ones that seem to thrive are the deep red ones.

It is high summer and hot. We are off to see Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale al fresco - and the forecast is for the first real rain for ages - typical British weather. 😕

1. It did not rain till we got home.

2. We did not see the blood moon.

3. It is Sunday and raining now.

4. Outside my window 19 goldfinches and chaffinches are feeding. (plus odd blue tit, great tit, woodpecker and pigeon).

5. When I opened the back door this morning there were 10 house martins wheeling around my head.

Last night I gave the Brushes Ap another go à la Hockney - somewhere back of Coniston Water from memory.