War and Peace

The creatures we share the garden with bring their own wide range of different vibes.

Earlier this Summer, the bumblebees went mad about the hollyhocks. They drank nectar until they started dazedly buzzing around in circles. The two in the picture at least seem to share one flower peacefully.

Not long after that, the patrolling of the garden by big nose diving dragonflies started. They are extremely territorial and although we do not have any water in our garden, it apparently needs to be defended heavily. They are fiendish and not afraid to attack something as big as us.

And October brought on loads of spiders. The Rudbeckia forms it own little micro-environment with a bunch of spiders hanging between the flowers. One of them managed to catch a solitary bee and wrapped it up for later.

This Comma came to say goodbye as a last sign of Summer, the coming week the weather will turn. Rain and cold will come to replace the lovely warm afternoons we have had the past weeks.

In preparation the undergardener cleaned the birdfeeder and filled it up with peanuts.
Bring on the cold!

Sharing

Once again I have plenty of nasturtiums to go around. So this wonderful hairy monster (not really it is only about an inch long) is very welcome to munch on some of the seeds.

Cheeky

On my peanut feeder it said “jackdaw proof”. Which is true, but I don’t think they had this cheeky exotic visitor in mind during the design stage. Meet Percy our local parakeet. He is a very fussy eater, discarding the skin of the peanuts. Sometimes he brings his woman, Priscilla along and they make sweet squeaky sounds.

With a little help from my friends

I think the war on slugs might have just taken an unexpected turn. Out of nowhere Major toad appeared in the salad growing bag. Quite an interesting choice of abode, but he is welcome to stay if he hoovers up a slug or two on the go.