Pondlife Update

Hairy-Footed Flower Bee

Temperature today hit 24° and will reach 25° tomorrow. Suddenly it's summer. The Hairy-footed Flower bee has been busy in the rosemary bush. Anthophora plumipes is all black with an exceptionally long tongue and doesn't sit still for a portrait so she is a bit blurry (whereas the rosemary is sharply in focus).

And I just saw the first Himmelblaue Bläuling of the season flitting around the back of the garden. On the downside, this sunny weather brings out Homo cretinicus in great numbers. Next door must sun bathe with a transistor radio that broadcasts, presumably, out of a hole torn in the space time continuum. I kid you not, while I had my tea I heard 'Like a Rhinestone Cowboy' followed by 'Daydream Believer' by the Fab Four - no, not That Fab Four, a much more fabulous foursome - The Monkees.

Need Money?

Monday I noticed this mass of glibber in the concrete bunker filled with stagnant water that we euphemistically refer to as 'the pond'. Of course, it is a heap of frog's eggs and in a few weeks I guess I shall see several hundred (?) tiny tadpoles swimming around. Unless something eats them.
I will post updates. (These posts are a bit like the buses, nothing for months and then two in the space of 2 days.)

Spring 2018

This feels like a proper spring - gradual warming and lots of rain. Saturday I harvested and cooked the first rhubarb of the season. And there are lots of fresh young nettles for my porridge. The lettuce seeds I sowed after arriving back from our hibernation on March 14th are now ready for planting out. Cabbage seedlings are potted on and tomatoes are 3 or 4 inches high. Yesterday I started trays of amaranth, sunflowers, sweet corn and popping corn, a few cucumbers and zucchini.
Higglety and Pigglety are laying about 10 eggs a week between them (well, under them). I was thinking that when they outlive their usefulness, stuffed they would make a fine pair of ornaments for the mantle...