Mr. Stag

I planted out 10 asparagus crowns today in a trench along one side of the 'hugelkultur'.

 And whilst doing so I unearthed (and reburied) a massive stag beetle. Maybe because I usually see female ones, this one seemed particularly enormous. Was he a wee grub when I entombed the dead wood six years ago? Anyway, I'm hoping he wasn't too discombobulated by the experience ...

Spectral Dust

Dang! I see, too late, that there was a 'potato photo of the year' contest. Next time.

Leopard Slugs

On Saturday just enough dampness drizzled out of the overhanging cloud to moisten the ground. And that was all the invitation the slugs and snails needed to have a night out. I took this picture of the group congregating at the chicken feeder and, as they are rather well camouflaged, I have outlined the ones I can see. Mostly leopard slugs (Limax maximus) and the odd snail. Apart from that spritzing it has been bone dry since June. Click on picture to enlarge

The Mrs.

This is the third female stag beetle I've found in the garden this week (different sizes). She spends 6 or 7 years underground and then comes above ground for a couple of months to mate.
Her final act before she dies is to make her way back to the place from which she emerged where she buries herself into the ground about 12" down and lays her eggs.
I just saw a male 'flying' around tonight ...

Tonight @ The Horse Hospital

We rescued one (stag beetle) from the water butt Tuesday.

Accomodation Available

High rise living with views out over the city for south London's stag beetles at Nunhead cemetery - part nature reserve part burial ground. They don't offer 24 hour security which is a pity as a magpie or crow can pick off emerging bugs in their dozens. Maria.Fremlin has posted some particularly macabre footage of the aftermath of such an attack which could be animated out-takes from a Svankmajer film. She also very helpfully provides a guide to the larvae of several beetles which is worth consulting before stomping in disgust any and every grub one unearths. Size would seem to be the big giveaway for indentifying a stag beetle larva - 8 centimetres!

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo

'Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo' coming to a cinema near you?


Found this one loitering around the back door.

Hoverflies on the pebbledash alash.

World DominAnt

Over the years that we've lived on top of this hill in south London, I've come to regard it as one big anthill. Every time I turn over a flagstone in the garden, it's teeming with ants beneath. They relentlessly try to establish aphid ranches on my artichokes and beans. Walking to the train, I see little eruptions of sand and ant activity betwixt most of the paving stones. Yesterday I saw hundreds of wing-ed ones issuing out of a crevice in the garden path. Well now I read that I've got that wrong by an order of magnitude. There are super colonies in Europe, Japan and America. Billions of ants all belonging to one global mega-colony. In light of this news, my pouring boiling water on one lot (or feeding the grubs to the chickens) looks a bit feeble.

Cold-Hearted Cicada

The feelings of a cold-hearted lover
are like a cicada:
it cries constantly
but never shows its face
Miwa no Sugikado

Found on BibliOdyssey along with a couple of woodcuts by Utamaro. Although we heard them all through the dog days of August, I only once found one, a mature wing-ed one, dead, when I was about 10. I pinned it to an acoustic ceiling tile and it was my bug collection. I'm just back from a visit to Toronto where I unearthed this while planting potatoes in my mother's garden.


Unless someone tells me otherwise I'm calling it a cicada. It still seemed to be in a state of suspended animation but definitely still alive, so I buried it again. It's not due to see the light of day until May 18th by this calculation - E=(19.465-t)/0.5136 - where E is the emergence start date in May and t is the average April temperature.

Diet of Worms

Today I did my worm survey. Pictured above are some of my finds. The chickens were utterly undiscerning when they dispatched them later, the different varieties are apparently equally tasty.
It was sunny and warm and I planted out some little pea plants (Magnum Bonum from Rebsie and self-saved Uncle Fred). Also sowed Champion of England pea in situ and, in modules in the greenhouse, Cabbage 'Mammoth Red Rock' and two interesting (new for me) brassicas from a Portugese friend, 'Couve Galega' and 'Repolho Bacalan Grande'. She says the stem of Couve Galega can grow many many feet tall and the head of Bacalan Grande will be 50 cm. across. Here's hoping.

The Birds & The Bees

Green Porno by Isabella Rossellini. More here.

Summer's Death Toll

Cause of death of the first four: unknown. But I feel responsible for the demise of the bird. I feel like Philip Larkin did after the hedgehog/lawnmower incident.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled it's unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
I've been trying to keep the greenhouse windows clean - even squeegeeing the condensation off in the mornings - in an effort to allow as much sunlight as possible in. The more sun, the sweeter the tomatoes. At best only 91% of sunlight gets through the glass, and there has been so much cloud cover this summer. And then I got carried away and cleaned the windows (that I could reach) at the back of the house... I'm going to leave the resulting smudge there as warning to all the other birds.


Beautiful photos of exhibition preparation for the American Natural History Museum here. (via Curious Expeditions)

N.I.W. No.3

This morning's round up of some of the locals and holiday-makers spending their summer in my garden.
The Good...

...The Bad (passed away shortly after the photograph was taken) & The Ugly (also no longer with us)

More Bugs

Here is a sample from Georgii Georgievich Jakobson's illustrated book 'The Beetles of Russia, Western Europe and Neighbouring Countries' (1917). Click on the picture to enlarge, and the link for hundreds more beautiful beetles. And then if you're in the mood for a tear-jerker, have a read through the biographical notes on Jakobson.

EntOmology 101

It's National Insect Week here, in America it's National Pollinator Week. And look what crawled out of the woodwork today...


Click on the picture for greater detail
... a female stag beetle (Lucanus cervus) about 5 cm. long. I spotted her on a stump in the chicken corral and got to her before they did. Let the Great Stag Hunt know if you find one.

L'escargot

The lock upon my garden gate's a snail, that's what it is
The lock upon my garden gate's a snail, that's what it is
First there is a mountain then there is no mountain, then there is
Donovan

Hunh??
Anyway, there have been a lot of snails about lately. Glistening snail trails through the garden every morning. Sadly they have polished off 6 out of 8 'Hugh's Huge' peas. They had to tiptoe through a crushed eggshell barrier to do it too. But I have a new weapon in the arsenal for naughty molluscs. Three actually. The hens. They don't suffer long.


Illustration from Agence Eureka
Psst.. 'E-lect-tric-al Ba-na-na is going to be the very next craze'

The Acrobatic Fly

"I love only the cleanest flies, super-gay, dressed in little grey alpace suits from Balenciaga, glittering like a dry rainbow, precise as mica, with granite eyes and with bellies of noble Naples yellow, such as the marvellous little olive flies of Port Lligat, where nobody lives except gala and dali. These little flies always have the grace to sit on the oxidised silver side of the olive leaf. They are the fairies of the Mediterranean." Dali 1966
Dali said that he was only happy in the sun, naked and covered with flies. And he would wax his moustache with sticky date juice and pour anchovy oil over his head to attract them.
Whatever your feelings toward flies you've got to be impressed by the dexterity and strength of 'The Acrobatic Fly' from 1910.


Click on picture to enlarge.

Beetle mania

If you've never seen E.O.Wilson in action, enthusing about the abundance and diversity of life on earth, then take a look at his TED acceptance speech last year. His inquisitiveness is infectious. Without getting into numbers, which are big and speculative, there is a lot out there that we don't know about and haven't yet named. But that's what he wants to do in 'The Encyclopedia of Life'.
Like, there are lots of beetles - apparently 1 in 4 animals is one. And they keep finding more. As I mentioned before, one was discovered by Michael's cousin Werner. Very often they can only be differentiated by their unique genitalia. Hmm, well I don't know what I was doing (darning my socks?) but I missed hearing that one day back in 2005, Quentin Walker, chief entomologist at the Natural History Museum sorted through some goolies and discovered three new species. Of slime-mould consuming beetles. So he named them for his three favourite Republicans - Agathidium bushi, A. cheneyi, and A. rumsfeldi. So I've just taken the trouble to update this handy diagram.

The Correct Method of Pinning Common Insects

Rings of Saturn

" ... we had walked out together into the garden, where night had already fallen. We waited for the taxi beside the Hölderlin pump, and by the faint light that fell from the living-room window into the well I saw, with a shudder that went to the roots of my hair, a beetle rowing across the surface of the water, from one dark shore to the other."
Sebald, again, on leaving Michael Hamburger's home.