Harvest time and this year's planters around the pool

I feel liberated not having a huge veggie patch to have to look after, yet I still miss it in a way. However we absolutely have to have some home grown tomatoes, so I grow some in large pots on the patio around the pool. This year I also have three varieties of chilli (two hot), and two varieties of bell pepper. There are two varieties of cherry tomato and one large one, the Black Crimean, which is really tasty.

This year though, we also have citrus fruits! I have a few fruit slowly growing on my Kaffir Lime tree.

The Meyer Lemon is doing well too and these lemons are already about half size. The flowers are very strongly perfumed and the big blue Carpenter Bees absolutely loved them. I am battling insects on it though - first there was a regular looking scale insect, and now a weird kind of thing I haven't seen before, which I have discovered is Cottony Cushion Scale. The adults grow up to 5mm long and are disgusting to squish 😀 as they are soft and sticky. I've been using Savon Noir which helps to control the pests, and also washes off the sooty mould that is appearing thanks to the honeydew that they excrete. It's a natural product containing soap and olive oil, which I suppose helps make it stick to the leaves and stalks, and seems to be quite effective against unwanted critters. 

First real harvest of various tomatoes, peppers and chillies!

We sit out on the patio often in the early evening, even when it is hot (and we have a lovely air conditioned house!) because it’s just nicer being outside. Most evenings the Cirl Bunting comes around - on this particular day he was calling to the female. We were not sure if he was trying to entice her by the juicy grub or whether there were still chicks in a nest that he was going to feed.

I noticed this amazing view so had to grab a camera - whilst we see beautiful sunsets through our kitchen window I've never seen the sky like this before.

Bedding plants around the pool: Fewer geraniums this year to combat the pesky Geranium Bronze butterfly, although I've only seen one of them this summer! But my plan was that if they destroyed the geraniums, I would still have colour around the pool. The Bidens (the orange daisy like flowers) have been magnificent. I also have six Lantanas which I bought from the local nursery, who had sold out of most other plants. 😞 I ended up at the garden centre having to buy more expensive individual geraniums in larger pots as they had sold out of the small ones in trays of six or ten. Next year I will get on to this much sooner - I forget that I am in the south and everyone is buying their bedding much earlier than in Brittany!

This year's colour scheme is hot! Lantana:

Bidens with red Geranium and white Lantana in the background:

I've started collecting plants that I want for my nectar bar bed that hopefully will be created this autumn - as I need a 'helper' 😀 to clear the turf and prep the ground so that I can plant. It's annoying to buy the plants larger like this as the price is ridiculous, but buying them in season is often the only way to be sure of finding the plants that you want, and to be sure of the colours of the flowers. Oh well, at least the bed will look good from next year as some of the plants are quite mature.

There is a lot of watering to do though; often I need to water these plants twice a day as they dry out so quickly. 

Lavender, Nepeta, Perovskia and in the foreground, a really lovely purple Sedum called 'Dazzleberry'. The other Sedum in the glazed pot was left here for us! I also have Gaura and yet another Sedum hiding behind the pillar.

Salvia 'Hot Lips' and 'Amethyst Lips':

Next photo - Perovskia, Nepeta and Salvia guaranitica (which I hadn't realised were actually shrubs that grow to about 1.5 metres!). So I will plant these two beauties (the ones at the front) at each end of the bed.

I'm going to add some herbs to this bed, including Rosemary which flowers in the late winter, and bulbs for early spring flowers for the pollinators. Hopefully there will be about 9-10 months' worth of flowers for them. The Perovskia in particular is already covered in buzzy bees nectaring on the blooms. 🐝🐝🐝

The pool looking inviting on a lovely day (that's the robot in there cleaning it - it's just like a robot vacuum!):

We have been enjoying all the fields full of sunflowers around here, and I've been wanting to take photos for weeks, but it's hard to find somewhere to pull over when you are on a main road! Finally we found a place where we could stop, although the flowers were just starting to go over, but there were still some individual heads that were perfect. Honey bees were enjoying the pollen and nectar. I have other photos I will feature in another post later. 😀🌻🌻🌻

The rest of the garden is coming along fine, although I still haven’t seen a butterfly on my new Buddleia. The herb bed has been full of colour and bees enjoying the flowers, which has been great as I can see most of it through the kitchen window. The greengage was so loaded in fruit a few weeks back that I took about six bags around to various neighbours, and met some of them whilst doing so, which was nice. The neighbours whose house we look out over from our kitchen window gave us a bag of tomatoes last week, just at a point when we had no ripe tomatoes ourselves, so that worked out well! Covid has prevented us getting to know anyone around here other than exchanging a bonjour in passing. I still don’t feel like socialising with people I don’t know indoors though. You can't really say "Would you like to come around for a coffee, but you can only come if you've been vaccinated". :-/ Maybe next year.

Wordless-ish Wednesday

As I wrote lots in the last post, I'll just finish off the month with a number of photos taken over the last few weeks with just captions and no more blurb!

It's harvest time! Walnuts are dropping and we have quite a few
apples this year, so we've already picked a load of them and they
are a million times better than the rubbish apples sold in the shops!

Thanks to the rain we had some peaches this year -
they are wild and only small with quite tough skin,
but I like these tart white fleshed ones.
Yet they only stay good for about a week, even in the fridge.

The bare earth is where the potatoes were growing but even that is being
rapidly colonised by self seeding flowers - and since I took this photo
a few weeks back it is even more colourful.

Coriander lawn emerging, with a Phacelia lawn by the fence!
I have weeded out dozens of self seeded Borage.

Again the weather has been kind to my spinach which was
about to bolt but cooler damp weather has meant
there is absolutely tons of it to harvest.

A Small Heath butterfly on my Sedum - it's rare that I see these butterflies nectaring.

Plenty of butterflies this month with a Brimstone at the top,
Red Admiral left and Comma right.

I love the wings on these huge Violet Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa violacea).

I'm being kind again - here's another Cross Orb Weaver, this time with some dinner. Just click on the link here.

Smokebush 'Grace' is flowering again
thanks to the rain in August and Sept!

I want to get more Sedums like this 'Autumn Joy' in my
thyme bank next year, along with some more Stipa grasses
as they are all drought proof.

Out of focus, but does anyone know what this is?
It was in a packet of mixed seeds for pollinators, and keeps self seeding.

Greenfinch enjoying the sunflower seeds.

A load of huge fungi seen in a nearby orchard - one was as big as a dinner plate!

A walk we did a while back up high looking down over
the Couesnon valley - not sure what is what down there as
there's a river, a mill race and a trout pond.

The viewpoint was the shrine at the top and
I'm amazed I managed to get up there at all! :-)

To finish, Bertie in some silly and cute poses.

A tummy tickle would be nice.....

.....or maybe I'll just smell the roses Erigeron!

Hope everyone in Europe is enjoying the sun!

It's starting to feel a bit like autumn

I'm one of those people who refuse to accept that it is autumn before the due date, i.e. the autumn equinox. However all the signs are appearing, from the cooler mornings with dewy grass showing up tiny webs which I try not to step on, and larger orb webs visible when I let the chickens out early in the morning. After the rain some shroomy things have been appearing, though not like the amounts we'll get later on in real autumn. Robins seem to have returned; although I don't think they go away, they always seem absent during the summer and then appear to come back because they start singing when the others birds stop, and continue singing all through the winter. Thank goodness for Robins! The late summer butterflies are back and lovely and colourful, ditto the late summer damselflies and dragonflies I see here. And we are eating our pears and it won't be long before the first apples are ready - they are already looking plump and red on our best eating apple trees. 

Gathering pears - we have two more trees
but there are not many on them.

Looking for Wasp Spiders at home with a helper.
We didn't find any here.

The bit of lawn that was brownest is greening up nicely,
although half of that green is weeds!
Some bits have had to be mown already.

A fat fungi I've never seen before -
the stalk is more than an inch in diameter.

About four feet away this little one came up,
which after three days is now looking like the one above.
Any ideas anyone?

This is a nymph of the Striped Shield Bug (Graphosoma lineatum),
the red and black stripey bug.

This true bug I have no idea! All I know is that it's not the
Green Shield Bug (Palomena prasina) cos I found one in the garden
and checked out its underside..... I love the colours, whatever this is!
And before you ask, I have no idea why I did not take
a photo of its top side..... hmmm!

Back to those bug eggs again - this is the best I could do.
They do look like tiny bugs emerging, but as the eggs are 1mm wide,
I really can't do any better than this.

On the M. W. Walk, we came across this beautiful dragonfly.
It's a Migrant Hawker (Aeshna mixta) and probably a young male,
as the mature males tend to have a blue/brown abdomen.

I had to take a few photos as I've never seen this dragonfly before so here it is again.....
Migrant Hawker (Aeshna mixta)

At home the Western Willow Spreadwings (Lestes viridis, or Chalcolestes viridis) have appeared.
They are always happy to perch on vegetation near the pond.

Western Willow Spreadwing (Lestes viridis, or Chalcolestes viridis).

Another Harvestman, quite different from the one I showed last post.
I've never delved into Harvestman identification so I'm hoping JJ might know! :-)

Sawfly larvae on a small Alder tree by the pond.
This one in the foreground has just had a moult, and you can see the
discarded skin under the first three true legs on the twig.
Its head will darken up like the other one after a few hours.

On the same tree I found this tussock moth larva. It looks very like a Vapourer Moth (Orgyia antiqua) but the tail end is a bit different and not the normal dark colour. However I can't find any other European tussock moth whose caterpillar looks remotely like this, so maybe it isn't a final instar one??

Vapourer Moth (Orgyia antiqua) caterpillar - I think!

Vapourer moth (Orgyia antiqua) caterpillar - I think!

This moth was on a stinging nettle by the orchard -
it doesn't have a common name, only Latin, Carcina quercana.

Butterflies gorging on rotting plums - Red Admiral, Peacock, Comma and in the pic bottom left,
there are two Commas and a Red Admiral. I'm too lazy to add Latin names but you
European peeps know these butterflies well!

I'm adding a final photo but I'll keep it hidden from those who don't like spiders so you will have to click to see it. I had been doing a bit of gardening and whilst wandering around, felt something tickling my shoulder. I put my hand inside my T-shirt and felt something furry! Eeeks! I freaked thinking it might be a wasp or a bee, as I react badly to wasp stings and don't fancy being stung by anything, particularly right now; lord knows what would happen with my buggered immune system. So I hurriedly stripped off down to bra in the garden (not overlooked thank goodness!), turned my T-shirt inside out, and was hugely relieved to find it was 'only' a large Cross Orb Weaver! Phew. :-) Pic here.

After a lovely few days it looks like cooler wet weather is coming back again but at least I got out away from the house twice this week, and I'm meeting up with friends for lunch next week and desperately need to get a hair cut too (preferably before seeing friends...). So many things to do whilst I've got a bit of energy. Still not heard from the hospital as to when my last chemo will be, but quite frankly right now I don't care!