Meanwhile, what's been happening in the garden?

Time for a break from holiday photos and a catch up with the garden.

These photos are from July, August and September, and I'll post them in date order. Back in July I saw this young Praying Mantis (Mantis religiosa) walking along the wall of the house. It was only about 4cm long.

I've seen some new to the garden butterflies this summer, the first of which I was really pleased to see - the Lulworth Skipper (Thymelicus acteon)! They used to love my lavender at the last house too.

I'm not sure what this butterfly is below, possibly a Common Blue. I only saw its underside.

True Bugs. Left is a Fire Bug (Pyrrhocoris apterus), known in France as a Gendarme. Middle top and bottom is a Red Shield Bug (Carpocoris mediterraneus), presumably not in its final instar which will be red, and right is a seed bug called Spilostethus pandurus.

The geraniums looked great for a couple of months until the naughty Geranium Bronze butterflies had their wicked way with them, but by then the Bidens which was also in many of the pots took over. Bidens is the orangey flowering plant in the foreground - and they are still looking like this now in November, although the flowers have turned a darker orange. What a great plant! There is also a Lantana amongst these plants - all the Lantanas survived the winter and have been flowering around the pool all summer and some still have flowers on even now.

August and the tomatoes and chillies were doing well.

I made four new tomato plants from the side shoots which had grown whilst we were away in June; it's a great way to get free plants so long as you can propagate this way early enough to get a crop.

I was so happy to see flowers on my Lagerstroemia shrub as it's the first time it has bloomed since we moved here. I love these shrubs so much I even bought a new one as I'd given up on this one! Guess what? They both had flowers on this year! I'm not sure why the leaves were this colour, they do seem to be more of a copper colour but I think the intensity is due to the dry conditions. The ones I see when driving around all have green leaves though.

Now onto September: Me and my shadow. 😀 I didn't want to crop the picture! This is the first summer for the Nectar Bar and it's done remarkably well given the dry conditions. We did start watering after a while as some plants were not doing well, even so, it's fairly impossible to water enough, and with our water restrictions we couldn't use the hose after about July/August. You can see how dry the grass was!

We had a decent rainfall at the end of September which has greened things up a lot, but since then only small amounts of rain, so most of the trees and shrubs this autumn are just a dull yellowy brown. October (whilst we were away!) was also a warm month, so there haven't been any frosts yet, which I think also help with autumn leaf colour. 

This end was quite full and floral compared to the other end. I had no idea the Gaura would be so big, and the Sage 'Hot Lips' (foreground) has flowered its face off from about June to now. The other sages haven't got as established and are much smaller.

It felt quite autumnal when the berries formed on the Pyracantha hedge!

These garlic chives in a pot will be divided up and moved to my Nectar Bar next spring. The ones in my herb bed have self seeded and the new plants are already flowering! Insects love them, the flowers look great, and the leaves are of course, garlic flavoured chives! Win win. 👍

Another new to the garden butterfly has been the Brown Argus (Aricia agestis). I first spotted a pair mating when I didn't have a camera with me, but luckily I saw them again. I'm not sure if this is a male or female, as they both have sex brands (the dark mark on upper forewing).

The third butterfly I saw was a Long-tailed Blue (Lampides boeticus). I saw one in my garden in Brittany so it's not a lifer, but still special. I saw one in the garden again since we came back from holiday, at the beginning of November, but I didn't have a camera either time!

Then there is this one, who for the life of me I cannot ID! It's old and worn, with the outer white edges of the wings worn away, but mostly it's the white markings at the bottom of the upper hindwings which puzzle me. It also has the extra markings on the underside of the forewing which not many Blues have. It's possible it is an Adonis Blue?? Hmmmm. 😕

A final photo of a 5-spot Burnet moth (Zygaena trifolii).

You can see that the most popular nectar plants for butterflies and moths are Lavender, Perovskia (aka Russian Sage), and Sedum. I'm looking forward to this Sedum growing bigger in the future. Given that I have spring bulbs planted, and there are still plants flowering, it looks like I should get about eight to nine months of nectar for the insects! 👍😀

P.S. Whilst we are on an insect post, do you remember this caterpillar I came across back in April, which was crossing the road? I've since discovered that it's the larva of the Glanville Fritillary butterfly!

Finally - phew, it is SO much easier blogging on my desktop, compared to my ipad!!! 😀

A walk to the Albir lighthouse in the Serra Gelada natural park

About halfway through our trip, we stayed three nights in L’Albir, which is at the other end of the bay from busier Altea. Altea however has a very pretty old town and I have lots of photos from that visit, which I’ll sort out when home. So for now, I’ll take you along this 5km there and back walk to the lighthouse of Albir, which looks back over the whole bay area. 

The path was fantastic, nice flat even concrete so you can walk along admiring the scenery without having to watch for rocks or roots which invariably trip me if I’m not careful on most walks! The downside was that it was part cloudy and very hazy the morning that we walked here. It seemed very humid in L’Albir, so we wanted to get our exercise out of the way in the cooler morning! It did clear a bit along the way, so we were hugging the shady side on the way back. 

Altea zoomed in above, and K at the beginning of the walk with L’Albir in the background below.

Below, Mediterranean Heather (pink flowers) and Rosemary flowering everywhere on the rocky garrigue.

(A side note: I don’t know what’s going on here but since all the insects in my first post there have been very few, and south of Valencia I have barely seen a bee or hoverfly on all these flowers (between the native plants and the foreign species in bloom in people's gardens/campsites) - only a few wasps, flies and mossies. Crickets have been making their summery noise at night when we pass wasteland on the way to a restaurant but apart from that, and a few Red Admirals and White butterflies, virtually nothing! OK, it’s late October, but it’s about 28C during the day and mild at night. It’s just very weird - and disappointing!)

You can just see the lighthouse at the top middle of the photo below. If you click to view larger, it will be clearer.

There used to be an ochre mine here in the 19thC through to early 20thC. Info is given in English in the following photo on the info board (click to view larger if you can’t read it).

There was a good photographic display about the families who worked at the lighthouse, which was difficult to access back in the olden days. Two families would live in this building, with the two lighthouse keepers.

You can see the path running left to right through the middle section of the photo.

Lavandula dentata, which PlantNet calls French Lavender; however I always thought that was the Papillon Lavender, which is L. stoechas. I haven’t seen this species of Lavender growing wild before.

We are enjoying our last week and started heading back north today, first stop the Ebro Delta for a couple of nights and some birding around the lagoons and rice paddies. 😄

The desert of Abanilla, Murcia

This desert-like area was just over the border into Murcia, which I read somewhere was the, or one of the, most arid parts of Spain. We had already been driving through fields of different kinds of produce - from most of Valencia’s oranges, rice and olives to orchards of pomegranates and fields of date palms. I’m now feeling inquisitive as to what they might grow in the very south of Spain! Strangely enough, around Valencia there have been many fields of globe artichokes, a crop very common around Roscoff in Brittany. And even stranger indeed, fields galore of cabbages. I’m amazed they would grow through the heat of Spain’s summer, even though of course they are irrigated.

Here however, there was nothing. Nada. Oh ok, a few olives here and there. 😄

All photos are SOOC again, and the sky was hazy, but you can see from the pic of Keith and his bright shirt that the landscape colours really were that pale colour. Those were mostly rocks rather than soil where they are completely devoid of vegetation. I love these weird kind of landscapes!

Looking in the other direction it’s a little greener with an olive grove in the middle of the wild landscape.

I don’t know what this plant is below - it’s a rush-like plant (I’ll PlantNet it when I get home as it’s fascinating) and it’s so amazing to see signs of life even on seemingly half dead things. I’m not sure if these tiny pretty peach flowers are actual flowers, or bracts.

Other life? I saw my first real, through binoculars, Dartford Warbler! 💕 We think we’ve seen them before when we didn’t have binocs, because of the way they hold their long tails, like a wren. Even this time the bird was backlit so couldn’t see all the details and colours, but I’ll take that as a tick! 

Here are a couple of pics of me at Morella; they were on K’s phone so I didn’t have them at the time of doing the last post. The burger is a very weird deconstructed one at a quite posh restaurant, delicious, but give me a regular burger any day! 😄

I’m sorry I haven’t visited any of your blogs, my evenings are busy downloading photos and checking out places to park and that kind of thing for the next day and more Facebooking than usual due to posting a few photos there. Be back soon!