The Toad in the Pond.

Just a quick update about the pond and how it's coming along, you remember, at the end of summer last year I pretty much broke my back digging through pure red Shropshire clay to put in a pre-fab pond my Mum had given me. Three weeks later I had already got two Frogs and a Toad in it.

Fast forward to today and I no longer have Frogs, don't know what happened to them, maybe they had an argument with the Toads or something, but I now have two Toads in the pond...

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Free Macro Spider and Hoverfly Backgrounds for Widescreen or Standard

Yesterday I went up the woods with BF and took some shots of the insects up there, you would be surprised at just how many insects there are!

Anyway, as a big thank you to you dear reader, I offer you two images available as a free download you can use as desktop wallpaper...

All you need to do is click the word below the image you would like to download, this will take you to the filedropper website, just follow their instructions and you will have downloaded the image.

To install: Just find the image on your hard-drive, right click and then choose 'Set as Desktop Wallpaper' - Simple!

WideScreen

Normal

WideScreen

Normal

Hope you like them, let me know if you download one and how it looks :)

Dustbathing Chicken Dance

My chickens were let out for the first time this week and they have had a great time (and so have I) they have eaten all of the slugs and snails they can find and have scratched all over the bare dirt, diggin up weed seedlings - double bonus for me.

After eating and scratching they decided to have a dustbath...

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Bees and Spiders

It was a sunny day, and guess what... I had to go to bloody work! I did manage to grab 20 minutes or so beforehand to get outside with the whole set of extension tubes and the 85mm f/1.8 nikkor attached to the front of the camera. Let me just say how heavy this set-up was, and if you do use it on your camera, make sure you are supporting the lens at all times, not only does this decrease camera shake, but it also stops the whole ensemble from breaking apart and falling off (Which it didn't do but it felt like it was about to!)

Honey Bee
Apis melifera

Fact: All worker bees are female.

Buzzing Spider (Female)
Anyphaena accentuata

Fact: This spider is named due to the buzzing sound it creates as it vibrates it's abdomen against leaves. This behaviour is seen in the males when trying to attract a mate.

This is the Male

Buzzing Spider (Male)
Anyphaena accentuata

Squeak the Cat

This is 'Squeak' my cat, he is 10 years old and sleeps like a dog! 

Squeak.

12 Perennials That Butterflies Love

1. Garden phlox (Phlox paniculata)

Photo: © Marie Iannotti, About.com Guide to Gardening

Garden phlox may be old school gardening, but the butterflies don't seem to care. With clusters of fragrant flowers on tall stems, garden phlox offers nectar in summer and fall. Plant Phlox paniculata and expect visits from clouded sulphurs, European cabbage butterflies, silvery checkerspots, and all kinds of swallowtails.

2. Blanket flower (Gaillardia)

Photo: © Marie Iannotti, About.com Guide to Gardening

In my yard, blanket flower is a "plant and ignore" flower. It's drought tolerant and can handle poor soil conditions. Once established it will push out blooms right to frost. Few butterflies will roll up their proboscises and flutter away from this one. Look for sulphurs, whites, and swallowtails once this one flowers.

3. Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

Photo: © Debbie Hadley, WILD Jersey

A few plants go by the name butterfly weed, but Asclepias tuberosadeserves the name like no others. Monarchs will be twice as happy when you plant this bright orange flower, since it is both a nectar source and a host plant for their caterpillars. Butterfly weed starts slow, but the flowers are worth the wait. Better get a field guide for this one, because you might see coppers, hairstreaks, fritillaries, swallowtails, spring azures, and of course, monarchs.

4. Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis)

Photo: © Marie Iannotti, About.com Guide to Gardening

Goldenrod's gotten a bad rap for years now, simply because its yellow blooms appear at the same time as the sneeze-inducing ragweed. Don't be fooled, though - Solidago canadensis is a worthwhile addition to your butterfly garden. It's fragrant flowers appear in summer and continue through autumn. Butterflies that nectar on goldenrod include checkered skippers, American small coppers, clouded sulphurs, pearl crescents, gray hairstreaks, monarchs, giant swallowtails, and all manner of fritillaries.

5. New England aster (Aster novae-angiae)

Photo: © Marie Iannotti, About.com Guide to Gardening

Asters are the flowers you drew as a child, many-petaled blossoms with a button-like disk in the center. Any variety of aster will do, really, when it comes to attracting butterflies. I like New England asters for their prolific flowers late in the year, which coincide nicely with the monarch migration. Plant asters to see buckeyes, skippers, monarchs, painted ladies, pearl crescents, sleepy oranges, and spring azures.

6. Joe-pye weed (Eupatorium purpureum)

Photo: © Marie Iannotti, About.com Guide to Gardening

Joe-pye weed is great for the back of your garden beds, where at nearly 6 feet in height, it will tower over lesser perennials. While my gardening books list it Eupatorium as a shade-loving plant of wetland areas, I've had success planting it just about anywhere, including in my full sun butterfly garden. Another late season bloomer, Joe-pye weed is an all-purpose backyard habitat plant, attracting all kinds of butterflies, as well as bees and hummingbirds.

7. Blazing star (Liatris spicata)

Photo: © Debbie Hadley, WILD Jersey

Liatris spicata goes by many names: blazing star, gayfeather, liatris, and button snakeroot. Butterflies (and bees) love it no matter what the name. With showy purple spikes of flowers and leaves that appear like clumps of grass, blazing star is an interesting addition to any perennial garden. I added a few white varieties (Liatris spicata 'alba') to my butterfly bed for more contrast. Buckeyes are frequent visitors to this perennial.

8. Tickseed (Coreopsis verticillata)

Photo: © Debbie Hadley, WILD Jersey

Coreopsis is one of the easiest perennials to grow, and with little effort you'll get a reliable show of summer flowers. The variety shown here is threadleaf coreopsis, but really any coreopsis will do. Their yellow flowers call smaller butterflies, like skippers and whites.

9. Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)

Photo: © dog madic/Stock.xchng

If you want low maintenance gardening, purple coneflower is another great choice. Echinacea purpurea is a native prairie flower of the U.S., and a well-known medicinal plant. Large purple flowers with drooping petals make excellent landing pads for larger nectar seekers, likemonarchs and swallowtails.

10. Stonecrop 'Autumn Joy' (Sedum 'Herbstfreude')

Photo: © Marie Iannotti, About.com Guide to Gardening

When I first saw sedum on a list of butterfly plants, I had doubts. It's not the showy, colorful perennial you picture when thinking of butterfly gardens. Still, I decided to plant some and wouldn't you know it - you can't keep the butterflies off the sedum. With succulent stems, sedum almost looks like a desert plan before it blooms late in the season. Sedums attract a variety of butterflies: American painted ladies, buckeyes, gray hairstreaks, monarchs, painted ladies, pearl crescents, pepper and salt skippers, silver-spotted skippers, and fritillaries.

11. Black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia fulgida)

Photo: © Debbie Hadley, WILD Jersey

Another North American native, black-eyed susans bloom from summer to frost. Rudbeckia is a prolific bloomer, which is why it's such a popular perennial and an excellent nectar source for butterflies. Look for larger butterflies like swallowtails and monarchs on these yellow flowers.

12. Bee Balm (Monarda)

Photo: © Flickr users Carly & Art, CC Share-Alike license

It might be obvious that a plant named bee balm would attract bees, but it's just as good at attracting butterflies. Monarda spp. produces tufts of red, pink, or purple flowers on the tops of tall stems. Be careful where you plant it, as this member of the mint family will spread. Checkered whites, fritillaries, melissa blues, and swallowtails all visit bee balm.

via 12 Perennials That Butterflies Love.

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The Common Frog

My first frog to visit the garden last year, the pond had only been in about 2 weeks, and after adding the plants and things from Freegle this little beauty was so lovely!

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The Decline of the Common House Sparrow

The common House sparrow, I have quite a few where I live and they are always in the garden, gobbling up the leftover chicken feed and scattering about in the plants for odd crumbs and so forth.  There is also a nest they visit every year, it is an old ventilation flue in the wall and they always raise at least three to five babies.

You can imagine my surprise to find out that these little birds are on the Concerned list, which is pretty much one step away from endangered!

To give them a helping hand, I have fixed up another nest box for them to use if they see fit.

Birdhouse: £3.00 from Morrisons | Wood Pole: £free - it's form an old bed that broke | Wire: Scavenged

I have always put food out for the birds all year, this photo was taken on the 18th Jan 2013 and shows the Sparrows quite well I think!

Last Summer

I bought the chicken shed after the old one was looking bloody awful and worn (they also had the run of the garden and devastated it completely!). It took a while to save up for this but I love it. It fits in so well with my plans for the garden I cannot begin to tell you!

For most of the summer and Autumn, the three girls were kept inside until one day they managed to get out, I think it was the beginning of November... anyway to cut a long story short, I left it open and they had the run of the gardenfor the whole of winter, I was feeling guilty for locking them up when they were used to having a whole garden to scratch about it.
Lesson learned though, the garden is pretty much trashed again, all of that lovely green grass you see there... gone... so they are once again confined to quarters.

The pond.

I put in the pond during October last year (2012) and within a month it was populated with all manner of frogs and toads and of course the dreaded Mosquito. I added a couple of small fish to it so they would eat the mosquito larve and they did a fine job.

I don't think they survived the winter. I haven't seen them since the pond thawed.

I have a lot more planting to do around the pond but already the water speedwell is growing and I can see that the water forget-me-nots are starting to get bigger.

I also have some tete-a-tete daffs to go around it as well... Only 50p per pot (about 5 plants in each) from Morrisons at the moment so I grabbed 6 pots! I am a very frugal gardener really, we aren't on the highest of wages so I really have to watch what I'm spending on un-necessities like the garden flowers.

I do however but and raise seeds. Look for the next post on the plants I'm growing from seed this year!