Song for Jasmine

Summer has gone, Autumn is here. Trees are shedding leaves, flowers are fading fast, and the house-martins left a while ago. But as Jane points out in Urban Extension, sometimes there are new things to see in Autumn. I haven’t seen her special bee yet, though I’m keeping an eye on the ivy near my home. However, I have seen lots of other interesting things recently. Here’s a selection taken from a walk through the country lanes near Divonne two weeks ago.

At the top is a Pale Tussock moth caterpillar (Calliteara pudibunda). This guy was crossing the road, intent on going somewhere. I’ve never seen one of these before, but this must be the season for them, because we found another further on. They’re rather striking, the tufts make them look like a toothbrush!

There are still some flowers around, and yes, there are insects keen to visit them. This bee and the fly were just two of the more co-operative characters we encountered.

Autumn is, of course, a good time for fungi. I don’t know the names of any of these, maybe Winter Woman knows, she’s keen on fungi.

Further on, there were plenty of other insects crossing the road. On the left is a forest bug (Pentatoma rufipes). On the right is a dragonfly, a ruddy darter (Sympetrum sanguineum), who very obligingly stayed still long enough for me to take his photograph. That doesn’t happen often.

All the insects shown so far were actually on the road, for reasons only they know. This great green bush cricket (Tettigonia viridissima) was no exception. Dweezeljazz almost stepped on it, but she saw it just in time. It then hopped into the grass at the side of the road, making it much more photogenic. The Rhopalus subrufus on the right was on a wall in Divonne. Not exactly its native habitat, but well-placed for the shadow to show details you can’t see on the actual insect, so I’m quite happy with this shot.

It’s not just insects out and about in the Autumn sunshine. I was rather lucky to get a shot of the lizard before he dived under cover. The frog did dive for cover, but then drifted out to take a look, and stayed still for the photos. Very kind of him!

There’s still plenty of action on the plant front too. There are many flowers to be seen, even if they are mostly small and unspectacular by comparison with the competition in summer. These blue flowers are some of the largest still around. But even without flowers, there are some very pretty plants, like the Verbascum rosette. Elsewhere in our contryside, there are verbascum plants in their second year which still have some flowers left on them, bright against the brown of dying vegetation. Meanwhile, these first-year rosettes look very pretty in their own right.

Then there’s this old apple tree, which has sufferred badly in the late summer storms. Despite this, it’s still doing a good job of maturing its fruit, you can see there’s no shortage of them still on the tree. It’s clearly not giving up without a fight.

My little organic terrace-garden has been rather successful this year, and the produce has been very welcome at our table. We’re not the only ones to appreciate it, naturally, there are plenty of critters who have helped themselves throughout the summer. That’s OK with me, I’m happy to share to some extent, providing they don’t eat everything.

One common form of damage has been beetroot leaves eaten out from the inside by leaf-miners. There was a lot of this in early summer in particular, and I had little choice but to remove the affected parts of the leaves and throw them away. Otherwise I would have had very few leaves left on some of my plants! Apparently, some plants have evolved patterns of markings that look similar to the damage caused by leaf-miners, which protects them because the leaf-miners prefer unoccupied leaves in which to lay their eggs. Maybe I’ll ask Dweezeljazz to go out and paint the leaves for me next year, that sounds like a job for an artist!

There have been any number of butterflies hovering around the garden, even well before there were any flowers in evidence. They must have had something else in mind and yes, sure enough, I have found lots of eggs hidden on the leaves. Some were quite hard to spot, among the beetroot in particular. Some were easier, like the yellow eggs on the nasturtium leaves.

Butterfly eggs, of course, hatch into caterpillars, and I have found quite a number through the summer. On the left is a ‘Small White’ (Pieris rapae), this one was just running around the rim of the pot like he was desperate to find the end of it. I don’t know what the one on the right is called. Below them is, I think, the caterpillar of a Garden Tiger moth (Arctia caja). Apparently, Tiger Moth numbers have been decimated in the last 30 years, due largely to excessive use of pesticides. Like many other small creatures, they are now in need of protection in the UK. This one was running across our living room floor at high speed, heading for the stairs, looking for a place to pupate. He was safely redirected to the great outdoors!

There have been a number of other insects, such as this bright green beetle (probably a Chrysolina species), and the two crickets below.

The one on the right is Roesel’s bush cricket, (Metrioptera roeselii), and this poor specimen has lost one of his hind legs. Despite this, he was quite agile, climbing easily, and was able to manage a decent hop when I picked him up and released him in the nearby bushes.

It’s not just insects that visit our garden. After being absent this summer, the goldfinches are back, this one investigating the sunflower heads for seeds. Well, that’s why I planted them! I know it’s not a good photograph, but it’s the only one of a goldfinch that I have at the moment, so it will have to do. Hopefully I’ll get better photos later.

Although not closely related to the American goldfinch, it does share its taste for sunflower seeds!

Finally, late one night a few weeks ago, we found this hedgehog doing the rounds on our terrace. I don’t think he found anything edible, but he’s welcome to come back anytime. Again, not a perfect photo, but we don’t like to use flash on animals, especially nocturnal ones. He wasn’t hanging around for us to get many shots, this is the only one we got of him too!

I haven’t any photos of all the bees, butterflies and wasps that have visited my garden too. Maybe next year. It’s amazing how much variety you can get visiting just a few pots of plants.

I read an post on Gills blog (That British Woman) recently which described a game that I thought would be fun to play. The rules are simple:

• You leave a comment on her blog, she assigns you a letter
• You then write a post about 10 things you like, beginning with that letter, for your own blog
• When people comment on your list, you continue the game by assigning them a letter

I took the plunge, and Gill gave me the letter ‘N’. Here’s my list, achieved with only a little cheating!

Nat My first ‘N’ is easy, my wife Nat, also known as Dweezeljazz. Life just keeps on getting better with her and because of her.

Night-skies I have had an interest in astronomy ever since I can remember. As a kid I used to make telescopes out of whatever spare lenses I could find. You couldn’t see much through them, but I had fun anyway.

Night-dives Looking down instead of up, I’ve been on a few diving holidays to the Maldives in the past. Night-dives are something special, seeing how the reef changes. I’ve dived the same reef in the afternoon and the evening of the same day, and it’s like it’s a different place altogether.

Nature, in general, has also been a lifelong interest for me. At school, the teachers had to persuade me to read fiction-books in the reading lessons, instead of books about things that live at the bottom of a pond. I suppose they had their reasons!

Notocactus, a type of cactus with very pretty flowers. Even though they are apparently now called Parodia instead of Notocactus, they were still called Notocactus when I started growing them as a kid, so I’m sticking to the name. I had over 400 species of cactus in my collection as a teenager, nearly all of them died when I went to university and they could not be looked after in winter. Now I have space for only a few plants, and Notocactus Tabularis is among them.

Nemo. “Finding Nemo” has to be one of the best films of all time. I just love those characters, I even have a little plastic Nemo on my desk. Sad, I know…

New Technology. My first computer had 1kB of memory. I’m glad things have progressed, and I do my best to keep up with what’s new.

Nudibranchs, or sea-slugs, are some of the most colourful and beautiful creatures in the sea. They’re small, so can be hard to spot, but I enjoy looking for them. After all, anyone can spot a whale.

Neige. I know, that’s “snow” in english, which begins with an ‘S’, not an ‘N’. But this is supposed to be a bilingual blog, so I can use a French ‘N’ too, can’t I? We’ve had a lot of snow here this winter, and I just love the way it changes the landscape.

Nat, again, because every fun thing that I do begins and ends with her.

I have to say, that was harder than I thought it would be, even though Gill was kind to me with the letter (thanks, Gill). Still, I did it, so does anyone else want to play?