Wildflowers round my pond
Waterlilies
More Jubilation
Wildlife Garden Achieved
Hand in hand through their pondlife
Where’s the focus?
The joy of our own pond
I’m so glad we made a pond. Bruce’s back didn’t enjoy it but even he agrees that the pond is worth it. We can sit and watch frogs and newts, and all manner of insects who enjoy being near the water, without even leaving our garden. At the weekend I spent some time watching Damselflies sunbathing and mating in various places across the pond.
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New Damsels (and Newts!)
I spied a couple of Damselflies in the garden the other day, and of course I took photos. I though they were just the standard Azures or Common Blues but on later inspection I discovered I’d found a new Damsel, so introducing … the Dainty Damselfly …
Male:
Male again:
Female:
And while hanging around our garden pond looking for frogs, we were delighted to find NEWTS! So exciting! These are a few photos of baby newts but we also spied at least one adult in there as well 😀
Found a Dragon!
Flight
At the weekend I was having a walk round the village with my daughter and when we reached the village pond there were dragons all around! Lots of Common Darter dragonflies buzzing around, some mating, and also (I think) a Southern Hawker. It was very exciting to be in amongst them and I was lucky enough to get a couple of shots of the Darters in flight! I would have loved to get a shot of the Hawker, but he was much too fast for me!
Here’s one settled on the ground for a better look:
No photos of the Hawker this time sadly, but this is a photo of a Southern Hawker that I managed to capture last year. They’re so pretty!
Garden Tour
I thought I’d show you the pond today. I mentioned when replying to a comment that I really should show you how the pond is going. It looks alot more natural now.
Here’s the pond with our garden chairs where we sit and watch the pondskaters and hope to catch sight of frogs:
And here’s me in my usual position sat looking at it:
Looking from the other side, with the last of the Ragwort:
Another view of the pond where you can see the pond plants (Frogbits and Water Soldiers):
And on the other side of the house, where the Beech tree is starting to change colour – it’s definitely autumnal here:
The sun came sparkling through the tree while I was taking photos, so of course I took a photo of it!
Ending of June
The weather has turned in the last couple of days to heavy showers, but it has been lovely and sunny. In between taking my daughter to a riding competition (last weekend) and the bee incident, I did manage a few photos here and there.
I have been enjoying our ‘meadow’ of lovely long grass in the back garden. Lots of insects seem to be enjoying it too.
Today, in between the showers I popped out for a moment and noticed this little bee who seems to have moved into a hole in our shed. Yay 🙂
The Buddleia won’t be long now – so close to flowering! So looking forward to all the butterflies gathering when it does 🙂
There are a lot of Ragwort plants which are also getting close to flowering. Last year these were particularly popular with hoverflies and the Small Copper butterflies. Another one to look forward to.
We were looking at the pond and commenting that we hadn’t seen the frogs for a while … I then stood up to pull some grass out of the pond and my foot disturbed … guess what?! Yup, a little yellowish frog went sploshing into the pond out of the way of my foot. He then popped back up to say hello. He’s pretty small. We thought he was a baby, but then an even smaller one popped up next to him! Really makes us happy to see our pond in use 🙂
There are all different stages of Ladybird life around the garden at the moment …
Here’s a larva (this is what hatches from the Ladybird eggs):
Then after stuffing itself with food, the larva settles down and turns into a pupa:
And then of course it becomes an adult ladybird, and sets off chomping its way through lots of greenfly 🙂
Finally, we are glad that we’ve let some of the brambles stay, as they are now producing the start of a nice crop of blackberries 🙂
