Prince...or princess?

Yet another day of continuous heavy rain, which will exacerbate the flooding in the Nene and Ouse valleys. I heard that the Met office has confirmed that April 2012 was the wettest since recording commenced in 1910, and was 5C colder than April 2011. It's no wonder that everything in the garden is so behind. May isn't looking much better, with even more rain to come and a frost forecast for Saturday night!

I've still got most of my woodland surveys to fit in in the next two weeks, and Alex is supposed to be conducting a range of ecological surveys which have to be completed and written up by the end of May. He had been planning to carry out his surveys at The Boardwalks nature reserve, just ten minutes away, but this is now deeply flooded and there's no telling when it'll dry up, so a new site will have to be found!

I didn't venture very far, and even a trip round the soggy garden was unrewarding, so today I'm blipping the caterpillar of an Emperor moth, which we're raising in captivity. Having hatched over a week ago, they're growing rapidly, though this one is still only a few centimetres in length. They have voracious appetites and are busy demolishing the leaves of our myrobalan, which needed pruning anyway!l