Squash

I did a couple more hours of extreme gardening this morning, and I'm now barely able to move. I am pleased with myself though - the horrible flower bed I began to work on yesterday is now properly cleared, tidied, and top-dressed, with two old plants moved and replanted and three new ones added. The difference is so dramatic that I can barely believe what I achieved this morning, and I keep finding myself tottering over to admire my handiwork.

By the time I'd finished, and R and I were starting to think about making lunch, the weather - which had been lovely for much of the morning - was starting to look threatening. Thunderstorms were forecast, and while I don't have much faith these days in the pronouncements of the Met Office, I thought I'd better take a quick bug walk and grab some photos, just in case. The first five images in my Facebook post were taken before lunch. The final one, and its companion here, were taken while we were clearing up after lunch, by which time it was raining quite hard.

I was on my way to the wheelie bin with a bag of rubbish at the time, but skidded to a halt at the sight of this box bug on a wet argyranthemum flower. Dropping the rubbish, I scuttled back inside to get the camera before the bug could move - and then, having taken a few photos of it, thanked it and told it very seriously that it really ought to move, before the conditions became even worse. Ten minutes later, a massive thunderstorm rolled across the top of us - so I hope it heeded my warning.

I was tempted to blip the Melecta albifrons today, because it has the more usual grey, black and white colouring of the species, and works as a contrast piece to this one. But it's not often I find a box bug on a flower, so this is the more unusual image, and that was enough to tip the scales. Box bugs were once very rare in the UK, found only on Box Hill in Surrey, where they fed on the box trees. These days though, they've dramatically broadened their diet, and have been able to increase their range correspondingly. They can be found anywhere from Devon to Yorkshire, and here in the Shire I find many more of them than the similar, but supposedly more common, dock bug.