How's That?

No, it's not a grasshopper, it's a bush-cricket. The guide says its probably an Oak bush-cricket, and it lives in "most environments", though they probably didn't have the bathroom ceiling in mind. How on earth did it get there? This bathroom does not even have a window, and you have to walk through a minimum of three doorways to get outside the house. Bush-crickets have the gorgeous long antennae, grasshoppers have short stubby ones. We have a huge population of grasshoppers in the orchard/apiary, but we haven't seen bush-crickets there (they are usually in woodland, rather than grassland), which makes it all the more puzzling that one has come to lodge

Other news 1: the same hedgehog (I think) did a walking tour of the same bit of garden at the same time today as yesterday, so maybe it's fine, but didn't get the memo about being nocturnal

Other news 2: the colonies that we combined on the 22nd have settled down together, and the queen that was in one of the boxes is happily laying eggs. We haven't actually seen her, but the evidence of her good works is clear. Wasps remain aggressive, persistent and numerous around all the hives. There is always something to worry about!

As a measure of the effect this summer has had on the orchard, we brought home the entire harvest from five or six plum trees, cooked them all and ate three quarters of them for Sunday evening dessert. That's that then. We also picked the only two harvestable apples from the early apple tree (George Cave). To be fair, we might have got a few more last week if we had not had Covid but, like most of the orchard trees, it is having a resoundingly 'off' year