Weevil season

My damaged knee woke me up multiple times in the night, and I'm still limping quite noticeably, but it's a lot less painful than it was yesterday. Luckily, because last night I found myself letting out an involuntary squeak every time I put my weight on it, and the couple of hours I spent in the garden this afternoon would have been embarrassing if I'd still been impersonating a field vole.

The other good news from today is that I haven't fallen over again, though my confidence has been shaken and it may be a while before I feel able to restart my usual balance exercises. I'm still perplexed that I was able to topple forwards like that with absolutely no warning, and I find myself wondering what other post-viral deficits I might be suffering that I haven't yet noticed. The experience has left me with definite fit of the blues.

Still, two hours of garden beetle-and-bug-bothering restored a measure of good humour - in me, if not the beetles and bugs. I didn't find anything other than the usual suspects for the time of year, but managed some reasonable photos, which in late October, using available light only, is something worth celebrating in itself. This, of course, is my favourite tiny beetle, the seed weevil Oxystoma pomonae, which is currently turning up all over the garden. I keep expecting to find pairs of them in their winter roosting position, but the unseasonable temperature is keeping them active at the moment. Both these photos are of the same male, who is around 3mm long.