Tasty

We seem to have moved almost seamlessly from winter into summer: last week I was wearing thermals and the Big Owling Coat, and today when I went off to the garden centre I discovered that I was too warm in jeans, a t-shirt and shirt, and a gilet. By the time I came back, at about 11am, the car thermometer was registering 17°, and one of my younger neighbours was swanning around the village in cargo pants and a sleeveless vest.

This afternoon I set to work to plant up some of my new purchases: Verbena bonariensis, foxgloves, field scabious, aubretia, a couple of 'Bowles' Mauve' wallflowers, and a bergenia. I shudder to think how many plants I've tried here and lost to either the soil or the weather over the years, so this time round I'm putting in things I've previously seen growing locally, in the hope that they may prove hardier. The one triumph of hope over reason is the foxgloves, which have never done well for me - but these are the perennial wild form, rather than a named cultivar, so again, I hope they may be tougher. 

While I was working I took regular tea-and-photography breaks, and searched the garden for insects. Bee-wise I spotted the first Early Bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) I've seen this year, and the first mining bee too, in the shape of both male and female Gwynne's Mining Bees. Even more pleasingly, I found an overwintered Gorse Shieldbug on a clump of honeysuckle growing through a ragged Viburnum tinus - most likely the same individual, because it was certainly in the same spot, as the one I photographed back in the autumn.  "Are there any laburnums in the village?" I enquired of a neighbour, who'd stopped to compliment me on the state of the front garden and ask whether I'd found any invertebrates. "X used to have one," he said, "but I think it died a while back." Much like my own, then. The Gorse Shieldbug Diet Mystery goes on.

On the other hand there's no mystery about what the local Honey Bees are eating: all day my little goat willow was covered with them. I'm not going to lie - I'd prefer to have seen it busy with solitary bees or bumbles. But for this year at least the willow has come out before most of them, and the Honey Bees are taking full advantage.