Welcome to my diary. I write a short account of the happenings in my garden every month. It is quite amazing how year on year the seasons change, which makes our weather so interesting - you can never predict what is going to be growing at any particular time.

Julia’s Diary

SEPTEMBER

The last few weeks of summer we have had several beautiful moths in the house.  I don’t recall seeing this kind before.  There were at least 3 of them , one settled on a sunflower in the kitchen and looked so pretty I took a photo. (see below)  Last week I was thumbing through some back copies of The Garden and came across an article headed “what is feeding on my box bushes?” The accompanying photo was my beautiful moth and I had been rescuing them by putting them back out in the garden!  It is the box tree moth (Cydalima perspectalis ) it even has a pretty name.  The article says the plants should recover but it is liable to recur which might cause the death of the plant.  Yesterday, there was one on a box bush in the front garden, ( see below) you can see what it has done to the bush, although there are signs of re-growth.  Please don’t say you should have known what it was, and I still think it is very attractive.

      The giant puffball on Two Tree Island, I mentioned last time, continued to grow well with my label “please do not destroy me “ along side.  Then one day it had vanished, completely, I just hope someone had a good meal from it or better still it was taken to a school for the nature table.  Do they still have those?  I did manage a picture before it disappeared, you can see that the slugs were enjoying it, but even an army of molluscs couldn’t have eaten it all – see below.

      I have just taken down the tomato plants from the greenhouse, they did well this year, free from any disease or pests.  Sad to have to go back to shop bought ones.  I still have some melons developing, will they make it, I wonder.

     At last the brent geese have arrived, a bit late this year, and I haven’t seen a swallow for a week or two and the trees are just beginning to get their autumn colours, so I suppose it must be autumn.  The bees living in our roof are still very active though, feeding on ivy, I suspect.  What an unpleasant smell ivy flowers have, but the insects love it, swarming all over it now that there is not so much for them to feed on.

      Mike has seeded some bare patches on the lawn, he goes out every morning to check if anything has come through, but not yet.  It is a new box of seed, I know it doesn’t remain viable for very long, so it should be OK, he will be very disappointed if all his hard work comes to nothing!

Happy gardening

Julia

Giant Puff Ball

Cydalima perspectalis .

(Box Moth to you and me)

On a Sunflower in the kitchen