A LADYBIRD SUMMER

It wasn't very many years ago that I first came across a ladybird larva - that particular one was a purple and black spiky little monster on a honeysuckle bush. And now I have come across ladybird pupa for the first time - funny little bright blotchy lumps stuck to flower pots and rubbish bins. And I've become more aware of where ladybirds are - surprising places like snuggling in lumps of sheep's wool on barbed wire fences. Here is a selection of observations from the last few months.

First is a seven spot ladybird (27th June 2020) on a dying plant in town. I wonder what it is doing there. I've peered into the photo looking to see if there are aphids for it to eat. No. I worry about it retrospectively. Why was the plant dying? Had someone poisoned it? Would the ladybird die too? What is it about ladybirds that we can't help feeling drawn towards them? Concerned for them. I really like coming across hover flies but I'm never tempted to invest them with personalities in the way I am with ladybirds.

27th June 2020

Here's another (on the 8th August 2020) on the food waste bin outside my house - a harlequin I think. The council provides us with several different kinds of containers to throw things away in and each is a place to find ladybirds . . . and ants! If you zoom in you will see it has a thread attached. These threads are everywhere. I don't know what they are.

8th August 2020

The next day I came across a strange cluster of at least three seven spots (I think) settled together in a bundle of sheep's wool. It's a warm sunny day. Why are they there?

9th August 2020

I'll zoom in for you on this one.

On 28th August I come across a ladybird pupa (harlequin?) fixed to the outside of a steamed up car window. I think the white feathery bits are where it is attached. This attachment is quite firm. I had to remove another from a plant pot so I could wash it up and it was quite an effort. It may well have been a mistake to move it. Apparently they can flip up on these 'hinges' to avoid parasites. Trying to learn things from the internet leaves one very patchy. The inside of one of these bright little lumps is more or less liquid as it is formed into the more familiar beetle. How can it know when to flip up? How can it 'know' anything? I'm hoping some expert will tell me in the comments so I can change this text from bewildered wonder into proper information!

28th August 2020

I'm going in date order through the year. It's not till the 31st August 2020 that I photograph a harlequin larva - the kind of creature that has turned into the pupa with the soup inside. Like the ladybird in the second picture it has a mysterious thread attached. It's on the big wheelie bin (with the ants). Do click on the picture to enlarge it. It is a most extraordinary creature.

31st August 2020

And on 2nd September 2020 - another (harlequin?) pupa in the hinge of the wheelie bin lid.

2nd September 2020

The pupa stage lasts only three to twelve days. How can the miracle of changing from a little spiky monster into soup and then into a ladybird happen in such a short time?  If I were a real scientist I would probably start breaking them open to see what is happening but I am not. And they are real creatures.

Something else puzzling me. Earlier in the year there were thousands, possibly millions of aphids, in the sycamore trees. I'm not coming across them now. What do ladybirds eat in the autumn?

I ask Google. According to Nature's Calendar ladybirds eat scale insect, mildew, plants and pollen - it depends what variety they are. On the National Insect Week page about the seven spot it says they eat each other. Oh joy! Why did I ask?

Last year I read a book about octopusses, squid and cuttlefishes. (Other Minds - The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligence by Peter Godfrey-Smith.) It was very disconcerting. On the cover there's a quote from a review in The Times newspaper. "Fascinating and often delightful". Fascinating. Yes. Delightful? No. Horrifying. So many of the fascinating facts seem to have been discovered through interference in their lives. Why do we want to know about creatures to the extent that we will mutilate, torture and keep them captive? One octopus, kept in a tank, would damage equipment and squirt people. Good on him / her! I say. (I'm getting cross.) (Read it and see.)

Incidentally, I'm getting cross too about the push to build electric cars. To make enough batteries we, we humans that is, will need to dredge the sea floor for cobolt. So . . . we've worked our way through fossil fuels which have taken millennia to create, harmed the atmosphere as we've burned them up, and now we're moving on to something else to dig, scrape, desecrate. Meanwhile, I enjoy using my laptop which is made from metal and plastic. And I drink tea (transported across the world) from a mug made from clay (dug from the earth and which, when it breaks, will be finished with). And I am glad I was born in this century - because the horrors of the industrial revolution are over and I can reap its benefits without having to labour in a mine or a pre-unionised factory. Oh, it is so difficult to be moral!

I would like to visit other countries. I'd love to see the world. And maybe one day I will. I'm fascinated to know how other creatures function too - octopuses and ladybirds alike. But we have to curb some of our desires to push forward. (How do we know which ones? To what extent?) Some of you have been kind enough to say that reading my blog brings you hope and peacefulness. We need that. You also enjoy looking at the little things you find here; things you might otherwise pass by. May I encourage you too to look at the little things around you. Try looking in the hinges of your rubbish bins . . . in fragments of waste caught on fences and walls . . . these ignominious places. Because there are wonders there to rival the octopuses. Miracles of little monsters which turn into soup then re-form into spotty beetles.  (What are all those spikes and colours for?) (Unanswerable question!) I have not been outside the UK in nearly ten years. And before that . . . it was about twenty years. Those visits were important. In England there's a lot of hardening; a lot of narrowness. We, as a nation, seem to be getting frightened of everything that isn't 'us'. And we are being more and more tempted into a slim idea of what 'us' means. If we travelled more, maybe we wouldn't be so frightened of what's 'beyond'. So there's the tension. Can we travel enough that we can learn to love our neighbours but little enough that we don't destroy the world? Can we be curious about our fellow creatures without feeling compelled to harm them? Can we be happy to stay at home? Can we be content to look without 'knowing'?

We need to know lots.

We don't need to know everything. Ladybirds on the RHS site.

Links UK - more than 40 kinds

Other Minds - The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligence by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Nature's Calendar - the ladybird page

National Insect Week page about the seven spot

UK Ladybird Survey

The Life Cycle of Ladybirds on UK Safari

Learn About Ladybirds - BBC Breathing Spaces

Life Cycle of Ladybirds - on the Ladybird Challenge (Help discover the balance between 7 spot ladybirds and their parasite Dinocampus coccinellae)

Ladybirds on the RHS gardening site.

Harlequin Ladybirds on the RHS site.

Harlequins on the Buglife site.

Links USA - around 140 kinds

Ladybuglady.com

Ladybugs of the US on iNaturalist

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URBAN TOADSTOOLS AND A PENNINE MOTH

Blogger has changed the way blogspot posts are formatted and it's now much harder to set the pictures beside the text. It takes ages. I first posted this article yesterday and find the pictures went skee-wiff in the emailed version. This is very annoying. I could have been distinguishing between poisonous and edible mushrooms. The re-arranging of the text might then have had serious consequences. As it is, it doesn't matter terribly but I've changed the layout to alternating photos and text and am re-posting, hoping the words and pictures stay together better this way. Apologies to those who will now be receiving this twice.

There is one change in the text. The toadstools have grown over night so I've changed that the largest is two and half inches across to four inches. It may change again. An evolving post.

11th September 2020

A mixture of life challenges and photographing too many images has prevented me from posting over the last couple of months. I think I'll solve this by showing some of the things I see without necessarily feeling obliged to say much about them. Just sort of 'dash-em-off without thinking'. I'll begin with some toadstools. (Should one call them toadstools?)

11th September 2020

The largest is about four inches across.

This is what they look like underneath.

They are growing on an urban lawn which is regularly but not closely mown.

I don't know what they are called.

Do you?

11th September 2020

This is another toadstool, nearby. It may be the same kind at a different stage of growth. I don't know.

This is it from the side.

Fox Moth Caterpillar.
Bridestones Moor.
September 11th 2020

And here is a Fox Moth caterpillar which I came across on Bridestones Moor yesterday. It's about two and a half inches long. It was crawling across the path in a very exposed landscape - rocks and grass but no trees about 1,400 feet above sea level. A tough environment.

Here's a link to a page about its life cycle. The site is based in Cornwall and I'm in Yorkshire but the Fox Moth is quite widespread in the UK. Not that I think I have ever seen either the caterpillar or the moth before. It's interesting how the photos on the link show how the male and female moths look very different from each other.

How are you doing?

(Could the toadstools be Amanita rubescens - Blushers?)

There's more about Fox Moths on the UK Moths site. (When you get to the page you can click on the separate photos for more info.)

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TREE FOLLOWING - AUGUST 2020

The top of the right hand tree. Heavy with leaves. 7th August 2020.

I'm feeling overwhelmed by the trees I'm following. Initially, it felt fairly simple. These two trees are sycamores. They are immediately outside my front door. All I had to do was look at them, photograph them, post about them. So why overwhelmed?

7th August 2020.

To some degree we can blame it on the Coronovirus. It is overwhelming - so everything is overwhelming. Even small things. I can smell gas in the cellar and am waiting for someone to find if there is a leak. One thing after another! At one point the bath, the shower and the handbasin in the bathroom were all out of action: broken or leaking. Shielding etc. have made it harder to get things mended. A train is on fire in Scotland. Floods in Scotland have floated cars in a hospital car-park overnight and when the water receded they landed on each other's roofs. I am not in Scotland. It is sunny here in Halifax this morning. But there hasn't been much sun. The skies have been almost constantly over-cast even though it's summer. Then there's Beirut - and all the calm and sensible people who live there somehow coping while I am overwhelmed by trees.

Trunks of the right hand sycamore (?) tree. August 7th 2020.
Trees can seem so BIG!
Their canopies another world. A world we can peer into but hardly touch.

Last month I took photographs so I could post about them - then didn't. I couldn't stop finding more and more to see in these trees, and more to think about. I was heading the same way in August. I peer through the branches and see what appear to be millions of creatures living there. Ladybirds, lacewings, little black flies. Between them they are a whole universe of beings. Then there's the way the two trees muddle their branches. Which tree is which? And are they even sycamores? Maybe one is some kind of maple? I'm sinking in the shapes of the seeds, the texture of the bark, the colour of the leaves, their possible names in Latin!

The winged seeds of sycamore and maples are called 'Samaras'.
(I call them 'keys' or 'helicopters'.)

So I was in danger of stopping again. Right. Take myself in hand. There will need to be a short fleet of posts. It won't fit in one.

Are you finding this too? That there are so many big things wrong with the world that even simple things seem difficult? I find I can only do things if I do them in small bites - and then celebrate. Hurray! I just swept the floor! Hurray! I just walked upstairs and back down again! Hurray! I am managing to post daily on my other blog Message in a Milk Bottle. (I really enjoy taking these simple and unconnected pictures.) Hurray! I've just written a Tree Following post for August!

ARE YOU?  Click the tree design to find out more.

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Linking with Nature Notes at Rambling Woods.
And to Our World Tuesday

WELCOMING THE VISITORS

Scruffy hart's tongues ferns in wall. June 1st 2020.

Do you remember this picture?

It's of bedraggled Hart's Tongue ferns in the wall outside my house on 1st June 2020.

Something apparently unconnected; do any of you read Karen Gimson's blog? (Recommended!) Well, at the beginning of March, Karen was giving away a Hozelock Bokashi Composter and I 'won' it by leaving a comment and my name came out of the hat.

This kind of composter lives indoors. There are no worms but a sort of magical sawdust that you sprinkle onto food you put in the large-bucket sized, grey and yellow plastic box. Incredibly, it can be cooked as well as uncooked food, animal as well as vegetable. (Even bones.) I haven't been very adventurous with it. I find I am conservative about what I think 'ought' to go into a compost bin and these conventions are hard to overcome. However, feeling rather brave, adventurous and reckless even I have included pasta from time to time. It's now got to the point where I must get someone to dig a hole in the ground at my allotment and bury the contents. (Perhaps I will ask them to sing mystical chants while they do it!) But in between then and now, twice a week, I have opened a tap at the bottom and let a slightly yellow, slightly cabbagy smelling liquid flow out. I've diluted it with water and poured it over the hart's tongue ferns using a little red watering can with a long, thin spout - rather like an old fashioned oil can.

The same hart's tongue ferns on 1st August 2020/

And this is the result!

All previous hart's tongue ferns I have come across have been growing on woodland slopes or at the edge of county ditches where there would always be some kind of decaying vegetation. These must have been hungry as well as thirsty. Just look at them now! Not only have the original ones revived, more have appeared - presumably encouraged by the dribble of water and nutrients through the channels of old mortar. I've just counted forty. FORTY!

Petty spurge. 1st August 2020

Because of the rules of the pandemic and my lack of immunity to the bacteria in soil I have still not been able to visit my allotment but I'm trying to make the most of the little area outside my house. Fortunately, it's at the dead end of a blocked off street so the large pots I've placed along the pavement don't get in anyone's way. As well as extending growing space this has the advantage of expanding the distance between me (on my doorstep) and anyone who might be passing by. (Virus anti-sociability!) There's also a little concreted area where trays can go and a tiny patch of earth 70 inches by 22 inches. (I've just measured it.) During June, one of our two cats died. We buried her there and sprinkled four kinds of flower seeds which sprang up and were promptly eaten by slugs. I had some spare red kale plants whose leaves are pretty as well as edible so I planted them instead. Slugs ate them! I had grown rudbeckia from seed. I put them there. Slugs ate them! Never mind. Instead of bright colours, I have a little army of petty spurges. They just arrived. I didn't plant the hart's tongue ferns, I didn't plant the petty spurge. The big deal is that slugs and pests are avoiding both and both are now happily growing. I have a garden!

Small foxglove plant. 1st August 2020

Foxglove seeds had fallen from the garden in Dorset into a couple of pots which came with me when I moved to Halifax. Slugs and snails ignore them. They have flowered and dropped extra seed. Now transplanted into the earth, hopefully these new plants will flower next year. There are lots of foxgloves growing wild locally. When they start to drop seeds I'll collect some so I will have even more. Whatever grows (almost whatever grows!) is welcome!

Aquilegia. 5th June 2020

Remember this picture? It is of some rather exotic looking aquilegia growing nearby. I've collected seeds from them and sprinkled them on the earth. Hopefully, they will grow and I will have exotic flowers outside my house too next June. (I've kept some in an envelope and can start them in pots in spring if I need a fall back.)

Small, self-sown cyclamen now put in pots. 1st August 2020.

The trouble with cats is that they like sitting on things and my remaining cat is an enthusiastic window-box-plant-squasher. Last year I planted cyclamen in the window boxes. Squashed! Dead! Breaking my arm didn't help. I couldn't water things as much as they needed. But eight baby cyclamen have sprung up in their place. Two I've left in the boxes. The other six I am now nurturing in separate pots. Of their own accord they are perpetuating the line. They are welcome!

Lobelia flowering in stripey Yucca pot. 1st August 2020

This pot came with me from Dorset. It contains a stripy Yucca plant and a foxglove seedling. Also some lobelia. The lobelia came from Dorset - at least, its ancestors did. I bought a few plants several years ago and they have been self-seeding ever since.

Geranium in pot. Grown on from plug. 1st August 2020.

And last, but not least, geraniums. I have not been into a shop for months but Diana at Elephant's Eye on False Bay pointed out that the large windows in my house might have been intended with a weaver in mind and that weavers traditionally had geraniums in their window boxes. How could I resist? I looked online but geraniums seemed very expensive so I asked my neighbour to keep an eye out for me in the local shops and she came across a wonderful bargain - eighteen plug plants for £1:77! Enough for her to have some on her windowsills too.  I've potted them up and when they get round to flowering we will have a right gaudy and joyous display at our end of the street.

More hart's tongue ferns in the same brick wall. 1st August 2020.

Sorry, I'm so chuffed with the hart's tongue ferns I need to show you another group in the same wall.

Nature, in the form of lack of water, of slugs and snails can be destructive. But there can be hardly anywhere in this country where absolutely nothing will grow. I will not necessarily be able to have the plants I first thought of but nature (and my neighbour!) are filling the gaps. What grows is welcome. Plants which choose to be here of their own accord or are from the immediate environs are those most likely to survive - and that, so far, with a little bit of nudging, is what they are doing!

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ASH TREE: A STUCK FOOT POST

Yesterday morning a man I don't know called out a greeting. "Well done!" he shouted. I stopped.

???

"You're doing well!" he bellowed, long-distantly.

???

"Thank you!" I yelled back, puzzled.

"How old are you?"

At top voice, I told him.

This is the first time anyone has asked me how old I am since . . .

. . . well when is it that people stop asking how old you are? Fourteen? Something like that; a few years after you've stopped being precise about the months and days you've accumulated. "Five and three-quarters," you say . . . and find a way to slip in (hopefully and acquisitively yet also with pride) the date of your next birthday. Then there's a long gap before you start re-volunteering age related information . . . you are soon to be one-hundred-and-ninety-three and you remember when Noah got married.

Have I really reached an age when people shout out 'well dones' in the street simply because I am walking along with moderate speed? Not really. I resisted shouting 'I'm not as old as you think! I've been ill but I'm getting better!'

Twice, while I was being treated for leukaemia, people mistook someone older than me for my offspring. I thought I'd got beyond that. Clearly not. My hair has re-grown; white and thick, with an irritatingly purposeful wave that makes me look prim. When I was young (in my early twenties) a friend commented, "We think we aren't vain. We think we don't mind what we wear. But no way would we buy crimplene!" I feel that about my hair. I've never minded excessively about my appearance but I don't like it that my post-cancer-treatment-hair currently makes me look like a lesser version of the Queen.

How is any of this relevant? Well, this morning I was thinking perhaps I didn't feel like going for a walk. Then I decided that before I age irreparably, by which I mean the kind of aging where you really are running out of years, I'd better not give up on going out walking in the early morning. So off I went. And I got  as far as round the corner when I was stopped in my tracks by a bunch of yellow flowers growing at the foot of an ash tree. The sun was catching it 'just right' and I couldn't pass by. I've still not caught up with June posts - and there are Tree Following photos in my camera . . . but the moment seemed right for a 'Stuck Foot Post'. Clearly, I thought, if I am looking old enough to be congratulated for hurrying, there's no time to hang around waiting to fill in odd gaps.

A 'Stuck Foot Post' is where you stand still and see what you can see. You can twist and turn and twizzle and you can move one foot but not the other. You can lean forward if you wish but you mustn't walk forward. One foot must remain 'stuck in place'.

Until very recently, this road had many trees in it. First a couple were taken away because they were growing out of a wall and were pulling it over. Then a cluster of cherry trees and others were chopped down because (a local account tells) burglars hid their van behind them while engaged on raiding a series of large industrial units and the owners decided to open the view. But this ash remains. I walk past it a lot but hadn't paid it a great deal of attention till it gained the status of 'one of those remaining'.

During May and June, there was a campaign to persuade people not to mow their lawns so small plants could flower in them to look pretty and come to the aid of struggling pollinators and quite a lot of grass around the place has grown longer than usual in consequence. Then there's the coronovirus which has taken people out of the work force so councils are not necessarily prioritising having short grass. Locally, this has led to lots of flowering plants in the streets and where the council has eventually started mowing it has sensitively left swathes of it long where poppies grow and some buttercups are still flowering, and clover. So although the broader scene of grass has now been cut, immediately round this tree there are nettles and dock and clover and ragwort (is it ragwort or something else?) and . . .  

So I stopped, and looked, and took photographs, then set about running along (scurrying) in bursts to catch up with the morning and my fitness and my age . . . before, all of a sudden I inadvertently run out of years.

If you feel like posting a 'Stuck Foot Post', let me know the link and I'll add it here.

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