Critter of the Day: Pyrausta aurata

The minuscule Mint Moth. It also likes a good thyme. Look at its lovely long antennae and beautiful blue eyes.
We had chicken, Yorkshire puddings and garden beans for our family meal with blackberry and apple crumble for afters and scored 10 (with generous marking) on the GSQ.
Admin1 is rereading The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod. Admin2 is reading Winter in Madrid by CJ Sansom.

Critter of the Day: Ringlet

Aphantopus hyperantus sitting on a blackberry leaf. Their dark wings give them more solar energy so they are active on cloudy days.
Admin1 is reading Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway, who gives the hardboiled crime genre — there’s even a character called Marlowe — an SF slant (as have various other writers). Here it’s a tale of squabbling ultra-rich tech-heads who’ve had a life-extension process that also make them very tall. Rather different (and shorter) from books like Gnomon and Angelmaker, it seems to have more in common with NH’s novels under his ‘Aidan Truhen’ monicker, which is an anagram if I’ve ever seen one. Thanks Admin2!
Admin2 is reading April in Spain by John Banville. An Irish couple on holiday spot somebody they presumed to be dead. A slow burner with a shock ending.

Eye Eye Skipper

A new visitor to our garden, the fluffy-bodied, beady-eyed, long-horned small skipper. Its caterpillars live on long grass so they have profited from No-mow May extending into June and July. And at last we had some proper rain today, but it didn’t register on our rain gauge due, no doubt, to the damn pigeons which have taken to sitting in it and probably using it as a toilet.
[update] and indeed they did. Here’s the evidence:
Cleaning it out added 5.4mm to our rainfall tally which is probably fair. Except that changing the batteries added another 5.4mm.
Admin1 is rereading A Book of Scars by William Shaw.
We had a Chinese banquet for supper and scored 11 on the GSQ, restoring our running average to exactly 10.

Elusive Butterfly

First peacock butterfly of spring, photographed at a distance in some other person’s garden.
Admin1 is reading What You Pay For by Claire Askew and Admin2 is reading 84K by another Claire, Claire North, which has been languishing on our shelves, unintentionally unopened, for the last five years and now, with its corporate-capture government dystopia, seems even more prescient.

Critter of the Day: Cabbage White

Pieris rapae feeding on our lavender.
Admin1 is reading Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas. Admin2 has been reading The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, which is like a fiendish logic problem, not helped by its old-fashioned style and Admin2’s ignorance of aristocratic Japanese culture in the 1930s.

Critter of the Day: Cinnabar moth

Hello, pretty patterned fly-by-day moth. We look forward to golden eggs and stripy caterpillars on the ragweed. Oh, and hello Fiona too. Long time since we’ve had a house guest.
Last month was the third sunniest June on our records: 252.4kWh.
Admin1 is reading The Royal Secret by Andrew Taylor. Admin2 is reading Smoke Screen by Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger.

Critter of the Day: Large White Caterpillar


The caterpillars are much more colourful than their large white parents. Here are three of them working as a team to demolish the cabbage. They are not the only critters wrecking our victory garden; today the squirrels stole our cucumber seedlings and a young tomato plant. But we had homegrown peas for tea.


Admin1 is rereading The Complaints by Ian Rankin and admin2 is rereading Reconstruction by Mick Herron.
We scored 12 on the GWQ!