butterfly – Vermilion Sands

Pink and Blue

Celastrina argiolus on a pretty plant next door.
Admin1 is rereading The Birdwatcher by William Shaw. Admin2 is rereading Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw. Rhymes!

Cabbage Whites en route to our cabbages.
And here are their lovely golden eggs.
Admin2 is reading The Blood Divide by AA Dhand, a bizarre story in which a low-life Bradford cornershop proprietor is guided to his destiny in India via copious amounts of violence and bloodshed.

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.

Critter of the Day: Speckled Wood

A butterfly sitting on the grass of No Mow May.
Admin1 is rereading Slow Horses by Mick Herron. Admin2 is reading Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North.

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: Red Admiral

A warm and sunny day, and this fresh-out-of-the-chrysalis butterfly graced our garden with its presence.
Admin1 is reading Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds and Admin2 is reading The Dead of Winter by Rennie Airth.
We scored 11 on the GWQ.

Critter of the Day: Peacock

First one we’ve seen all year. Photo is a bit subdued because it was taken though the window at an angle.
Admin1 is reading This Night’s Foul Work by Fred Vargas. Admin2 is reading First Light by Peter Ackroyd: astronomers, archaeologists, Aldebaran and agriculturalists.

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: Speckled Wood

Pararge aegeria. We tried to persuade it to open its wings, but it just stayed perched on a leaf in a dancer’s pose.
Admin 1 is reading A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee. Admin2 is reading The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman.

Comma Comma Comma Comma Comma…er…Butterfly

First butterfly of spring that hung around for long enough to have its picture taken.
Admin1 is rereading Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith. Admin2 is reading The Cutting Place by Jane Casey. We scored 10.5 on the GWQ.

Last of the Summer Wings

A Red Admiral perches on one of the few remaining buddleia flowers on the hottest September day since our records began: 33.0 °C. The days to come are predicted to be much colder, and then comes autumn, winter, Brexit…
Admin1 is reading Boiling a Frog by Christopher Brookmyre.

Critter of the Day: Small Tortoiseshell

There were also Red Admirals, Speckled Woods and Large Whites flapping around.
Admin1 is rereading The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin. Admin2 is reading When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi; the autobiography of an overachiever who gets his comeuppance when he dies of cancer in his thirties.

Critters of the Day: Cinnabar caterpillars

After the eggs, a load of adorable little stripey youngsters cavorting on the ragweed.
June’s weather was pretty average for June; ie colder, cloudier and wetter than the average May and July.
Admin1 is reading Bryant and May on the Loose and Admin2 is reading Seventy-Seven Clocks, both by Christopher Fowler.

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!

Critter of the Day: Cinnabar moth

Admin2 has been chasing this creature around the garden for days but Admin1 found it while mowing the lawn.
Admin1 is reading The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffifths.

A Whiter Shade of Pale

A blank Pieris rapae waiting to be coloured in on another >10kWh day. In the past week we have had 5 of the top 6 sunniest April days of all time.

Critter of the Day: Speckled Wood

Orange tips, cabbage whites and small blues are also flying around, on another >10kWh day.

Flower of the Day: Camellia

And another battle-scarred peacock.
Today was the warmest day this year: 22.7 °C. It was also the sunniest: 9.12 kWh.
Admin2 is reading The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman.

First Peacock of Spring

Aglais Io on a forsythia.
Admin1 is reading Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds. Admin2 is reading The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman.

First Butterfly of Spring

A comma on a skimmia on our warmest day this year: 21.0°C. We are digging for victory in the garden. Admin2 is reading The American Boy by Andrew Taylor and we are watching Better Call Saul, season 2.