The photo below shows many of the features in the Second Meadow that are mention in this post. The stone row just to the left of centre is Cynthia's Ridge. Travelling clockwise the flat area to the right is the Dust Bowl. The dark circle at 3 o'clock is Second Meadow Pond. Just below this is the singled Eastern Dandelion just above the ragwort plant both growing in what I call Conservation Lawn. At about 7 o'clock there is the cardboard Amazon square and at about 8 the western dandelion between two non-interference grass tufts. The grey brown area to the left of these is where the woodchip from the entrance path encroaches. At about 11 o'clock past the fern and the irises the black bryony climbs up into the darkness and already has a few yellow autumnal leaves.
In the top right hand corner the trunk of the mature birch tree growing in the original Square Metre can be seen
In the top right hand corner the trunk of the mature birch tree growing in the original Square Metre can be seen
19 July 2019 Quite cool with rain approaching: its first intrusions could be felt in the wind. A muscid and an ichneumon sat each on its own rock in Cynthia’s Ridge, presumably enjoying the stored warmth. There was also a fragment of snail shell on one of the rocks indicating a thrush had been in action. Second Meadow Pond was half empty again. Many of the sorrel seedlings are marked with red to a greater or lesser degree.
20 July 2019 Heavy
overnight rain has wetted the Dust Bowl and given the seedlings a better chance
of survival. There were two springtails on thePost settings pond and a cream spot ladybird, Calvia
quattuordecimguttata, on a
hogweed leaf. One living feeler of ivy
has reached Second Meadow Pond.
21 July 2019 Warm
again – good growing weather. Three Rhagonycha
fulva, red
soldier beetles, and a male social wasp
on hogweed flowers. A red blood worm
tumbling through the water in Second Meadow Pond plus a dead burying beetle (Nicrophorus
sp.) in the grass. I wonder what it had been burying.
22 July 2019 There
are green aphids on some hogweed stems and a potter wasp on the flowers. I am letting a few grass clumps develop
naturally in the Second Meadow in the hopes that they will grow into an
interesting feature. The first
harvestman of the year appeared in the vegetation north of Troy Track.
23 July 2019 It
is getting very hot and the hogweed is drooping slightly. Noted some worm casts in the Second Meadow.
24 July 2019 The
hottest day on record in Great Britain.
Here it reached 32.5° in the shade.
26 July 2019 Thunderstorms
overnight and heavy rain that refreshed Emthree after the heat. Politics has been as lively as the weather
with Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister and appointing what looks like a
very right-wing cabinet.
28 July 2019 Much
cooler and showery, irrigating much of Emthree.
There are busy gatherings of insects on the hogweed flowers now.
29 July 2019 Windy
and rather cool. The first knapweed is in flower.
There was a visit from a meadow
brown butterfly. The grass tufts in Second Meadow are now
starting to differentiate but I do not think they will anthesise this year.
30 July 2019 We
have moved my little gardening seat back further into the Brambly Hedge area so
I can get more into focus with my close-focus binoculars (now essential
equipment). There are many solitary
wasps among the hogweed flower visitors and a scorpion fly put in an
appearance.
1 August 2019 Light
rain today. A large black beetle in the pond.
Creeping buttercup in flower. I
surveyed the area with my old Zeiss monocular which allows very close
focus. I selected a few more plants of grass
to be given a kind of zen landscape treatment.
2 August 2019 I have three square metres now: the
original, what I call ‘The Waste’ to the south of it, and the Second Meadow to
the west of these. There are many
insects jostling on the hogweed flowers and male and female Gasteruption
seem more abundant than usual. I noted a marmalade fly, Episyrphus balteatus
drinking from Second Meadow Pond. The
eastern dandelion leaves are being attacked by the rust fungus Puccinia
hieracii but so far it does not look too debilitating.
3 August 2019 The seed pods of the gladdon irises
in Medlar Wood hang like green hand grenades.
There was a visit from a speckled wood butterfly. An ivy shoot has started to climb the trunk
of the birch up a rough patch of bark.
A small hedge woundwort plant on the western edge of the Second Meadow has had most of its leaves eaten during the night.
A small hedge woundwort plant on the western edge of the Second Meadow has had most of its leaves eaten during the night.
4 August 2019 This would have been (and was) our 60th
wedding anniversary. There was an orange
rowan berry like a punctuation mark on the Conservation Lawn in the Second
Meadow. Meadow Pond was only half
full. The black bryony up its iron pole
is quite splendid: a bright green column of leaves hiding still green
berries. Some of the leaves have dark
brown blotches, probably caused by the fungus Cercospora scandens.
5 August 2019 Honeybees quite frequent visitors
to knapweed flowers. A large white butterfly
made a visit. The spindle suckers are
heavily infested on their lower leavers by the yellow spots caused by the scale
insect Unaspis euonymi. There has
been a small amount of rain and the eastern dandelion has, perhaps as a
consequence, cocked up its leaves at an angle of about 45°.
6 Aug 2019 Cool and
showery but much action on the American
willow-herb, Epilobium ciliatum with
some aphids attended by a wrinkled ant.
The aphid is, I suspect, Macrosiphum tinctum. There are a few yellow spots on some of the
hornbeam cordon leaves, maybe a fungus – I will have to wait and see if they
develop.
7 August 2019 The
western and eastern dandelions in the Second Meadow are quite different in
character. The eastern has more shiny
leaves that often stand up at 45°, whereas the western one has nearly matt leaves
of slightly paler green that lie flat.
The eastern also has markedly red streaks on the midribs of the leaves,
but there is little red in the case of the western one. Cooler and showery.
8 August 2019 Still cool
with mist and rain on the way. I weeded
out sorrel seedlings from the Dust Bowl and cleared round the self-heal plant
near my seat. Found another small
ragwort plant near here. This really is
gardening with wildlife – but why not?
Co-operating with nature.
9 August 2019 Just
before 3pm and earthworm emerged on Troy Track into the full sunshine of a warm
afternoon. It did not seem to like it
much and hid most of its body under a low grass tussock. Overnight there had been heavy rain which
might have flooded the worm holes or otherwise tempted it out. Shortly afterwards a young grass snake poked
its head out, tongue flickering, from the bottom of Brambly Hedge and after it
had tasted the air slithered back again.
10 Aug 2019 A summer
gale with winds of around 50mph. More
sound than fury. The tutsan berries are
turning from orange-red to black. With
the continuing wet there are many small seedlings appearing in the Dust Bowl.
11 August 2019 The tallest
stem of the American
willow-herb has decided to lay flat on the
ground but still looks healthy. Troy
Track is also developing a surprisingly g=rich flora despite regular trampling. Calm after yesterday’s high winds but much
leaf and twiggy litter. The dead ash
sapling must have broken at the base and is leaning westwards with its burden
of small-flowered sweetbriar in the upper branches. There was a black and scarlet Necrophorus
burying beetle drowned in Second Meadow Pond (I would not have thought it had
much to bury) and a 4th instar green shield bug on one of the small
ashes.
12 August 2019 Frequent
overnight showers. Ground quite
wet. Many hogweed flowers but little
else. None of the vast quantity of birch
seeds on the ground seems to have germinated.
13 August 2019 Grass
clipping across Conservation Lawn today.
I thought about taking up drawing and painting but decided the next day I
would not be good enough. The eastern
dandelion I have named ‘Shuttlecock’ and the western one ‘Green Star’, this latter
has the shorter leaves of the two and today a perfect white fluff feather was
caught under one of the leaves.
14 August 2019 Heavy rain
all day and very cool for August. I
stayed indoors.
15 August 2019 The Rosa
sp. hip has turned greenish orange as it begins to ripen. There are also some glandular hairs on the
hip pedicel. Sammy saw a grass snake in
the garden to the west of Emthree and also reported a frog from the nearby
tortoise pen potato patch. The two
dandelions continue to differ: the easterly is losing some of its leaves to the rust fungus (Puccinia hieracii): the western specimen has none of the
fungal speckles and its leaves still lie quite flat on the ground. Very mysterious the ways of dandelions.
16 August 2019 Incoming
rain from the west. The figwort in M3 is
flowering again and another ’Lammas’ shoot has appeared on the cordon oak. This particular oak branchlet has extended
three times so far this season.
17 August 2019 At Emthree
I am fishing for thoughts and like the sun on my back. The eastern dandelion leaves are standing up
even more proudly now, perhaps because of the wet weather. Another difference from the western plant is
that the eastern has slightly undulating lead surfaces whereas in the western
they are completely flat. The plant with
shuttlecock leaves will direct rainwater to the centre of the crown more
efficiently than the plants whose leaves lie flat. There was a dead worm beside one if the
self-heal plants.
18 August 2019 Emthree is
getting more like an arboretum every year.
The hornbeam is still growing strongly and is over 2 metres tall (it
will be cut back to 1 metre in autumn).
One of the hazels has extended nearly as much. The rose hip has lost all but one of its
sepals and a green shield bug is still about.
One of the hogweed umbels
attracted a congregation of solitary wasps.
19 August 2019 A small
female sawfly, black with a yellow body, busily explored every leaf of the
easterly dandelion. Black muscid flies
pursued their various dispositions on the stones of Cynthia’s Ridge – an ever-changing
drill. I caught glimpses of something
blue beside the red stone. It proved to
be a chewed-up petal of some nearby flower.
20 August 2019 Flowers
out: hogweed, knapweed, self-heal, Epilobium montanum, E. ciliatum,
herb robert. The rust fungus continues
to pull down the easterly dandelion.
There was a small shining copper orange beetle on a knapweed leaf. A flesh fly drank from Second Meadow Pond.
Fifteen years ago the area was much busier and on 20 August 2004 I spoke of the
grasshopper and ground hoppers that were abundant that summer. There are none so far this year.
21 August 2019 A scarce
snout-faced hoverfly Rhingia rostrata and a bumble bee
hoverfly Volucella bombylans on knapweed
flower (and another on 22nd) and a black spider hunting wasp Anoplius
nigerrimus resting (they are usually in perpetual motion) on a stone on
Cynthia’s Ridge. Warm and summery again.
I
have started a new experiment by placing a rectangle of cardboard 35 x 27cm
(used to send me a book by Amazon) on the ground on the south west edge of the
Second Meadow and where I can easily see it from my seat. The idea is to study what happens to it. Today a kite-tailed
robber fly Machimus atricapillus rested
for a while on the rectangle – a new record for Emthree. I also noted some bright blue glittery thing in
the grass nearby and discovered it was part of the thorax and body shell of, I
think, some kind of fly, like an empty, blue crab shell on a much smaller
scale.. I reflected, as I often have, on
the large quantity of dead insects that must rain down to the ground every day to be
hoovered up by flesh eating scavengers – birds, shrews, spiders and other invertebrates.
22 August 2019 Warm wind
from the south-east. There are many butterfly
species about in the wider garden.
Emthree was visited by an exploring-for-hibernation-place peacock and there
was a ragged large white on Brambly Hedge. The first
Lammas shoots on the oak cordon have been quite severely damaged by the powdery mildew Erysiphe alphitoides.
