[David Dickinson]

I wish I could shed my old skin just as easily as your chameleon!

On another note, as every good gardener knows, the best place to dry out slightly damp seeds is on kitchen roll spread out on the kitchen table. Flat mate in lock down in Ireland so nobody around to put a spanner in the works. Or so I thought. I woke up the following morning to find our six-legged friends were just carrying away the last of my Salvia farinacea seeds!

[Charithea]

Don't dispear David. They will grow somewhere in your garden in the spring. I dry my seeds by putting them in Big paper bags and leave them outside because if I spread them  on the table my 5 cats will carry them around the house and garden on their fur. On the other hand David my Salvia farinacea did so badly and  the seeds were all lost. The ready bought plants are never very successful in our garden and neither are growing them from seeds.

[Charithea]

A most welcome visitor to our garden is this baby hedgehog sitting in John's gloved hand. Our only female cat was watching it moving among the Hemerocallis lillies and John moved it to a safer place. The other photo is of two beautiful kittens drinking water while the grey one was eating out of our cats' dish. I adore kittens but these perishes, which arrived uninvited, have flattened our Tulbaghia violaceae and terrorized our cats. The kittens arrived with the new owner of the old house adjacent to the western side of our garden. I was told by the owner that the kittens were motherless but she was planning to keep them which made me very happy. Alas the owner went to town and left the kittens so we ended up looking after them for 2 weeks as they preferred our hospitable garden and the wires in our kitchen.  I sadly was forced to ask her to take them home with her and bring them back when she finally repaired the house and took up residence here.

[David Dickinson]

This thread started with a posting about what I presumed was a male carpenter bee of some kind. It was dive-bombing any other insect that visited flowers in its territory. Another has taken up territory in the garden this year. He attacked a wasp and a battle ensued. The wasp appeared to sting the bee many time as the 2 of them span round and round attached to a petal by one leg of the bee. Evidently the exoskeleton of the bee was strong enough for the sting not to penetrate , The bee flew off seemingly unscathed.

[Umbrian]

Interesting and well observed - so much  goes on in our gardens apart from our efforts- some of it beneficial and some less so. I am beginning to get very frustrated with the ever increasing amount of Blackbirds that consider my garden home. Lots of young ones about now and they are causing havoc pecking in my pots  despite a generous layer of gravel on the top and even attcking my cuttings box.  Much as I have enjoyed watching their progress I am beginning to wish the parents would send them off to find their own territories😊