Brenda writes: “When is a wildflower a weed? When it’s growing in the wrong place. One of the advantages of our enforced ‘staycation’ is that we’ve had a chance to do some gardening. Our extended wild flower areas have now largely gone to seed. The spear thistle triffid sadly collapsed under the weight of its own success. Now finished, I thought it would be a nightmare to remove but Steve found that the stalks were dry and brittle and the root pulled out easily.
Much more labour-intensive is digging out the undesirables in the area we cut as lawn. Plants are programmed to propagate by spreading seed, and ragwort is particularly successful – so that’s mostly what I’m having to remove. Come springtime battle will commence with creeping thistle but meanwhile it will be a valuable winter food source for finches. There were no new moths in the trap today but there was a rather handsome flounced rustic.”
No new species for August 17th:
TOTALS TO DATE:
Birds = 215
Moths = 212
Wildflowers = 270