I’ve just spent a contented half hour watching insects in my tiny garden. It’s a very warm autumn day. The sun still has bite and I’ve not checked today’s UV level, so I carefully balanced my need for Vitamin D with my need to keep the insect-watching brief.
First there was a pair of larger orange-brown butterflies feeding on buddleia flowers – Australian Painted Ladies, perhaps. I watched them sip, then fly a lap of the yard before returning to the same flowers. One would move, then the other move to join it. Do butterflies always travel in pairs? I realised I don’t know much about these things. A small blue-grey butterfly danced around the geraniums and paper daisies without stopping.
Honeybees were everywhere, man. In the lemon verbena, the marjoram, the catnip, lavender, and almost anything else with flowers (not the geraniums). I stood and listened to their hum for a while, then checked that none had been taken by resident spiders or praying mantis. Not yet. The mantis that hunts on the letterbox was absent, and I watched a tiny fly with a metallic blue abdomen there instead. Couldn’t work out what it was doing – perhaps tasting something on the paintwork?
Now I’m getting lost in my need to identify species. I’m not getting much satisfaction either, having mislaid my favourite ID book and useful websites. I want to know the names of all the flies, the native bees, the damselflies, butterflies, and spiders. I am astonished by both the abundance and diversity of small creatures in my garden today. Are they there every day, or only when it’s clear and sunny? And if the “as above, so below” adage is correct, I wonder about the soil life.
Standing out there in the sun, I recalled the graphite drawings I did for my organic horticulture course, back in 1997. Hooly dooly, that seems so long ago now. I still have the records somewhere. I refused to kill and stick pins in anything, so spent a lot of time looking for dead things and perusing illustrated reference books. The act of drawing made me pay more attention, anyway. In my landscape design studies I focussed on wildlife-attracting species, which often emphasised indigenous plants for obvious reasons. That info is also here, somewhere. I used to be more organised than this, dagnabbit. I need to keep better records and plant more of what works.
Last year I planted native and exotic daisy species, with all my gardening pals in mind. Daisies are so diverse! The bold colours satisfied my human neighbours, and daisies attract all kinds of beneficial insects. I just watched a hoverfly move clockwise around the centre of one flower, feeding, for instance. I count on hoverflies to keep aphids under control. I sow mustard seed to attract clouds of them each spring. I planted tansy near the apple trees, and regret placing one beside the path, because their scent is anything but attractive. Not as off-putting as carob flowers, but bad enough. The yarrow is doing well, further out in the sunlight. Both yarrow and tansy are also great compost additives.
And now I’m just rambling, needing lunch. I have photos. Will I get myself organised enough to share them? Perhaps another day. I hope so. Sharing such things makes me happy. Paying attention to gardening coworkers and making them happy has delightful ripple effects.
Mental Dust-Bunnies 
On the other side of the world I am eagerly awaiting the return of my gardening co-workers, thank you for reminding me that they’re out there somewhere 🙂
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My pleasure! 🙂
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Wow, thank you for sharing about your warm autumn day and the thought of having a praying mantis in the garden (never gonna ‘appen in a Welsh garden). As for the study of bees, especially bumblebees, you can’t do better than looking up Brigit Strawbridge-Howard. I noticed that when I clicked on Dagnabbit it took me off of your page to another, but did you know that you only need click one little box [ ] on the 8 “Insert Link” that says next to it: Open link in a new window/tab. I can’t do that here, so instead is another Dagnabit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm-00hTA3nk
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No mantis in Wales? That’s a shame. We don’t have bumblebees in my state (I think there may be some in Tasmania) and I’m curious about the name you mentioned. Will look her up. We have native bees though, and the only one I’m familiar with is the blue-banded one. It’s solitary rather than a hive dweller, and I’ve seen pics of it snoozing in grasses. Thanks heaps for the link tip – will give that a go, later tonight. 🙂
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Hooly dooly what a loooooovely organizendium of beauoooootiful meanderings here, you’ve brought some of us from far, to very near. A wander through Oz, good for oll of us. Feeling a bit pleasantly word-loopy, also sun-drunk; thanks for the tipple. Ahhh.
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Haha! Word-loopy sounds good. I just felt loopy. 😋
That was one lucky grasshopper! High five! I think we had rats or frogs, but not live, good grief. And I, eternally compliant until this point, refused and walked out. We could have just as usefully used plastic models or computer simulation. Agh.
In another course, we collected animal scat to analyse their diets. Much more fun, lol.
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Exactly!!! About the simulation and plastic models. I couldn’t stand the hypocrisy. To study life, by killing it? I think that’s when I went vegetarian, right around that time.
Hehehe about the poo analysis, that definitely sounds like more fun.
Was very happy to see a post from you today. Your blog-friendship means a lot to me.
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Ditto 🙂
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Awesome morning. Last year our pollinator population was abysmal. I even wrote a post about the lack of bees. My neck of the woods is having a hard time with our honey bee population. It’s just crashing. The growers are worried about getting their stuff pollinated.
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We humans… smh… it’s a miracle the honeybees still exist at all. I plant as much as I can for them, while most ‘gardens’ these days seem to be virtually flower-free. Do you have native bees in your neck of the woods? Our native blue-banded bees are great buzz pollinators for crops like tomatoes. No idea about almonds, peaches etc. Might need school children with paintbrushes to do it all by hand – make it part of the curriculum.
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