Love bug housing

You may remember a while back that I received a gift from Prezzybox.com to review and it wasn't to my taste - flower grenades, that looked a little too much like grenades for me.. Well the lovely people at Prezzy box read my review and were slightly horrified to learn I had been offended. Dear love them, after sincere apologies they offered me anything else from their gardening range to review and I choose this insect house :)

Now this is more my thing and it was utterly delightful to receive, to make and soon I will have the pleasure of putting it up in the lottie. Plus I get a cute little tin to keep essentials in like plasters and antiseptic wipes or maybe all  the labels and pencils etc... It's a great wee gift and this, my friends I would recommend. :)

Look how cute the tin alone is and the contents are laid out so prettily too. I got stuck into building my Bug House right away and it was delightfully easy and I'm super pleased with the results and the 2 ladybirds that came with it = adorable!!

Ok, I am quite sure bugs aren't that fussed on how beautiful their homes are but darn it I'll try anything to welcome on board and help us fight the enemies...

I'm in a love bug mood these past few weeks since I started to clear up the embarrassing messy parts for the plots. We are seriously lacking in helpful bugs and though I made a makeshift bug house years ago and purposely put lots of grass and stones under our shed for bugs - we seem to have counted 4 ladybirds between us, 2 frogs (yay!!), lots of bees but not much more than that :( I want more good bugs! (Who ever thought I'd say that!!) The leatherbacks and those damned New Zealand flatworms of the past 2 years have destroyed the lovely balance.

So here is my Bangor Blue slate hotel which also has lots of dead and decaying leaves in and around it since I took this photo. On the other side of the wee fence is this pile of rotting wood and an old pipe where a frog has been living.

Plus we have a ready rotten log over on 14b where our other frog lives and lots of woodlice etc and I have been leaving the artichokes to flower to try and encourage butterflies and bees etc. Next year there shall be sunflowers too (I forgot them this year) and more echinacea and black eyed susans etc. Yes 2 frogs *happy dance* and you know why I'm so happy -  they eat loads of insects and nasty creatures and the ultimate enemy, Slugs and Snails!!!!!! Hurrah

Is it just me or are the slugs much bigger this year??

The RHS answers the question about who might check into your bug hotel.....

"A surprisingly wide variety of invertebrates including nesting mason bees and leafcutter bees, woodlice hiding from the sun – and woodlice spiders hunting woodlice, earwigs hiding their babies from predators, ladybirds and lacewings hibernating over winter, beetle larvae feeding on the dead wood, funnel web spiders spinning their traps and centipedes hunting down their prey."

Good stuff I say :)

Thank you Prezzy box for increasing our chances of more friendly, useful bugs on the plots and as for the flower grenades - well I have taken the seed out of the clay containers and shall be scattering them this weekend over by the field boundary.

Hugs and best wishes to all
Namaste

Autumn clear up, part1

This is a vignette of my Saturday spent at the allotment. I decided to bite the bullet and really get stuck into 14b, a place of fear where weeds ruled and one felt so overwhelmed that even walking past it I would pretend in my heart that it had nothing to do with me and tut at it as I do with other 'abandoned' plots, yikes!

Andrew was rebuilding his horse manure stocks (a man's poo heap is his castle!), he got roughly 13 wheelbarrow loads of the stuff for free, though we did give over a big bag of veggies. So I was alone most of the time, thank goodness for my MP3 player and some darn good music. In fact please do take a moment to enjoy this.....

Tree Hugger - by Antsy Pants
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R378SwPH-b0

So here is the scary before picture, there is a wonderful life affirming after photo but that is going to have to wait until tomorrow ;). For now here is the 'mid way' photo to compare :)

I was overjoyed to meet this little fella....

seeking shelter from the sun with Maggie, under the wheelbarrow = cute!

Maggie wasn't much fussed, hahaha. In fact Maggie didn't seem that interested in the other friend I made, I think she is either really ditsy and genuinely doesn't notice or just gets jealous when I give affection to 'someone' else, hehehe. I swear when I started out on this allotment journey I would have been sick in my mouth if I was even asked to hold and appreciate a snail but I have grown....

I think maybe I have 'grown' too much as on that Saturday morning we were out for our weekly morning coffee wake up and a lady killed a wasp against the cafe window; I was a little shocked and upset. Silly me I know, but I hate it that people kill insects for no reason other than they don't like them. Hell there are some people I don't like, I don't think it would go down well if I just killed them nonchalantly with a rolled up celeb gossip magazine.

Don't get me wrong, when it comes to me verses snails and slugs etc for my veggies I take no prisoners but that just means I fling them all into someone else's plot - don't judge me!!! I throw them into abandoned plots, honest I do or over by the hedgerows. I am really too soft.

****

Oh but I have 1 more thing to share, hehehehehehe

It was only a matter of time, glad it wasn't me though! The frame is still good so Andrew will make a new seat bit, in time, as if he hasn't enough to do!

slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails

I have an issue. I am writing about it here in the hopes that I shall learn that I am not a freak and that in fact other sane people feel the same way about this..

I hate slugs. I mean I HATE BLASTED SLUGS!!! They are evil and should only eat stuff I don't like and then die a happy death with food in their mouths as a beautiful little birdie swallows them whole. There glad we got that out in the open.

When I see a slug on my rounds (patrols) of the lottie I get a little touch maddened and tend to pick him up and fling him as far as I can way into the hedgerow (or to be perfectly honest, sometimes into someone else's plot - yes shame on me, but the anger takes over and I just lose it).

Here is a particularly nasty fellow - even looking at this photo makes me want to chuck something.....

Now snails also come under the banner of 'the enemy', for what is a snail but a slug with a house. But here is where the issue lies....I can't hate a snail as much as I hate a slug.

Is it precisely because of the house on their backs that I like them a little more - am I elitist?? Do I see the snail as more worthy of being left alone merely because it has a shell??? Somewhere deep down do I see the snail as more advanced than the slug and worry for it's ability to pay those mortgage direct debits??? I fear I do. Oh, lordy I never thought of myself as a snob but when I see a snail I think - 'oh you shouldn't be here eating my food; I think I'll just move you carefully over here anyway from my plot' and I carry the damned thing to the hedgerow. What is all that about?? I mean look at it - it's hardy gorgeous under that shell!

Does anyone out there the same? or the question should probably be: Is anyone out there willing to admit they feel the same?

Oh yeah, and puppy dog's tails was just because of the nursery rhyme - here's Maggie's tail though...

Tomorrow we shall do a major catch up (with photos) on the miracles we have worked on our plots :) I have the text started and the photos uploaded at least!

Hugs

Snails.... (PG 15)

I forgot to share this story with you..... on THE EVOLUTION OF SNAILS!!

They are slowly adapting to this world, were they are hated so very much by every sane person. They have been studied, developing over the past 40-50 yrs and I think becoming clever and stronger as a unit. They have different coloured shells, depending on where they live so they're harder to catch; the humble and sweet Thrush is in decline because they are in training to be masters of disguise. This is the real terror we must face.

My friends. What is a Snail but a Slug with a mobile home??? The 'Enemy' is (admittedly slowly but therefore more secretively and underhandedly; damn their evil minds!!) becoming a more advanced killing machine. They are on to us; they have their eyes on OUR prize - blast their miscreant potentiality!!!

Sleep well, if you can.......

Slugs and Snails and catepillars...

It's not often I get near any of the bugs on our plot; Andrew is very effective at 'disposing' of them - he is in fact generally, a heartless bug killer. But yesterday in our front garden I noticed a snail (which is still alive somewhere) and had a thought... Maybe I'm mad, but in Paris people pay good money to eat these delightful, slimy, squidgy things and I'm no expert but are snails not slugs with fancy shells on their backs??? My idea therefore is an EU initiative wherein allotment holders can gather up their slugs, ship them off to Paris as 'food' and make a profit out of the blighters. Et voila, dinner, Escargots, and you don't even need to hoke them out of their fiddly shells.

On the other hand there is something delicious in seeing this...
Dead. Gone. Succumbed to the lovely blue pellet on the soil.

Slug : "What is that? it's a pretty colour, I wonder does it taste nice, ummm, no!

Carrie: "Ha ha! Got you, you blighter".

Don't judge me!!


Ohhhh, we found this cool caterpillar. We have no idea what it is but it was so weird and special to us that even Andrew was persuaded to let it live, though in the hedgerow, not in our plot. Look at it up close - there's hairs and red bits and a horn thing. Cool!

All the other cabbage white caterpillars that we have had, never got a chance to be photographed and viewed by the world - Andrew, need I say more?

On a really positive note, we have millions of worms on our plot, no need for a photo of them, we all know what a worm looks like, eh? Some of them are so big! I choose to believe that if you cut one in half (accidentally!) it turns into two worms and I won't hear anyone say otherwise.

We also found a lot of ladybirds everywhere, they did a fantastic job on the green aphids etc and they're so pretty. It had been a while since I'd seen one, now they're all over the place. This is interesting, a ladybird larvae, I'd never seen one of these before. This picture was taken way back in June by the way, so I'm sure he's all grown up by now.