I read an article online which said that yesterday (24th June) was St John’s Wort Day. This struck me as slightly odd, because I know we’ve got loads of St John’s Wort in our garden, but I wasn’t aware of it having flowered yet, so I thought I’d take the camera for a walk and see what I could find.
This is not St John’s Wort, it’s Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis). It’s in what used to be the vegetable patch, which we’re going to gradually transform into an orchard. We just need to figure out how many fruit and nut trees we’ve got the space to plant!
Pretty forget-me-nots (Myosotis – no idea which species these are), with the scarlet pimpernel hiding underneath them. Also in the vegetable patch/orchard.
Ah. Well now. This explains why the rhubarb’s been in such a sorry state this year! A measly two stalks, and most of the leaves have been stripped right back to the veins. This was taken a couple of weekends ago, and we counted TWENTY shield bugs on what was left of the leaves, merrily making more shield bugs to eat the rest. Thanks, guys!
This is a Common Blue damselfly, who I found buzzing around inside the greenhouse. We see a lot of different types of damselfly, and thanks to next door’s lovely pond, we sometimes see dragonflies too.
Hello! This is a different type of shield bug, hanging around on the dead nettles. We did some weeding underneath what’s going to be a native fruit-and-nut hedge, as the plants we didn’t want in that space were starting to crowd out the immature hedge plants. It needed doing, but we upset a lot of insects in the process. I felt very sad to see a huge spider running away carrying her eggs. But, we’re gradually getting rid of all the horrible shrubs that were in the garden when we moved in, and hopefully by adding lots of native plants we’ll be creating a better habitat for the future.
We’re keeping a close eye on the apple and pear trees this year. They’re only a few years old, and they haven’t done that well at fruiting yet. I don’t think we’ve managed to harvest a single pear (they seem to fall off the tree long before they’re ripe), and last year’s apples seemed to be full of moths. This is a ladybird larva, so I’m kind of hoping it’s eating whatever’s been ruining the apples!
And here’s the chap that prompted the walk down the garden in the first place – St John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum). We have a few clusters of plants, although not as many as last year by the looks of it. Most of them are just about coming into bud, but this was the only one that was actually in flower, so harvesting them right now seems a little premature!
And here’s how it gets its name – the little spots all over the leaves. This is one way that you can tell St John’s Wort from other types of hypericum – it’s called perforatum for a reason.
Apparently the shield bugs like the golden raspberries too. (Guys! We want to eat those!) This plant was a gift from friends, and now that we’ve finally got it out of the pot and into the ground it’s doing amazingly well! Last year I think we had six raspberries, which we just stood and ate in the garden. This year we might get enough to make a pie! (Or we might just stand and eat them in the garden again. Who knows.) We do need to harvest them soon though, the one that the shield bugs are sitting on is lovely and ripe.
It’s not all fabulous out there – the shots I’ve taken don’t show you the overall wildness of the garden. Which I do love, but at the same time we do need to try and control things a little bit. We certainly haven’t managed to control the bindweed, which is winding its way through all the shrubs in the garden, and we have to keep disentangling it from our baby hedge plants. Here it’s coming up through another hypericum – an enormous shrub version. And we’re also contending with a neighbour’s cat, which has recently started making its presence felt in the middle of the lawn. Not in the flower beds, not in the convenient freshly-dug soil. Right out on the damn lawn. Marvellous.
But to end on a much more pleasant note – the sempervivium has gone mad! It’s crammed into a smallish pot, where it’s lived for years and years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it with so many flowers! Amazing what benign neglect can do for your plants. Just as well really, as that does seem to be our primary method of gardening!