June

I steal a few hours, alone, in the garden. It’s unusually quiet, the neighbours must be away. But the borders are quiet, too. There’s a few bees but not many, and I wonder if the cold, dry conditions a few weeks ago hit them just as they were starting their nests, or if the dry conditions generally have been too much for them. It’s eerie. There are few hoverflies and other insects, too, there’s none of the ‘hum’ of life that I would expect in early June, when things typically start getting noisy. But there is some life and I hold on to it, hard.

The pond is fuller since we had rain, and covered in duckweed, which I can’t remove because the tadpoles are too small to deal with the onslaught of being hoofed out and then chucked back in again (I can do this from July). I focus on other things: I tie clematis, honeysuckle and hops into the trellis, trim off wayward stems and check them for caterpillars – nothing. I trim the hedge, which has only just started looking like a hedge, and check the prunings for caterpillars – nothing. I cut back bindweed that’s allowed to live in the twitten but is not allowed to grow through the gate and strangle my hedge. Two caterpillars! Phew. But, sorry. I fetch a clothes peg and carefully attach the leaves to some living bits of bindweed so the caterpillars can eat them, instead. I check everything again and then throw my clippings on the habitat pile between the shed and the wall, where everyone lives but me.

The garden starts to look completely wild at this time of year. I mow the ‘lawn’ until May so the mining bees can use the short grass, and then set it free. It took a while for things to gather pace this year because it’s been so dry but it’s picking up speed now. The grass is knee-high in places and the borders are busy – ornamental poppies rub shoulders with foxgloves and alliums, along with the last of the honesty.

I collect seeds from white deadnettle to scatter elsewhere. I reduce the height of the knapweed around the pond so I can still see the pond. I ‘Chelsea chop’ the dusky cranesbill, (Geranium phaeum) so it flowers again, and the white comfrey so it doesn’t produce seed. I find baby frogs and photograph them. Hi!

I make tea and lie on the bench, a treat I rarely allow myself. In the sky I count 10 swifts flying overhead and far above them a buzzard being escorted away by six of the finest herring gull bouncers. Herring gulls are such good parents, such fine neighbours. I think of them, happily, as I fall asleep, and wake 10 minutes later with a jolt. More gardening? Why not?

I planted the front garden to be a riot of colour and wow! People stop to comment on it. It was covered in plastic and pebbles when I moved in and now provides food for pollinators all year round. There are primroses, crocuses and lungwort for the spring bees, then mountain cornflowers, Macedonian scabious (Knautia macedonica), dyer’s chamomile and viper’s bugloss for the summer crowd. Purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis) and rudbeckia for the autumn stragglers and a bit of winter honeysuckle for anyone who wakes up or is disturbed during the cold months. It’s a succession of pollen and nectar, carefully managed, not too tidy. Except there’s a problem.

Honeywort (Cerinthe purpurascens) is a beautiful hardy annual with fleshy, glaucus leaves and purple tubular flowers. A member of the borage family, it produces good levels of nectar, plus being Mediterranean, it’s used to dry conditions. It’s therefore a brilliant bee plant and the fact that it still produces good levels of nectar in periods of drought makes it extremely useful for dry gardens (or newly dry gardens due to climate change). Most flowers stop producing nectar in drought so honeywort can help them through. When bees visit its blooms they make a tinny buzzing sound, which makes me happy. Lots and lots of bees love honeywort, which makes it produce lots and lots of seed, which makes it produce lots and lots of new plants, which attract lots and lots of bees. See where I’m going here?

It would be an understatement to say the honeywort is extremely happy in my front garden, indeed, it’s completely taken over this year and nothing else has been able to grow. I’ve removed a few plants but, knowing how much the bees love it, I haven’t taken too much; it’s not nice to cut down plants when you know the bees love them and you know they will carry on feeding the bees when others won’t, especially when conditions are so dry. Instead I vowed to cut the plants back after they’d flowered but before they’d set seed, which seemed like a reasonable compromise.

I can tell when honeywort starts seeding as the leaves lose their beautiful blue hue and the seeds are huge – you can see them a mile off. It’s not a bad time for it to go: the hairy-footed flower bees, which are active from March to May, have pretty much finished for the season and the bumbles, if there were any, have plenty else in the garden to feast from. But still, it never feels good. I climb over the short wall and start chopping. The lack of bees makes the job easier, and soon I have a large pile of plants. I feel like I’m chopping down a forest – it takes a good hour and then five good armfuls to clear it through the house to the habitat pile at the back. But what I’m left with is heartbreaking; I was expecting to find little stunted clumps of chamomile and catmint beneath it, desperate for a bit of light. The plan was to give them a good drink so they could grow and fill the space left by the now-absent honeywort. But there’s barely anything at all, just some viper’s bugloss and Macedonian scabious that have seen much better days, and a few clumps of lungwort. The rest has died under the shadow of blue glaucous leaves. There’s no honeywort, and now there’s barely anything in its place, either.

To add insult to injury, as I pile it up at the side of the shed, a bumblebee finds it and starts taking the last of the nectar from its flowers. I sit, deflated, on the hedgehog feeding station. I’m being oversensitive because of the lack of rain; I’m taking it personally as if I were the dry garden, as if I were the empty skies. But the reality is that I’ve just removed a potentially important source of nectar during a drought and have nothing to offer in its place. I feel awful.

The bee takes her fill and buzzes off, for the last time, because the flowers will have dried out by tomorrow. I remind myself of all the things in bloom in the back, which I’m hydrating with grey water. There really isn’t a shortage of pollen and nectar in these parts. But the front garden is a mess, with virtually nothing growing in it. I’m sad but also mindful of an opportunity: what can I do with the space now?

The park caterpillars have started to pupate already. I knew they would, it’s never that long after they’ve dispersed. They seek out the perfect pupation spot like a dog sniffing out its next wee. I watch them crawl, with purpose, to the top of the tent, and stop. After a while they start to wriggle, uncomfortably, and then they hang down from the roof by a hooked tip known as a cremaster, a little silk pad holding them in place. Initially hanging in a straight pole, they seem to relax into the process and then curve up into the perfect, chunky comma. They might hang like this for a day or two before their skin splits for the last time and a chrysalis is born. Sometimes, despite much wriggling, the caterpillar skin stays whole, suspended from the bottom of the chrysalis. Other times just the gruesome remains of its old head are left.

Pupation is an interesting process; it’s when I start to see which caterpillars have been successful or not. First, there are those that don’t manage to pupate. Something happens during metamorphosis that stops them in their tracks. They hang and hang but never curl up into a comma, instead dying as a rigid, withered pole. Then there are the parasites. Sturmia bella is a parasitic fly that arrived here from continental Europe a few years ago (thanks, probably, to climate change), and is thought to have contributed to small tortoiseshell declines. It parasitises small tortoiseshells, peacocks and occasionally red admirals, the adult female flies laying eggs on nettle leaves and the unsuspecting caterpillars gobbling them up. The eggs hatch inside the caterpillar and the grub eats its host from the inside, eventually persuading it to pupate at the same time as its siblings. Then, while the others gradually turn into a butterfly, the Sturmia bella grub chews its way out of the chrysalis and drops down from a silken thread, hiding under leaf litter (or kitchen paper if you’re in Kate’s little mesh tent). There, they pupate into hard, wine-coloured pupal cases, and hatch out as adult flies a week or so later.

There are other parasites, too; tiny wasps that lay eggs in eggs and first instar caterpillars, their larvae bursting out of their unsuspecting host just before pupation – these caterpillars don’t pupate but wander around aimlessly until, eventually, they seem to explode, yielding their grubby secret.

Those that survive pupation then have other problems. In the wild parasites might lay eggs in the chrysalis or a park gardener might come along with a strimmer and squash them flat. When the butterfly is ready to emerge (eclose) from the pupa, it’s an extremely perilous time because it emerges with small, wet wings and it needs to hang upside down for a few hours to pump blood into them and dry them off. If conditions are windy or if the butterfly suffers a knock or it catches something while coming out of the chrysalis, it might get stuck or it might not be able to pump blood into its wings. This results in a crumpled butterfly, complete but deformed, which will survive for only a day or so. Men with strimmers are just one of so many dangers – can they not just stay at home?

These 41 from the park are lucky. If I hadn’t found the other batch, I wouldn’t have noticed these ones and I wouldn’t have been out gathering nettles into a plastic bag. The nettles would have had a bigger trim and the caterpillars would have been lost. I watch them crowd to the top of the tent and start to change, wishing they were doing so on the park nettles but grateful that they’re in my kitchen.

I’m very good at raising caterpillars because I have been very bad in the past. I took my first batch (from a clump of nettles that had been sprayed with weedkiller) nearly 10 years ago. I raised them in my bedroom, in an ice cream tub without a lid, from which, of course, they all escaped. I would gather nettles on the way home from work and then spend an hour searching for and then returning the adventurers to their ice-cream home. Then, one day, I came home to find a large number of them had pupated under my duvet, and I spent all night carefully teasing them off (remember they stick themselves in place with a silken pad), and it was long after I also wanted to be beneath the duvet that I had managed to prise them all off and reattach them to the kebab sticks I had arranged, like fishing rods, from my bookcase. They all turned out fine but, as well as pupating under the duvet, some pupated behind the wardrobe, another on the mirror. When they eclosed, which they tend to do together over a period of two to four days, they all flew around my bedroom and seemed reluctant to fly out of the window. I would then find surprise butterflies that had pupated in mystery places (the wardrobe, the mirror), which also had to be caught and released outside.

Another time, as I walked past men with strimmers attacking the communal paths of a local park, I gathered hundreds of caterpillars that were about to lose their homes, and transferred them to the nettle patch in my garden. Of course, every wasp in town was extremely grateful because I had essentially served them a very easy meal, all on one big plate. The whole lot had gone within a few days. Butterflies go about their business in the way they do for a reason. We are fools to ever forget that.

So it was with sadness that I realised that, if I was going to ‘save’ the caterpillars, I needed to do so at home, with the right kit. I searched online for some sort of mesh tent, only to learn there are such things designed exactly for the job in hand. I bought one designed for kids, a beginner tent if you like, and have been raising one or two batches a year in it ever since.

After a few hours, most of the Park 41 are hanging like chunky commas from the tent roof. I lose two of them to rigid withered pole syndrome (unofficial term). I keep an eye on them while cooking my tea, and watch a few wriggle themselves a new form. Looking after caterpillars is the easiest thing in the world. I wish more of us did it.

I see them as soon as I walk into the kitchen to make the day’s first cup of tea, four box-fresh small tortoiseshells hanging from their empty chrysalises in the little mesh tent, the blood-like spatters of meconium decorating its sides. Four of the 41 saved from the park, four little lives that otherwise wouldn’t have made it. My heart soars. ‘Hey, gorgeous things!’ I say, as the kettle boils. They’ve been there a while, all are dry with their wings perfectly expanded, ready for take-off. It’s 5.45 a.m. I open the kitchen blind and the day is dry and still but the sun hasn’t come around yet. I take tea back to bed, give them an hour.

Later, when the sun has moved round and I can be sure there’s no wind, I release my butterflies, one by one. I choose the front garden to release them, the hedge keeps everything protected and the sun is strongest here at this time of day. The tall stands of viper’s bugloss make the perfect release spot for them – each of the (now six) butterflies can have its own station on the same plant, and how marvellous they will look as they stick their tongues into the blooms for their first-ever sip of nectar.

I reach into the mesh tent and pop a finger in front of the legs of the one nearest the opening. It climbs aboard and then I transfer it to the other hand, which can take up to four butterflies at a time, for the short journey to the front door. I fish out three more, each one obligingly stepping on to my finger to be transferred to the other hand, to be carried to the door. Although their wings have fully dried, it’s still a vulnerable time for them, so I have to be careful. Outside I move my hand beneath the flower and let them climb on to it, where they settle themselves and open their wings a couple of times before moving into position to hang some more. The sun makes everything glisten. Today is going to be a good day.

I spend the next few hours popping my head out of the front door to see how they’re getting on. They move around, some visiting other flowers or other stations to hang from, before disappearing completely. I release another five butterflies from the little mesh tent, a total of nine that made it from caterpillar to adult, despite the efforts of the council.

It’s not rained for a month. Everything is struggling, and not just in my garden. In the park the playing field is yellow, the soil is sand. The tall poplar trees planted around the edge are shedding leaves but otherwise seem OK. The young trees are doing less well – three silver birches I planted in the copse have died, there’s a young hawthorn that’s seen better days and a couple of newly planted trees that desperately need water. At the edge of the playing field is a lone chestnut-leaved holly, its once-glossy leaves faded and brittle, the earth around its roots rock hard. Chestnut-leaved holly is a good tree for a changing climate because it does well in hot, dry conditions but doesn’t mind a lot of rain, as long as the soil doesn’t become waterlogged. Its leaves don’t hold much value for wildlife but its flowers attract bees and its berries feed birds. But it doesn’t become drought tolerant until it’s ‘established’, which means it’s too young to cope with this heat and lack of rain. It, too, could die.

I’ve been trying to keep these trees alive with grey water, which I decant into old 5-litre shampoo bottles that I bulk-buy my shampoo in, and take to the park when I walk Tos. Each day a different tree gets its 5 litres and when I’ve done them all I move back to the first one – that’s roughly 5 litres a week, per tree. It’s clearly not been enough, I’ve already lost my three silver birches and probably one of the newly planted trees near the edge. Now it looks like we’ll lose the chestnut-leaved holly. I can’t do this on my own, I can’t keep everything else alive as well as my garden. So, finally, I ask for help.

There’s a Facebook group for the park, plus my hedgehog group and another for the road next to mine. There’s also a huge network of dog walkers, connected by a WhatsApp group. I start with the dogs – we all take water to the park for our pups and most of us tip the bottles on to the grass as we leave. What if we tipped the leftover water on to the chestnut-leaved holly, instead? I text the group and some people respond positively while others suggest it’s the council’s job. It is, but the whole city is bone dry, they don’t have the resources to go around watering every tree on top of everything else they do on a skeleton budget, and what would they be watering with? Fresh drinking water? This is our community and our trees, we can look after them. I gently suggest they drop their leftover dog water on the chestnut-leaved holly as they leave the park, and post photos of the tube that takes water directly to its roots. Some of them will, some of them won’t. It’s a start.

I write much the same message in the Facebook groups and get much the same responses – some people deride the council for not doing enough, others fill watering cans and old pop bottles with water and take them to the park to douse the tree’s roots. I know this because they post about it on Facebook, and I feel happy. I am reminded, once again, that it’s the community that will save these trees, not me. I’m reminded that community is everything.

I spend four days releasing butterflies into the garden; some into the front, where the viper’s bugloss provides the perfect sanctuary, and others to the buddleia in the back. I release a total of 27. I write this figure down in my notebook, which reminds me that 12 were parasitised by Sturmia bella and two didn’t manage to pupate. That’s not a bad emergence rate, and probably better than if they had remained wild. Certainly better odds than they would have had if they’d been strimmed. It feels good. It feels good to do good things.

The original caterpillars, that first batch I collected from Wild Park, are not far behind. They started to pupate just a couple of days after this batch and it won’t be long before they, too, are set free in the garden. Meanwhile the patch of nettles that was completely destroyed two weeks ago is ripe with the freshest of new growth. I check them most days, when I walk with Tos around the park. Surely it’s only a matter of time before I find more caterpillars on them?

I wonder if the lack of rain is causing, or contributing to, all of these caterpillars? We are, apparently, not yet in drought but I can’t see how. The grass is yellow, the plants are withered and dying, the pond is disappearing before my eyes. And yet it will be faring better than wild areas because I’m keeping it hydrated (well, as hydrated as I can). I’m showering into a bucket and keeping washing-up water and the dog’s bath water, which I know only contain eco-detergents, and am reusing it in the garden. Are more butterflies coming to gardens and parks because they’re less parched than the food plants in the countryside? Maybe.

I buy a new mesh tent. It’s bigger than the child’s one I’ve been using for the last few years. It’s taller and wider and has a large door that takes up one side of it, which makes it easy to add plant material and clean. I could stand a vase of nettles in there if I wanted, to save me having to fetch new material from the park so often. It will be just my luck that I don’t need to use it, now that I’ve had my fill of caterpillars for this year. But something tells me there will be more.

Common backswimmer, Notonecta glauca

The backswimmer is so called because it swims on its back, using its oar-like legs to propel itself through the water, like a rowing boat. It’s also called a water boatman but so is another species, Corixa punctata, which is smaller, vegetarian and swims on its front. The backswimmer is a fierce predator that attacks prey like tadpoles and small fish, using its forelegs to grab its next victim and its ‘beak’ to stab it with poison, to kill it. Gruesome, yes, but a sign of a healthy pond environment – if yours can sustain backswimmers it means there’s plenty to eat.

Backswimmers have a large, silvery body covered in fine hairs, which they use to trap air when they come to the surface, so they can breathe below water. They are light brown with large, reddish eyes.

The backswimmer was one of the first species to colonise my new pond. One day I came home and found lots of tiny crab-like things bobbing in the water. These, I discovered later, were backswimmer nymphs, which grew through the season and eventually metamorphosed into the large adults that took a chance on my pond and laid their eggs. The second generation also laid eggs, and suddenly I had a family – large adults that would glisten as they swam to the surface for air, little nymphs that gradually shed their outer skin and grew into adults. One day I found a shed skin and kept it as treasure.

To garden for backswimmers is to have a pond where lots of species can live, so the backswimmers can eat them. It’s a backswimmer-eat-tadpole world, and I like it.