Garden nightmare!

Another garden spider hard at work remaking his web after the heavy rain had destroyed it.

New shieldbug

Found a Dock bug (coreus marginatus) on the hops.















Amazing how the angle of the light changes the look - this is the same individual.

Spider City

I have one hop plant in the garden and today I found all these spiders on it at once.

zebra spider (salticus scenicus)















Probably a garden spider (araneus diadematus)















Not sure about this one

Ladybird for lunch!

I thought this spider had an egg sac till I looked closely at the picture and realised it had caught a harlequin ladybird!

Common green shieldbug (palomena prasina)
Seen on a hop plant in a sunny position














This seems to be a 4th instar of the same. I thought it was a different insect until I started to research shield bugs.














Forest bug (pentatoma rufipes)
Seen by the shed at the bottom of the garden - very shady and overshadowed by trees.

Garden visitor

Wet day today. Spotted this visitor outside our patio doors. Not here directly because of the pond, but I'm expecting frog spawn next spring.
It is a common frog (rana temporaria) identified thanks to Froglife.
You can record sightings at Frogwatch.

Started planting

Log pile using bits of the old apple tree from the garden. Greater pond sedge beyond the logs, iris setosa (purple) at the back, creeping Jenny at the edge of the pond. Purple loosestrife in the water at the back, golden striped rush in the water at the front, and umbrella flat sedge in front of the log pile.

First visitor

Amazingly, before the water had been there for 24 hours, I had a visit from a bright green dragonfly checking out the pond! I didn't manage to get a photo, but I'm pretty sure it was an emperor dragonfly (anax imperator).

I have a pond!

Not quite finished yet, but undoubtedly a pond.

More than a year later!

Not a lot has happened in the last year. Just weeded out brambles from the potential pond area and weeded the patio. Spotted a comma butterfly (Polygania c.album), but unfortunately had no camera