High summer

 The last day of July. After some fairly strenuous gardening (not in the "wild" garden patch) I sat peacefully in what the poet calls "a bee-loud glade". There were at least three varieties of bumblebee - possibly four or five. But I do not claim skill at identification. Some were on the knapweed in the wild patch. Some were on the sunflowers. There were several popular plants. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again - never use insecticide.

A few days ago we were away for a fortnight, Our Edinburgh heatwave was much less severe than many places, but still I wondered what I might find when I came back. None of the plants looked much the worse, but the pond was nearly empty. I used all the available tubs of water to refill it as much as possible, and the next day I breather a sigh of relief when I saw a tadpole wriggling. I wonder how many baby frogs will eventually crawl out. Meanwhile quite a few adults take advantage of our water features on these hot days.

The pond plants for summer are doing well. There is far too much water mint. But the single plant of purple loosestrife is magnificent - and popular with bees.

Some of my plant photos are not worth posting. There is a good show of heath bedstraw and some attractive cornflower from the wildflower annual seed packet. One of the best has just turned up - officially a "weed" in many places. here it is.

Ragwort

Some pond-life

The little pond is getting seriously overgrown with forget-me-nots and with mint, even though I though I had thinned them out pretty thoroughly in March. One learns from experience. Next year....

However, I did manage to do a little pond-dipping this afternoon and photographed the results.

There are lots of these snails. I imported a few to keep the algae down, and they have multiplied many-fold. They are also keeping the algae down very well. The other day a pond-dip pulled out a little pod of their eggs - a blob of jelly about the size of a swallowable capsule pill. Under a microscope I was surprised to see that the tiny dots were not in fact eggs, but miniature snails - as far as I could tell. Here's an adult.

I was surprised to find a different sort of snail, with a spiral shell.

There were also lots of water fleas - daphnia. They are the little orange creatures, swimming about. They are very prolific and, I think, help provide food for the tadpoles.

Finally, on this brief look, there were some flatworms. I'm not sure how big they grow. At the moment they are small.

I have no certain knowledge about how any of these, except the first sort of snail, got into the pond. Presumably they were in the roots of some of the plants that were purchased. A good idea with a larger pond is to bring in some pond mud, and maybe some weed, from some wild pond. My stretch of water is so small that I decided not to overcrowd it. 

One other observation today was a big ants nest. I lifted a couple of flagstones as part of some reorganisation, and this is what I found. 

 You can see a cluster of eggs, and also a lot of young ants growing wings, almost ready to fly off in the sort of cloud that can spatter car windscreens. The speed with which the workers bundled the eggs and the immature wingy ants underground was wonderful to watch. All the wild life in the garden is wonderful to watch. At this time of year there is masses to see.