Spiders

Over the last 3 or 4 weeks the garden has been taken over by spiders! They are everywhere, even one building a web across the back door leading to a sticky face everytime I go out. The most common variety seems to be the Garden cross spider (Araneus diadematus).

Yahoo! News had a headline article today explaining that the conditions for spiders were excellent this year.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090925/tod-britain-braced-for-huge-spider-invas-870a197.html

The article made mention of an organisation called Bug Life, their website has lots of interesting information about insects, spiders, etc including links to sites with good specimin pictures;

http://www.buglife.org.uk/

End of a dry spell

It's not rained significantly for at least two weeks. The silver birch has suddenly appeared stressed and many of the leaves have suddenly turned yellow.

The rhubarb also suffers if not watered regularly.

The crop of beans is reaching it's peak although there are still plenty of small beans growing so it could go on for some time.

A few bees are still visiting the salvia and I even spotted a late large white butterfly this morning. The grasshoppers are still chriping away.

Beans

I had the first few good sized beans over the last couple of days and the crop looks pretty good. After the rain the other day there were quite a few snails munching on the leaves and a couple of small slugs.

The wild potato plant that had sprouted after I harvested has also been attacked by something and pretty much eaten up. I also noticed that the raspberry plant is getting eaten at the low level so I have a bit of a pest issue.

Given it's not feasible to keep ducks I'll have to look into other ways to keep on top of them.

Ferns

After a very wet July two of the fern plants have sent out new fronds, the first growth of the year having died back in the hot, dry spell in June. I will water regularly to see whether they died back due to a shortage of water.

Butterflies

Today the garden was full of butterflies, mostly attracted to the Verbena (Verbena bonariensis). The species identified were Gatekeeper, Peacock and loads of Painted Lady's and Large Whites. I also managed to track down and photograph the grasshoppers that I've been hearing chirping away; they are Field Grasshoppers and I saw about half a dozen today.

The number of bees and hover flies seems down maybe because the alliums and Salvia (Salvia nemorosa 'Amethyst') are past flowering.

The self seeded Verbena plants are now starting to reach the stage where they are flowering at a height of about 60cm.