More visitors - human and animal

Still more very welcome guests of late - Guy and Carolyn dropped by on Saturday for a spot of coffee and digger fun - 1.5 tonnes of JCB mega action was had this weekend, as we excavated the pond, the veg beds, and stripped the turf from both hedge lines and the woodland glade ready for autumn/winter planting! Creative destruction.....

Self-explanatory, really....fun!

Two pallet-built wildlife towers are also installed in the woodland glade, and our long-potted Camellias and a new Rowan are in the ground.

More alpha-male nonsense in the garden

Also here on Monday were Oscar and Eric, en route to Portsmouth and the Bilbao ferry - and they even managed to bring Pete and his partner Maggie along too. We all enjoyed some time in the field on the HWT reserve, and up on the Forest too. And a vast cod and chips lunch at the Redshoot Inn....

Finally, Emily came round too, with young Benedict (just two - Fionnbharr behaved beautifully with him, but less so the other two!), and we all ate too much (again).

Somewhere within this social whirlwind (more to come in the next few days!) we've had time to catch some moths (new ones included Red Underwing, Svensson's Copper Underwing, Birch Mocha, Orange Swift and Canary-shouldered Thorn), see some birds (first Reed Bunting and Meadow Pipit of the autumn in the garden, Dunlin and migrant LRP on the reserve) and even do some botanizing. But the end of the holiday is looming.....

Red Underwing

Birch Mocha