Caterpillars, Hawks and Meadows

Okay, my latest interest/project is getting into gardening. My husband usually calls me "brown fingers" because I have absolutely no idea of how to grow things and consequently it has never worked very well when I tried. I've also never tried very hard...
However, with the way the world is going it all of a sudden seems a good idea to grow some vegetables in your own garden, preferably permaculture style, and so I have started reading up on it and have become quite hooked on the idea. Alas, next year I shall try...
On a more immediate note, it so happened that a friend of mine (Emily) became interested in learning a bit of ballet, and she offered me produce from her allotment as "payment". I asked if she could teach me about gardening instead - you know the old saying: give a poor man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him angling and you feed him for a lifetime... In the end we struck a bargain of sharing the allotment (she has recently started studying for a masters degree and finds that she doesn't have enough time to do it all by herself) and teaching each other. At the moment of course there's not much to harvest: lots of kale, some turnips and the odd squash but it's so exciting to cook with things that you've just brought in from the garden...

Anyway, the whole garden theme has prompted me to share some photos with you from our own garden. These are not exactly new - and neither are the other stories I'm intending to tell you today - but cover the last few months. I don't think I'll ever get around to keeping this blog patch up to date, but better late than never I suppose...

First of all, I found some of these charming critters the last time I weeded the beds - probably in October or maybe late September. Isn't he beautiful? I have no idea what he would have turned into later on - we did have a lot of Painted Lady and Red Admiral butterflies on the ivy at some point, but of course that doesn't mean they grew up in our garden! He might well have become a moth instead... So if anybody knows what sort of caterpillar this is please share with me!!!

This one is Sean mowing the lawn - but with a difference. If you have a closer look you'll see that it's lawn on the left (where he has been with the mower) and meadow on the right! Yes, we left our lawn to grow wild this summer and had the most beautiful meadow full of lovely wildflowers, most of them yellow, sort-of-daisy-looking ones. They attracted whole charms of finches to come and feed in the meadow and it was really lovely to watch. Unfortunately Chiefie kept treading the grass seeds into her paws (some of the wild grass seeds can be quite sharp), so we won't be able to repeat this wonderful exercise next year and will have to keep it as boring lawn...

And the final garden story is about a hawk killing a pidgeon at the bottom end of our garden. Unfortunately, the pictures taken through the window of my upstairs study didn't turn out too well but it was definitely a sparrowhawk. I saw the movement out of the corner of my eye while working on the computer and as he was presenting his dark side my brain just registered him as something black - crow or similar - and I didn't pay much attention. Eventually the colour white penetrated as he was turning around and also plucking feathers from his prey and I realised that it was a bird of prey, so I started watching and taking photos. He was there for quite a long time, peacefully feeding on his pidgeon - I later took a photo of the "leftovers" which seemed rather "wasteful" :). He came back about an hour later and fed some more but in the end he disappeared and we were left to dispose of the carcass.

And just some more recent garden photos: pretties down the bottom...