After waking at 6am this morning, fretting about lawn edges, I did some intensive research on the interwebs and ordered a power edger. I can’t honestly say that I have total confidence in this purchase, but almost all of my other power tools have turned out to be fantastically useful, so I’ll just have to hope that this one lives up to the standards of its predecessors. It was another warm, bright day, and as soon as I could I headed outside, to try to build on the good work I did yesterday. I tidied the smallest of the flower beds in the back garden, trimmed a willow-leaved cotoneaster that was getting above itself, and started cutting back the scrubby weeds that have taken hold along the edge of the gravelled yard since R saw the light and gave up the glyphosate.
By far the best news of the day was the appearance of the first male Hairy-footed Flower Bee, whom I heard and then saw, late this afternoon, zooming along the long border of the front garden. Sadly, he was less impressed by the sight of me, and declined to let me any closer than about eight feet, which isn’t the ideal distance for a 100mm macro lens. After securing some very poor record shots to submit to BWARS, I went and changed the macro for the big zoom, hoping that he’d reappear and pause long enough on the pulmonaria for me to catch him at 500mm – but though he did come past several times, he was clearly onto me and didn’t even twitch in the direction of the pulmonaria patch. I’m reasonably sure that many of the neighbours already think I’m a bit odd, but after I’d stood stock still on the front lawn for forty minutes, clutching a large camera but never actually using it, I started to fear that some of them might be preparing an intervention, so I tipped my imaginary hat to a worthy little adversary, told the Plumpie I’d catch him another day, and went off to finish tidying up the debris from my afternoon’s work.
Today’s other firsts for the season were a Meliscaeva auricollis hoverfly, a newly wakened Buff-tailed Bumblebee queen, and a tiny male miner that I couldn’t get close enough to identify, but which was probably a Gwynne’s Mining Bee (Andrena bicolor). And though yesterday’s Green and Hairy Shieldbugs were nowhere to be found, I was compensated by the appearance of two Hawthorn Shieldbugs – both already changing colour, from their winter drab back to the vivid green and red which show that they’re ready to breed. This one was on the Lawson cypress, which is currently looking a bit sorry for itself and might need the attention of a more professional tree surgeon than me before too long, but it’s nice to see this year’s red and black flowers developing at the end of its healthier fronds.
R: L2, C5, D19.
