| 2024 | 2025 |
| << July 2025 | August 2025 | September 2025 >> |
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1st: Colour Bird's Foot Trefoil and Purple Loosestrife - both having good years on our land - we look forward to the Loosestrife spreading round all the ponds and the Trefoil finding its way into Swallow and Goat fields.   |
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2nd: Not looking their best Butterflies don't live long, some a few days, most just a few weeks. And they get start to show signs of wear and tear quite quickly.     |
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3rd: 5th Delmhies Puppy Party So proud and so grateful to all our dogs and their amazing owners. 
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4th: New plants We crouched in the shelf of Stonechat pond this morning, where, if we had enough rain, there would be water! As it is, parts of it are now smothered in vegetation, amongst which we spied two totally new species: Water Pepper and Water Purslane. Both very pretty and, as the names suggest, plants found in damp places. As well as these two, we also saw Greater bird's foot trefoil, young Grey willow saplings, Prostrate knapweed, Marsh cudweed and White clover. And to think, just a few months ago, this was all bare earth!!!   |
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5th: Banks and scrapes Despite the lack of rain, our banks and scrapes have filled up with a wide variety of vegetation. We have found upwards of 20 new plant species growing in them in the last few weeks, along with many existing plants that now exist in much larger numbers: scarlet pimpernel and white clover being two major examples. The photos don't really do them justice. 
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6th: Feed Me, Feed Me Not the best photos, but the action needs no explanation. Just love how many swallows we have this year!! Meanwhile, elsewhere, we are trying to reclaim the garden a bit - which includes a major tidy of the greenhouse as well as all the gravel areas, now that a lot of plants have finished flowering and spreading their seeds!!     |
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7th: Gulls For ages, we have been meaning to move a camera nearer to Chaser Pond to get some close-ups of the gulls. They are now regular visitors and at times we count upwards of 30/40 of them at once. Some weeks they are quieter than others but this week they have started to visit in large numbers again. We love having them. We 'think' we have Herring, Lesser and Greater Black-backed, the majority of which are youngsters. At the moment we think most that visit our pond are the first two. They are doing a grand job of 'fertilising' the banks of Chaser Pond and hopefully next spring this will really help it start to green up. We also hope the gulls hang around. They started visiting our land at the end of June although had been around most of the spring on the land next door. It would be great if they became all-year round visitors. They will nest on roofs in the absence of cliffs apparently! Many gulls are now on either the red and amber lists in terms of their conservation status - thinking back to our childhoods this is something we never would have guessed would occur!     |
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8th: Wiley At Wildside An amazing visit today to Wiley At Wildside with Becky - a once flat three acre field that is now the most extraordinary garden of many levels. Highly recommend a visit. And we had a fab drive through Dartmoor as well. 
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