Garden Butterflies

Our garden is a mass of flowers, with purple dominating, and should be crowded with insects feeding up ready for winter, but....

....the sun hasn't been around until the past week when we have - at last - seen some, to the extent that, on Wednesday, we sat outside for our sundowners, basking in glorious sunshine, something that has happened rarely this summer. The other days we have had some rain, much appreciated by the garden, but also a very persistent, gusting westerly wind, at times blowing almost to gale force.

The small numbers of butterflies appearing in the garden in response to the sudden sunshine have now moved their attention from the fading flowers of the buddleia to the verbena which, being six foot tall, waves around excitedly in the wind, much to the discomforture of any insects hanging on grimly in the hope of a meal.

It's the same small selection of butterflies, with red admirals and peacocks dominating along with a tortoiseshell or two, but the whites have disappeared and we've had just one visit from an old friend....

....a small copper which put in a very brief appearance, almost as if to say, "I'm off now, have a good winter and hope to see you in the spring."

Au revoir, little butterfly, but somehow spring seems an awfully long way away.

The Lurcher

Normally we share the long sandy beach at Littleferry with few other people, of whom most have accompanying dogs, but today it was our family which brought their dogs, including....

....Lethaby the lurcher who was instantly and gloriously at home, zooming up and down the beach in a way which my mother would have described as, "stretching his legs". 

There is something very exciting about watching an animal at full speed, doing what he was bred to do and so, so enjoying it.

And while Lethaby dashed up and down the beach some gannets, about a dozen of them, were wheeling and diving out over the firth.

The Last Days

As the day of our return from Mombasa to school in England after the long summer holiday approached, the family dynamics began to change. My father, who normally took little interest in his two sons, was dragged into various events which my mother organised. The picture shows one, a long weekend at Whitesands hotel along the coast from Mombasa which my father attended so unhappily that, in desperation, my mother relented and allowed him to return to Mombasa while the three of us enjoyed the hospitality and beautiful, empty beach.

I remember the misery of those last days, as each one with its precious hours shot by, when the evenings, the one time we had both parents trapped so they had no choice but to listen, were filled with our tears and our pleadings not to be sent back to England.

One of the rituals of those times was a visit to the Mombasa Bookshop, where my mother obliged our father to meet us and buy us each something to read on the 'plane journey from Nairobi to Heathrow, which in those days took a day to a day and a half. Early on my brother would choose the Beano annual and I had the Topper annual; later we left the shop clutching books - for me, "Hunter's Tracks', 'The Maneaters of Tsavo', Robert Ruark's 'Horn of the Hunter', 'In the Wake of da Gama'.

However much we kicked against it, the inevitable Last Day arrived. This picture shows us on the last Last Day, in early September of 1961, when Richard and I knew that we would never return to the easy life that Mombasa offered because my parents were retiring to England, a place we cordially detested.

The picture was taken outside the beautiful house at the end of Cliff Avenue with its views out across the golf course to the ocean beyond. It shows a slightly strange combination of people: our father was staying in Mombasa and had to return to the office, while the office driver, Gabriel, took our mother and us to the railways station whence the three of us travelled to Nairobi by the overnight sleeper train.

The Last of the Few

It's been a dreadful year for insects, whether in the garden or out in the countryside, with precious few on the many flowers in bloom on plants which have shown few signs of suffering unduly in the dry, cold, breezy and grey conditions which have characterised the summer of 2026.

However, one insect group has visibly declined in numbers - the butterflies, their absence notable because....

....many are so gloriously colourful. So we've seen peacocks (above) and tortoiseshells and red admirals and whites and fritillaries and blues and ringlets and a small copper or two and....

....we've had the pleasure of visits from painted ladies; and....

....in the dappled shade of the woodland we've seen one species which has bucked the general decline, the speckled woods; but with these one or two exception we've seen precious few butterflies this summer.

So, yesterday, in classic 'showers with sunny intervals', we saw one painted lady and one peacock, possibly the last of the few we've seen this year.

Return to Littleferry

We are temporarily dependent on other people to take us to Littleferry so today was the first time we'd been there since selling our car. Our scooter has the range to get there and back but we'd need two if we're to go together. Not that it was a particularly friendly return - it rained heavily for a few minutes when we first arrived before clearing as we walked along the beach, watched by....

....two grey seals swimming against a strong outgoing tide.

All along the shoreline birds were sitting, mostly sandwich terns and oystercatchers, preening themselves, the terns readying themselves for their long flight south.

Leaving the sandy beach we crossed the cobbles of the storm beach where this plant was growing. It never ceases to amaze me how such a plant survives on what appears to be a diet of bare stones. It may be sea sandwort, a succulent, one which we haven'r found on this beach before.

We returned to the car along the links where the ling is in full flower. The main difference we noted was how few of the flowers we'd seen here on our last visit were still in bloom - Scottish bluebell and ragwort being the dominant flowers today.

It was good to be back, but how I wish that summer's flowers were beginning again instead of fading before our eyes.

Memories

I was sitting up in bed this morning looking out at the view across the Moray Firth when a sudden burst of sunshine illuminated this painting hanging on the wall of the bedroom. It shows another view, this one from the upstairs balcony of the last house we had in Mombasa where, each morning, just before six, Saidi would bring up a tray of tea and the family would gather on the upstairs veranda to enjoy a cup and watch the sun rise across the Indian Ocean.

On the east coast of Africa, this is the most peaceful and gentle time of the day. The air is still and cool. The birds have just woken and are singing the celebration of another dawn - look carefully and find a bright yellow weaver bird in the foreground, enjoying his morning bath. There is little traffic along the coast road that follows the palms along the side of and then across the golf course. It is so quiet that the pervading sound is the distant, throbbing roar of the ocean swell breaking on the Andromache reef on the far side of the deep blue channel that leads into Kilindini harbour.

There is so much in this painting to remember. The ivory-white flowers of the frangipani trees to the left of the painting: Saidi will shortly pick one of these delicate flowers and we'll find it floating in a bowl of water when we go down for breakfast. The dark shape of the buoy marking the point of the Andromache reef and, to its left, what looks like an elephant standing on the reef that fringes the coast, the remains of a ship which went head-on ashore many years ago. The lantana hedge round the garden, which sometimes concealed a snake.

So, so long ago and, although much has changed - the lovely old house was demolished not long after we left - much is still as it was. The golf course is still there, as are the reefs; the breeze still blows in from the sea, warming as the day unfolds; the coast road still follows the palms across the golf course; and the roar of the breakers destroying themselves on the reef is never-ending.

Swallows & Martins' Farewell

As I walked up the track between the two rabbit fields this morning dark clouds were gathering, ending one of the 'sunny intervals' promised by the forecast this morning and replacing it with heavy - and somewhat welcome - rain.

The rain didn't bother the twenty or so swallows and a few house martins dipping and diving across the fields and then coming to rest for a few moments on the galvanised iron barred gates and....

....the tops of the fence posts. I'll remember them here as we plunge into our northern winter. I'll remember their high-pitched screams of excitement; the way they watched me, leaving it daringly late in my approach before they screamed again and took to the skies. I'ii remember how I worried, this autumn, that there have been so few insects - the hover flies seem almost to have disappeared - so few that I worried again about whether these kings of the sky have stocked up with enough food to see them across the Mediterranean and across the Sahara to their second summer of the year, in southern Africa.

I'm sure they were saying goodbye, or adieu, or au revoir. I'm sure they were wishing those of us who are staying behind well through the long winter ahead; as I wish them well in their thousands of miles of the sort of journeying which, in times gone by, we used to so enjoy.