We were down at our allotment yesterday to try to keep up with all the jobs that were piling up, one of which was to do one aspect of holding an allotment which should be most rewarding - harvesting the crops. However, on one crop something else....
....had beaten us to it. These are from the infamous 'cabbage white' butterfly, either the small white or the large white, large numbers of which were on the broccoli each time we visited. We did pick some florets but when we reached home discovered that they were infested so they went into the compost. We poisoned the plants, which means we can't eat any for a week, but expect that, by that time, the caterpillars will be back. We really do wonder if summer brassicas are worth the trouble.
On a more cheerful note, there were plenty of other butterflies around, including peacocks, red admirals, a blue, a copper and several of these gatekeepers, as well as....
....a couple of dragonflies. This one is a very smart male common darter guarding our strawberry bed but the other, larger one, which was constantly patrolling our corner of the allotments, was almost certainly a hawker.
There aren't many small birds in the allotments at this time of year as food is plentiful and they're busy bringing up their young so it was a considerable pleasure to have a visit from a noisy group of about six long-tailed tits, one of which inspected me from the end of the shed door not two metres from where I was sitting.
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