Friday, September 01, 2006

Nature notes

It seems to have been a stunningly long week, although I only did 3 days at work. I'm learning small amounts of new things but mostly feeling foolish...

When I got back this evening though, I met this lovely thing attempting to scale the side of the house... Aren't those colours amazing?

It's a Privet Hawk-Moth (Sphinx ligustri) caterpillar. This one was about 12cm (5") long so presumably somewhere near fully grown. I went in to find trapping materials and the neighbour-with-connecting-garden wasn't at home (and has a lilac tree which is one of the main foodplants), so I rehomed the caterpillar there...

Also went off and entered things for the Village Show this evening (because you do; well, because Sandra threatened and begged, and she's show secretary this year, and it was her Civil Partnership day when she did the begging/threatening, so how could I refuse...) so I now have to round up some knitting/crochet (!I have a curly wurly)/needlework/jelly/savoury flan on Sunday morning... Coming back from that, I spied Amelia being Mistress of All She Surveys. Centre of photo (that black-and-white smudge on the ground), average-to-large cat. Rest of photo, territory she strenuously defends. She looks so cute trying.

And also, while gratuitous cat-shots are going - double-decker cats. Tilda (aka Pig) above; Amelia (aka Bug) below. Sofa 0-cats 1, I think.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh it's so nice to see the top of someone else's futon with that dip in the cushion. The culprit for me, though, is a shih tzu.

Anonymous said...

Is that the mulberry jelly you've entered? Keep forgetting to say that it's delicious! I've been eating it spread thinly on top of soft cheese on bread; the combination tastes much nicer that it sounds....

Rosie said...

Whenever I spot a hawkmoth caterpillar I seem to suddenly get an unexpected lucky break, so hope that you'll have similar luck. (Wins in the village show, however, will be due to your amazing talents, not luck!)