Our Flora and Fauna - Sept 08

A quick post following on from the last - purely for showing some of the flora and fauna around the cottage.

We found the most amazing looking slug - couldn't salt this one!


Then there are these amazing saplings, they grow everywhere, very quickly becoming quite tall trees, with very dense wood. The spines on them vary in size, the younger the tree / sapling, the larger the thorns. I think they are either Honey Locust or False Acacia - but if this is wrong, please tell me what they are - and how I can stop them rooting all over the meadow.



We also have two walnut trees, one is looking a little tired, this summer although it still produced some walnuts, there were hardly any leaves on the tree. The second one is near the drive / house, and looks really healthy. Unfortunately, it has grown at an angle - falling over the drive. It will need taking down I suppose, but it will be a big shame - it looks so lovely:


The drive is flanked by 10 massive spruces - at least I think that is what they are. Which spruce escapes me - they do not seem to fit with any of the ones I have seen online. They have long paper cones and very fine needles. Again, if anyone reading this is able to identify them, that would be great, thankyou:


Dotted through the boundary hedges and along the road side of the drive, there are some chestnut trees, a couple of young ones are at the end of the dive by the 'new' gates:


Growing up the front of the cottage is a grapevine. The front is south facing but not really knowing anything about grapevines, I wonder how it will fare. Time to research methinks! Last September there were a few tiny little grapes, white almost redcurrant size.


We saw this little fella and wondered what he would grow into - Paul described him as a 'loo brush' - you can see why perhaps:


Paul is not too happy about wasps / bees or spiders, so you can guess how he felt when all we could hear of an afternoon in the second week was the buzzing of bees as they swarmed over the ivy flowers surrounding the electricity pole and stone wall at the end of the house. They didnt disturb us at all, they were far too busy to notice we were even there.

All these we saw in Sept 08, it will be interesting to see what we find during our visits over the next twelve months.