bugged

Mother Nature is gradually reassembling in the back garden, since the building work.

The new muddiness attracted plenty of green shoots, which necessitated a quick change of plan as we planted turf to keep the area under some control until we can decide what to do with it. That probably won't be until next year.

At the front, the vast tracts of Devonshire mud are similarly sprouting small green shoots, in what was presumably agricultural land until the recent makeover. There is a plan for the front, but that also involves further diversion of the stream and potentially the re-siting of some high tension power lines. Bring in the big diggers again.

So at the front we have foxes, an occasional deer but mostly a couple of crows which strut around the various ponds. We've had the starlings doing their murmuration thing too, but only in low hundreds.

The back is rather more scaled back, such that wildlife comprises the smallest midges, a few of the garden fence spiders (they look like ruggedised house spiders). My short term favourite is the Green Shield bug, which, as H2G2 would say, is 'mostly harmless'.

I confess to not being particularly aware of these commonplace insects until a few days ago, and had classified them as a variety of grasshopper. These bugs stay green in colour, probably so that they don't get confused with the less attractively named 'Stink Bug'.