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animals are transient, they come, they go; but wild plants ... they come, they stay, they get in the way, they interfere, and they compete with the flowers and vegetables we choose to grow. I think this attitude to 'weeds' is grossly unfair, so here

eating and growing until just large enough to transform into the fleeting adult.Although I find them regularly, I've never seen vapourer caterpillars in any great numbers, but according to several of my moth books they can occasionally be so numerous

150 years. It feeds on the fruits, using its stylet mouthparts to suck out the juices, in autumn moving to the berries of yew, which also grows profusely on the chalk downs.However, during the 1990s Gonocerus was found, first, at Bookham Common

loading a huge net sausage of straw into the water. I thought this treatment, intended to prevent algae growing on the surface of the water, was rather fanciful folklore. But I recently came across it on a water-management website, together with suggested

was the best sun in ages and these lovely bugs have started to appear, just as they always do at this time of year, sunning themselves on the south-facing fence, and the leaves of the ivy growing all over it. They won't stay that colour for long, and I expect

Due to the wet weather of the past week, I haven't been out in the garden much. The snails, however, have been very active; I can barely walk to the front gate without the familiar sound of snails crunching underfoot. Most of the plants we grow