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in the thicket of climber on the fence. The first ladybird of the year, a seven-spot, sunned itself on the ivy. And one of my favourite spiders is back.Pisaura mirabilis is a beautifully sleek and elegant creature, dusky grey with a beige streak down its back. It

It’s life and death out there on the ivy at the moment. The far corner of our garden is a sheltered sun-trap, and the fence is now smothered in ivy flowers. The air is thick with the heavy scent of the blossoms, and the lazy buzzing of insects

The south-facing fence of our garden is covered all over with ivy, and the leaves are prime basking territory for all manner of insects. This last week, the solitary bees have started to reappear in droves. There are very many species all looking a

of the leaves when I spotted a ruddy brown bundle next to the ivy thicket. There was a fox asleep on the roof of the shed.It turned its head towards me as I cracked open the casement to take a picture. Not a very good one, I have to admit, I need a telephoto

and sunned it self on the glossy ivy leaves that cover our south-facing fence. This spring generation develops from caterpillars that fed on ivy, but probably not this clump, since they eat the developing flower buds and we don’t have any here yet. They

was fluttering round the ivy leaves. It had probably just emerged from a chrysalis hidden somewhere inside the dense foliage, because this is the wrong foodplant for this time of year. This butterfly is unique in Britain in having two generations a year on two

have none of these, but we do have plenty of straggly bits of long grass, clematis and ivy thickets you could hide a giant panda in, and an unexplored jungle, alive with distant roars, behind the compost bins.I sometimes feel uneasy when I see a garden

It’s all looking rather still and damp in the garden now. Autumn, it seems, has come at last. Over the Guy Fawkes weekend, there were reports on iSpot and Flickr of red admirals and hoverflies visiting the sun-lit ivy, but, in my garden at least

and cherry laurel, but against one hoarding is a mass of ivy and it’s still in flower.Ivy is a very important late nectar source for all sorts. The bush is ablaze and abuzz with insects. Twenty or more red admirals and small tortoiseshells vie with countless

fence was an alien country. I knew there were houses over there somewhere, in the next street, but they were all but invisible through the nettles, living and dead plum trees and sprawling ivy.Ironic, then, that our garden, when we moved in, was just