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quantities per m³ of estimated water volume. Since the park was revamped a year or so ago it is a delightful place to wander, but the pond was always the low point. There are now recently installed baskets of water plants (more needed I think), and wire

with water.We're not quite all the way there. The pond is full of water and has already taken on a deep green bloom as the algae and microbes start to establish an ecological balance, but the pond surround needs to be planted up and after the soil has settled

, using railway sleepers, three high (about 50 cm), to make a raised water body. Triangular in shape, 2 metres long, with a deep corner dug down a further 50 cm and a shallow corner for marginal plants. Three species of damselfly, two species of dragonfly

It was blisteringly cold on Sunday, and the water butts were frozen over, but it was not a deep frost. So repairing and replacing the raised beds up at the allotment was relatively easy. The old scaffold planks we put in four or five years ago have

have a virtually water-proof skin based on the carbohydrate/protein mix of chitin, woodlice are still using an evolutionarily rather antiquated formula based on calcium carbonate, the main constituent of chalk.My pictures are really just an excuse

The warm humid evenings of late July and early August have brought out the flying ants again. These are the very common black pavement ant, Lasius niger. A few years ago we had a nest in one of our large plant pots and it was amazing to see

their fly stalking and scuttle off into the rosemary or lavender.  Late afternoon the swallows swoop down low,  then, just on the verge of stalling, scoop up beakfulls of water from the swimming pool. Then they sit on the ridge of roof preening and fluffing

. There is nothing about taking out Leyland cypresses, unless, perhaps by so doing I "increase the proportion of native plant and tree species". Ah, but I can get the pupils to build a hibernaculum for amphibians with the logs and retain the dead wood for timber

against winter and hard times in the honeybees’ wax comb, and which gives a honeybee colony virtual immortality.]The pupils also knew a lot about climate change — ocean acidification, changes in ocean salinity, water level changes, ice sheet retreat