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The Queen and the Worlds Biggest Caterpillar

Today, we are mostly hitting our head against horticulture. Hmmm. We are not the Queen.


Today, I am hitting my head against horticulture. What to plant in the veg patch to make it gloriously productive and wonderful through winter. And if I plant it, will it survive anyway? The potatoes have gone and an early frost nipped the corn. I have stopped picking the beans and hopefully the last ones will fatten up to produce some very superior kidney beans, for very superior bean salad.

Then what? I think that various oriental things such as mizuna and mustards might be the thing, and spinach sounds promising, but it is all terribly experimental. I am going to put in some exciting garlic varieties and I have scored some rather jolly looking flower sprouts from Suttons. Like mini pink and green cabbages, I hope they taste as good as they look.

I also have a big box of bulbs from De Jager, which is extraordinarily exciting. De Jager does big bulbs as standard and in the spirit of getting what you pay for, bigger really is better. (As I discovered with some chunky Acidanthera that I got from Avon Bulbs last spring. My track record with summer bulbs is dismal but these ones worked and hope springs anew). I really, really want to get planting but it will have to wait until the weekend when I will vanish in a flurry of fritillaries, a nest of narcissi, a...um....posse of paperwhites? [enough! Ed]

Anyway, it is going to be good.

The picture above is a particularly awesome caterpillar that Isabella and I found on Sunday. It was vast and hairy and handsome and everything I admire in caterpillars. According to the internet it is a Fox Moth but if anyone knows different then do say so.

Listening to: Well, the soundtrack in my head is Oasis’s ‘The Importance of Being Idle’ which is an improvement on much of their recent work and a lesson for us all. In real life, the last thing I heard which I liked was ‘Big Red Combine Harvester’ at my offspring’s harvest festival, which we sang with enthusiasm all the way to school.

And there was some dire, miserablist wailing from my daughter’s stereo earlier, with some fellow claiming he needed ‘love CPR’ which must go down as one of the most rubbish lines in history. Trouble with some bands is they think such claims will make them sound sensitive and interesting (don’t start me on Scouting for Girls). Which they may, if you are pre-teen or take medical dramas seriously. Not me on both counts.

I think such chaps should wake up, smell the substance abuse and start smashing guitars. If your Rolls Royce is not in the swimming pool you are not doing it properly. So there.
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