Friday 1st August 2025 - Highlights, Ripening, Insects and Sea Rocket

There have been three highlights to this week.  Two were related to some impressive achievements by our two sons – we’re super proud of them.  The third, after not having seen any so far this year, I spotted a bat on two separate evenings.  The first evening it dipped and dived over a neighbour’s garden and the second time, it extended its range to briefly cover our garden too. 

Walking along the field edges where a few weeks ago, wild flowers were in full bloom, a number of these are now setting seeds.  Already the blackberries are ripening as are the sloes and elderberries.  We stopped near a Mirabelle plum tree and seeing a number of ripe fruits, Peter picked a couple of handfuls.  Some made it home, others were eaten as we continued walking.  With the plums and blackberries, I’d already had two of my five a day by the time we were back home and all before breakfast! 

It’s been a good year for butterflies with more than normal visiting our garden.  What I haven’t seen, this and last year, is any of the small bright blue type of dragonflies which I think are damselflies.  However, there have been a number of red darters around our pond.  On Wednesday, I spotted an elephant hawkmoth caterpillar on a clump of moss (see photo below) but no sign of it on Thursday.  I’m hoping it moved to a nearby fuchsia (one of their favoured plants) and didn’t get taken by one of the blackbirds which are still to be seen with beaks full of bugs for their youngsters.  A couple of times I’ve seen hummingbird hawkmoths.  The one I saw today, stopped to rest on our fence.  Here, immobile and with its wings closed and not showing its full beauty, it looked like an ordinary brown moth.

We took an early morning walk along the beach yesterday, where for the most part we had it all to ourselves.  The first section, towards Cromer, was quite rough with large flints but later it opened up to sand and shingle with flotsam and jetsam, washed up by the latest high tides.  I tried to get a decent photo of the small pale lilac flowers on the sea rocket (cakile maritima) but although they looked okay on my camera, back home, downloaded onto my laptop they are definitely out of focus.  There are a number of these annual plants, either growing at the back of the beach or right on the tide line when they will be washed over by the sea; they’re definitely salt tolerant.