Saturday 11th May 2024 - Wasps, Fast Food and Vlog

A very enjoyable and informative talk at the Gardening Club this week.  Dr Ian Bedford, expanded members knowledge about wasps.  These are a diverse type of insect with ninety nine percent leading solitary lives – this came as a surprise to me.  The type we normally see, though not in such numbers as we used to, are the ones which live in colonies, making nests and with female workers collecting food for the grubs.  Peter has seen them picking caterpillars off the brassicas, before taking them back to their nest and therefore we consider them, the gardener’s friend.  Wasps can be unwelcome if they make a nuisance of themselves when we are eating out in the garden but they are only looking for something sweet to feed on. When this happens, we try to be tolerant of their advances.  The solitary wasps have some pretty macabre ways of storing food, ready for when their eggs hatch; I won’t go into these here.  Next month, members have been invited to the garden centre in the village where we will be given a ‘behind the scenes’ insight as to how the centre operates.  This will be followed by tea and cake, in the cafe.

In our garden, on my evening slug hunts, a little face has been looking up at me from the flowering plants; it’s a frog.  A delight to see someone else helping with the battle against these slimy creatures.  I will still continue with my slug hunts as there are far too many for this little frog to consume.  Also helping is a male blackbird who from time to time we see wiping a slug, before consuming.  However, it far favours fast food for its fledglings and by that, I mean picking out the worms from Peter’s compost bin.  The worms are there to break down the vegetable matter into compost but we can’t blame it for indulging in a bit of fast food for its rapidly growing brood.

If you have been regularly reading my blogs, you will know I have been considering recording videos and making vlogs to post on YouTube.  Well, I have posted my first vlog (should there be a drum roll here!) I won’t say too much here as the details and vlog are on my Overstrand Life channel. The quality is not great, recorded in Mp4.  I will be using the camcorder, for the next recordings, in higher AVCHD format.   It’s been enjoyable learning the editing package; there are still a lot more features which I haven’t used. I did however, experience a couple of frustrations, setting up the channel.

Today, I have two photos to include, both of a couple of large fungi, spotted on the edge of a foot path.  They are past their prime but still striking.