Category: insects

A dull Saturday – 12 June 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Not a day for doing much or going anywhere, although it did brighten up later.

Scamp did a bit of tidying up in the garden and moved some plants around to give them more sun and also to put them in places where they could be seen better. I deadheaded some of the aquilegia plants to, hopefully force them to produce more flowers. Scamp also cut the grass at the front and edged it I am now reminded!

We had the other half of yesterday’s quiche for lunch. I think I prefer it cold, while Scamp definitely prefers it hot. After lunch I took the camera for a walk in St Mo’s. Snapped a few damselflies, but because I hadn’t lifted the macro lens, none of them were acceptably in focus. I walked out behind St Mo’s school and disturbed a big dragonfly. It flew around for a while before almost crashing into me. It seemed to perch in a tree, but when I looked I couldn’t find it. PoD turned out to be a little fragile looking damselfly that seemed to be playing hide and seek with me hiding behind a stem. Every time I moved, it moved too. I took some photos of it and left it to its game.

When I cropped the damselfly photo in Lightroom later, it was really a small image. However, this new Lightroom has the ability to enlarge a photo to four times it original size without losing definition. That’s what I did. The process is called ‘Enhance’ and that’s what it does. It takes a fair bit of processing power to do it and the PoD took almost 30 seconds. The wait was worth it, because the quality is quite amazing.

We walked over to Condorrat tonight to pick up a Golden Bowl dinner we’d ordered. Two Chicken Chop Suey and two Fried Rice. Just as good as it always is. It’s great that some things don’t change in this world.

After dinner, Scamp and I watered the garden, just the front garden and just with watering cans. If the warm dry weather continues we may hose back and front gardens tomorrow night. We had a quick practise later for tomorrow’s class. The routines are a bit rough, but we have most of the steps in the right place.

No plans for tomorrow. We’ll see what the weather brings us.

 

A busy day – 7 June 2021

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Scamp was off to meet her sister. I was head gardener for a while.

Lots of things I could have been doing, but I chose to put my free time to good use and scrubbed out the bird bath then refilled it. My chilli plants have been desperate for more space and some real compost, not the floor sweepings B&Q seem to think they can foist off as ‘peat free’. What is this sudden panic to make everything peat free? Crofters up north have been digging it up, drying it out and burning it in their fireplaces for centuries. Suddenly they are virtually criminals because apparently that peat has been storing carbon and saving the planet. It seems strange to me that all these activists use the same terms like “locking away the carbon”. It’s as if this new jargon explains everything, when in actual fact it’s more like The King’s New Clothes. Everyone seems afraid to ask them what that means in Topsy and Tim language. How does it lock it away? Where does the peat put the carbon? I think it’s all smoke and mirrors, but probably not peat smoke. Anyway, I used some general purpose compost which may or may not have peat in it and the chillies are probably better off in it than in the B&Q floor sweepings. Rant over. After that I soaked the plants in the bird bath, muddying the water and undoing all the good work I’d done there.

Before I started the gardening I’d made a pizza dough and left it to prove in the warm living room. When Scamp came home I’d just finished rolling and stretching some of the dough to a rough circle and put it into the proving oven (the grill that had been preheated for about five minutes) to puff up. It was just a simple tomato base with extra chopped up fresh tomatoes and some grated mozzarella on top. Baked for about fifteen minutes at gas 6 – that was just a reminder for me. It was very successful.

Next Scamp wanted to wash her car, but couldn’t reach the roof, so I did that and then gave it all a bit of a soapy wash while Scamp scrubbed off the sticky sugary stuff that drips from the trees in late spring. Then I set up the hose for her to wash it all off and started on my car. It made sense to just get it all done at the same time. Thank you Bobby Flavell for the use of your outside tap again.

With the cars sparkling in the sun, Scamp decided to water the garden. Easier to use our own water for that, so I fixed up the hose and let her get on with it while I went for a walk in St Mo’s. Not a lot of movement, but one little Common Blue damselfly sat and watched me while I carefully dragged my camera out of the bag and took its picture a few times.

After dinner the Amazon man dropped off a parcel I’d ordered last night. It was a Samyang Lens Station. Basically the 18mm lens I use on the Sony camera is crap at focusing. However, Samyang will sell you a piece of kit that connects your lens through the computer to their website where you can download a new firmware file that will improve the focusing. It’s a neat scam and it certainly works! Thankfully, so did the lens afterwards, because I’d read horror stories on websites to the effect that the software could wreck your lens. Maybe it could, but it only improved mine. I’ll do a field test tomorrow just to make sure.

Finally wrote to my brother. The last email I sent him was in March! So much going on? Not really, just bad time management on my part. Must get better organised.

The last thing to do on a busy day was to have a quick dance practise just to make sure that the muscle memory was working properly. It was, after a false start!

No plans for tomorrow. We’re waiting to see what the weather will be like.

Wall to Wall sunshine – 6 June 2021

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Long may it last, even if we do have to water the garden!

After lunch we went for a walk round St Mo’s pond and stood watching the damselflies. I managed to capture one or two of them, or it could be that I caught the same one once or twice. Who knows with damselflies, they all look the same, don’t they? Well maybe not, because occasionally you can spot slight differences in their wing structure, some also have defects that mark them as different from the rest, just like humans, I suspect. Anyway, I was using the Sony camera and the Sigma macro lens and I did manage to get a PoD.

From St Mo’s we went down to Broadwood Stadium to extend our walk and take in the exercise machines path, then back across the dam through the houses and the underpass before climbing the long steep hill to St Mo’s school and then home. Not a bad walk. Later I wanted to see if any dragonflies had appeared, so I went for a short walk over to the pond, but there was no sign of life and it was getting late in the afternoon, so I headed home, because tonight was a dance class and I didn’t want to be in a rush to get dinner made and get a quick practise in. I needn’t have worried, Scamp was on the ball and had my burger cooking while her scallops were waiting their turn to go in the other pan.

Dance class tonight started with Mambo Marina which is a fairly old sequence dance that we learned months ago, but of course I’d forgotten bits of it. A quick reprise from Scamp and I was good to go. The Foxtrot was going to be next and it was nowhere near as easy as the MM. Lots of little tricky bits to it and we couldn’t agree on the correct footwork, but Jane and Stewart soon ironed out our problems and it was plain sailing after that. Last part of tonight’s lesson was the Cha-Cha. It is such an energy sapping dance. Most of the moves are fine, but it’s that little cha-cha step that has to be done right to keep in the tempo of the dance, that’s the problem. However, we managed to get it completed without too much trouble. We sat in the garden to cool down after that with a couple of beers. It really was a beautiful night.

Spoke to JIC later and got the low down on house hunting in and around Cambridge, Simonne’s run today and how JIC’s ankle injury is doing. Gave him some sage advice from his gran on how to prevent birds from eating all his veg. Black thread was her secret weapon. I imagine it works equally well with English sparrows as it did with Scottish ones! I hope so anyway.

Watched a Crash – Bang, Baku GP. Not driver errors this time, but tyre failures. More like Wacky Races than a GP!

Tomorrow morning Scamp is off to have coffee with June. I’m hoping to finish my epistle to Alex.

Hooray for rain – 5 June 2021

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Out looking for compost and a pot.

Such exciting lives we lead sometimes. What could be a more satisfying thing to do on a Saturday afternoon that taking a trip to the garden centre for a bag of ericaceous compost and a chance to compare the size, shape and price of different plant pots. In the end we did buy the compost, but passed on the pots, judging them no better than the one we’d bought earlier in the week. For once we were totally focused on the task in hand and didn’t really look at the plants on sale, we just bought the compost and went home.

It was a was a warm day and I just knew Scamp would want to get the new rhododendron planted in its slightly acidic compost. I, on the other hand wanted to have a look for some damsels or even some dragons. It was warm enough to wear a pair of shorts instead of jeans and that’s what I did. I walked over to St Mo’s, but there were no damsels or dragons to be seen. I took some photos of hawthorn blossom before I found what would be PoD. It was a little black fly crawling about on a tree trunk. I’m guessing it’s a Wasp Fly of some description, but I was struck by its strange eyes. The compound eye seems to have a simple eye in the middle of it. Since it’s on Flickr, someone will probably be able to ID it for me. Anyway, it got PoD.

Came back and Scamp was putting the final touches to the planting and was trying to water the rhododendron in, but something was blocking the watering can. She cleaned the rose from the watering can but that didn’t help, then she found that something was stuck in the spout. After prodding it with a garden cane, out popped a snail, complete with shell. How it managed to climb into the watering can and get stuck in the spout we’ll never know. I thought it was only Incy Wincy Spider who did things like that!

After dinner we watched a Baku F1 GP qualifying session with more than its fair share of crashes. Everyone seemed to want to throw their million pound race cars into the barriers today … and that was just the qualifying! What will the actual race be like, tomorrow?

Since we had missed last week’s dance practise, we though we should do a walk through of what we’ve learned so far, and we have learned quite a lot. Tonight we walked through two different waltz routines, a rumba, a tango and a cha-cha. We sort of walked through the first part of the foxtrot too, but couldn’t remember or agree on the first five or six steps. Hopefully it will all become clear tomorrow.

My weather app on my phone has been promising rain today for most of the week. It was apparently going to start at 4pm. They got it wrong by almost an hour. Just after 4.45 the first raindrops hit the window. It turned to hail for a time and then went back to rain again. It didn’t last all that long, but it did mean we didn’t have to water the garden, so the snail will be relieved.

Tomorrow seems like a better day and if the weather app is as accurate as it was today we may get out for a walk.

Coffee for three – 4 June 2021

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For the first time in ages we had a quorum when the call went out for coffee.

Scamp was away first to meet Veronica for a walk around Broadwood Loch. I was next, away to meet Val for coffee. We had barely sat down when Colin joined us. I’d missed his reply to my email invitation. For the first time in ages most of us were available. Fred had to call off as he was taking his wife to a hospital appointment. As you can imagine, discussions were wide ranging and interesting but without politics rearing its ugly head. Time just flew by and it was Val who had to leave first to meet his wife to go shopping. That seemed to break the spell and we all left to go our separate ways.

Back home and after lunch, Scamp drove us up to Tesco and we did a bit of shopping. Just essentials today, although I did get a few bottles of beer and Scamp selected a suitable bottle of wine, oh yes, and some ice cream. Like I said, just the essentials.

Back home, I grabbed the Sony with its big, heavy, slow macro lens, put it in a small rucksack and went over to St Mo’s on a damsel-hunt. I couldn’t find anything worth taking the camera out of its bag for, but wandered round the pond and then tried again. Immediately I found a couple of Large Red damselflies sitting on the upstand of the boardwalk. Took a few shots, then went looking for a dragonfly or two, but none were there to be found today. Walked back and found the two damselflies were now joined in the mating position with the male grasping the female at the back of her head. They sat quite patiently and gave me the opportunity to get some detailed photos. The Sigma 105mm may be big, heavy and slow to focus, but it really does resolve a lot of detail when it gets the chance. The mating pair became PoD. The rucksack makes it much easier to carry heavy kit like the Sony/Sigma pair although it is a bit more awkward to get quick access to the camera compared to the black Lowepro sling bag.

Scamp went out to sit and read in the garden later while I made Paella for dinner. It turned out really well although I hadn’t done anything different to what I’d done many times before. It’s probably just an extra gram or two of spice or herbs that tilts the flavour enough to make things taste different.

Tomorrow we may go out to get some more compost for the rhododendron and I may shovel some more earth on the potatoes which are showing their green leaves above the soil again.

What a difference a day makes – 3 June 2021

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Today dawned dull, cloudy and wet.

It wasn’t actually raining when we woke, but it had been. The streets were wet and those clouds showed no sign of breaking up any time soon.

After we finally got out of bed and dressed we noticed a visitor on the kitchen window. I don’t know what kind of fly it is, but I’m sure I’ve seen one before somewhere, probably on a window. I got a few shots with the Oly then for good measure, I took some more with the Sony. Sony won hands down. That was six shots in the bag, and one of them became PoD, but only after a fair bit of work. The great thing about the Sigma 105mm macro on the Sony is the detail it finds in things. The bad thing about it is the detail if finds in things. I’d washed that window on Monday or Tuesday. Today was Thursday and the window was covered in pollen which the camera and lens captured just as perfectly as it captured the detail in the fly’s wings and body. It took about an hour’s work to retain the fly’s details while blurring out the dust and pollen from the window glass. Photoshop is a cracking tool once you have time to work out how to use it!

We drove to Falkirk in the late morning to pick up our wedding rings that had been faultlessly repaired by the lady at McMaster’s. Mine cost nothing to resize, presumably because she could reuse the gold dust she’d cut off and because it was only 9ct. Scamp’s on the other hand was quite expensive because it needed a relatively large piece of 18ct gold inserted. It doesn’t matter, we are both now wearing the rings we exchanged when we got married.

On the way back we stopped at Torwood to get a pot and some compost to plant Scamp’s new rhododendron. After lunch Scamp started the baking of a tray of ‘Brookies’ which I’m told are Brownie Cookies. I went out for a walk in St Mo’s and continued on to the shops to get milk and some marshmallows which I seem to have become addicted to recently. No photos were taken in St Mo’s because there were no insects of any description flying today. When I got back home the baking was in full swing and by dinner time there was a box of Brookies to share. They weren’t as sweet as the usual brownies I’ve tasted, but had a nice crunch to them. Lots more there for tomorrow.

The clouds finally parted and the sun shone for an hour at night and we had a walk in the garden, deciding what to put where now that there’s a new plant to fit in. We’re still not decided on the final position, but I’m sure we’ll find enough of a space to squeeze it in.

I’m adding another photo from yesterday into today’s blog. Walking round the gardens yesterday, I found what looked like a good composition looking past the Reg Butler sculpture ‘Girl’, through the gap in the hedge to the people in the distance. However these two folk wouldn’t budge. In frustration, I took the shot anyway, including them. Just as I was pressing the shutter I heard the girl say “It’s not a very good sculpture is it? It looks corroded or something”. To which her partner replied “Hmm.”
Those who Can, Do. Those who Can’t, become critics. Thank goodness for the almost silent shutter on the Oly!!

Tomorrow I’m hoping to meet Val for coffee and a catch up and Scamp is intending going walking with Veronica.

A lazy day – 30 May 2021

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A day to enjoy the sunshine.

Today we didn’t go anywhere, we gave the car a rest day, we didn’t even have a dance class. What we did do was a bit of planting and rearranging in the garden. We also did a fair bit of sitting around, occasionally moving the seats to catch some more rays.

In the afternoon I took the Sony with the macro lens for a walk in St Mo’s and found a red damselfly fresh out of its exoskeleton, hanging on to a reed while unfurling its wings and pumping the blood into them before trying them out for the first time. It must have enjoyed the attention I was giving it, because its first flight ended with it hanging on to my arm. Then it flew back to its perch to dry out those delicate wings. I said my goodbyes and walked home, pretty sure I had a PoD. I did, although I hadn’t managed to get as close as I’d wanted. Maybe there will be other chances tomorrow.

We decided that, as it was a holiday weekend, we’d pass on the dance class tonight. We’re still not sure if the class went ahead without their star pupils, but I’m sure we’ll find out next week.

Spoke to JIC and found out about Vixen’s dentist’s visit to repair a damaged canine. A canine with a damaged canine? How strange. I wonder what she thought when she came out of the anaesthetic.

Sketch tonight was A Pack of Playing Cards. I chose UNO because it’s the only game Scamp can trounce me at. I must have won maybe one or two games in all the games we’ve played which must number about fifty now. I just don’t seem to be able to break that jinx!

Tomorrow we’re hoping for similar glorious weather to today’s offering. We’ve seen the promises, but we’ve had promises before that didn’t live up to the hype. Maybe it will this time!

Dull, dull, dull – 13 May 2021

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White sky this morning. No texture in the clouds, just milky white

At least it was dry and it remained so all day. The furthest we got was a walk down to the shops and back. Apart from the ‘messages’, Scamp got some Bizzy Lizzies for her Wanderella planter that hangs by the back door. She did get some last week too, but they turned out to be too big for the holes in the planter and were used up elsewhere. These ones were much smaller and fitted perfectly. I got some chocolate limes to which I’m addicted. Tonight I divided them up into bags of five. When I go out for a walk I allow myself one bag. When they’re done, that’s it until the next day. If I put ten in the bag, I’d just eat them all without thinking about it, that’s why I limit myself to five. Not much chance of a walk in St Mo’s today though.

Last night I found a tick. First one for ages. Today I found another. That’s the walk in the woods at St Mo’s off the list until the first hard frost, because the ticks don’t seem to like the cold. Neither do I, but I hate ticks and that makes the cold bearable.

<Technospeak>
Apart from slapping Germoline and TCP on the tick bites, I found time to delve into the old NAS drive’s hard drive. I found that if I booted from a Linux distro (a live Linux installation on a USB stick) on the Mac, I could access the drive. All the files are still there on the hard drive, but the drive is formatted to Linux and can’t be read on a Mac or PC. What I didn’t know was that I could drag the files from the old NAS drive on to an NTFS (PC) formatted memory stick and load them on to the Mac. I wanted Office 11 for Mac and that was in the downloads I’d stored on the old NAS. It worked! Well, it almost worked. The new Mac is running Catalina and it doesn’t allow you to open any 32 bit apps. Office 11 is a 32 bit app. Game Over. Apparently I can still get Office for free by connecting to iCloud. A bit cumbersome, but it might work.
</Technospeak>

In the afternoon I did a bit of photography in the garden and that’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s a Strawberry & Cream Aquilegia with a Spirea bush behind. That was in the hour or so of sunshine we had today. I managed to get a few shots of plants just coming in to flower. Good to see it.

Today’s sketch was to be A Close Up View of Something. I chose the pliers of the multi-tool I drew earlier in the week. Lots of lovely detail in the mechanics of the tool which allows the jaws to open and close, but to fold away again when you’re finished. Cleverly designed.

I forgot to post a photo of the Challah bread I made. As you can see we really needed to test it, even before I could get the photo taken. It’s just as nice today.

No plans for tomorrow. Scamp and Veronica are out in the morning, so I might get some painting done.

 

Chasing Butterflies – 29 April 2021

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The butterflies almost won.

Scamp was off having coffee with Annette and I had intended to start a watercolour practise piece in preparation for Every Day in May, but then I though it would be a good idea to give some of the plants their freedom and planted out half a dozen peas and the same amount of kale. The peas were grown from last years peas, but the kale was bought as plug plants. With that done and a cup of coffee I started yesterday’s Sudoku. I was just getting to the sticking place with it when my Fitbit reminded me that I needed to get off my backside.

It was dry and the sun was shining, but I knew from my gardening that it wasn’t all that warm out there, and of course there was the risk of a wee April shower, so I dressed appropriately for a walk in St Mo’s.

A lot of the fruit trees in the park were beginning to show off their blossom and I took a few shots of them, then I went looking for damselflies to photograph, but there were none. It must be almost time for them to crawl up the reeds, shake off their shuck and fly away. However there were none today. Further into the woods there were a host of butterflies. This time of year, late April and early May is the time to catch the Orange Tip butterflies. That’s what I started chasing. However, every time I got near to one it would fly off, leaving me empty handed. Finally one landed on a dandelion flower and I did get the chance to shoot a few frames of it. It was one of them that made PoD. Lunch was beckoning and I headed home.

I hadn’t been in the house five minutes when the rain started battering on the window. That was lucky. I’m not usually as lucky. I’m usually just thinking about coming home as the first drops start falling. The first drops of a downpour.

Scamp arrived just after I’d finished lunch and I went off to go shopping in Tesco. I saw a good deal on true headphones and treated myself. It took me ages to get them paired to my phone. They paired right away to the tablet and to Scamp’s phone, but point blank refused to connect to mine. Then, suddenly they were working and at full volume. I think I’ve manage to get the better of them now and they are behaving quite well. Time will tell if they are as useful as I think they’ll be.

I’m still thinking about getting another MacBook Pro, because although I got the old MBP to run Mojave after a little tweak, it won’t run the new editing software, I’m guessing its because the processor in the MBP isn’t quite up to the task. I’ve seen what I’d like now and Scamp agrees with me, but I’m still not sure. I’ll sleep on it, at least for tonight.

With that in mind, I’m off to bed. No real plans for tomorrow, other than buying a bottle of something for a man who has everything. No JIC, it’s not you, although you do almost qualify!

Testing the new toy – 18 February 2021

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Before we got to that, there was the subject of some shearing to be done.

It didn’t take all that long to reduce my overgrown locks to a mess pile on the painting room floor.  I managed most of it myself, but had to rely on Scamp to do the tidying up at the back.  I remember one of my colleagues at work saying that his grandfather stood in front of a mirror with scissors in one hand and a small mirror in the other and cut his own hair.  His acceptance of this skill always bemused me.  He said, “Of course he was a blacksmith, so he was used to it.”  Used to what, I always asked myself.  Are all hairdressers failed blacksmiths or are all blacksmiths failed hairdressers?  Answers, as usual, on a postcard.  Anyway after the hair had been cut to my and Scamp’s satisfaction and the hair hoovered up, I started today’s Sudoku feeling much lighter.

It was a bit of a dull day.  Not really encouraging us to go out for our daily walk.  In fact it wasn’t until late in the afternoon that I took the new macro lens for a walk in St Mo’s.  I found yesterday’s orange ladybird hiding in a crevice in a tree and that made PoD.  Walked to the shops and bought some stuff for tonight’s dinner which was a rehash of Tuesday’s chilli.  Tonight’s was better, but not as hot as a chilli should be, despite the addition of more chilli paste.

Today’s prompt was “carrots”.  Being a generous person, I gave them three carrots.  Subjects for painting should always be in odd numbered batches.  Don’t know why, but odd numbers of items are always more interesting than even numbered ones.  I eventually moved away from the sketch book and painted on cheap Flying Tiger 300gsm watercolour block.  I was happy with the 3 carrots.

Tomorrow is Friday and we’ve no plans.  Hopefully not as dull a day as today.