Beach Stones for Vegetable Bed Edging

Today was a day I was looking forward to, and dreading at the same time. It was the first day back to school after the Christmas holidays, a break which has the magical ability to absolutely destroy any sense of routine. We haven't been poking our toes out of bed until 9am at the earliest for the last two weeks. We woke to torrential rain and strong wind, which wasn't a great welcome, but by 11am it had cleared to an absolutely fabulous clear skied and sunny day. So I enticed a lazy three year old off the couch with a trip to the beach to play with his diggers on the sand while I foraged some big stones to use as edging for my burgeoning vegetable beds. I have already salvaged any sizable piece of stone from around the garden for the same purpose. As I happened to have a bin bag in the boot of the car, I also decided to scoop up a load of washed up seaweed.

My beds are looking pretty this evening after a bit of work. One is completed and the other needs another load of stones:

In Defence of Flies

It took me until last year to realise it was okay to like flies. I'm not referring to the pretty flies like dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies and the likes which are part of different orders of insects, I mean true Diptera flies like blow flies and craneflies (aka Daddy Longlegs - although I believe some use this name for the cellar spider/Pholcidae).

As you can tell from the photos I have been uploading in the last year, I've been insect spotting. The very back of the garden is a lovely sheltered habitat for insects and I've been growing native wildflowers like borage and letting vegetables go to seed for the flowers, which has kept my garden buzzing with all sorts of micro wildlife. From time to time I would see an attractive fly, pollinating my plants like any bee, and think hold on, I'm not supposed to like flies, they are gross!

Flies like this green blow fly on my, I think, Buddleia:

Or these little guys soaking up the Californian [poppy] sun:

This mad yoke is a noon fly with a jet black body and orange wings, just by the leaf of my yarrow:

This drone fly, Eristalis tenax, mimics a honey bee and pollinates just the same. Here it is on the leaf of my sunflower:

It's their relationship with shite that makes people dislike flies but we all produce it so we can't be too precious about it. Flies help break down waste and decomposing matter, and it's vital that someone does this. And I've just learned through my research that Beyoncé had a fly named after her in 2011. The fly, Scaptia beyonceae, which has a lovely golden patch at the tip of it's abdomen (fly arse) was discovered in 1981 but was unnamed until they were inspired by Beyoncé's bum. How unexpected and amusing. Look it up.

Photo Credit

Here are some more flies on my Calendula which, by the way, is still flowering in January:

Look at this lovely Tiger cranefly (the photo is regretfully out-of-focus):

I think if you are interested in insects and biodiversity, it is impossible to dislike flies. I feel so much better now that I have one less category on my list of aversions, which is quite short thankfully.


I have to admit that a bluebottle in the house still drives me crazy.