A Big Sprout?

No, it's a cabbage! The first of this year's.

There are masses of white fly so we had to remove lots of outer leaves, but there's plenty to have with fresh carrots (carrot fly damaged unfortunately) for our Quorn roast dinner. We're a bit concerned that the parsnips may have succumbed to carrot fly too, but we'll wait till Christmas to find out...

And as we've just finished decorating our Christmas tree I'm feeling Christmassy so here's the annual shot of the lovely Hungerford a Christmas lights - always stunning!

Oh, here's my latest Chainmail article - Hungerford's quarterly publication. I think I wrote it in a hurry :-/

Loads of interesting wildlife

There was a lot of wildlife around today. Mostly hoverflies and some lovely butterflies but I also saw a stoat (pretty sure it was a stoat). It ran really fast across one plot then made a flying leap into stingers on another plot!
The radish flowers and calendula are still attracting most of the insects. This noon fly probably arrived on site with someone's manure!


A noon fly - great gold face!

A colour-match hoverfly!

Jamie spotted a mass of these tiny caterpillars on the raspberries. I think they're Yellow Tail moth caterpillars but again I'm checking on the Wild About Britain forum. They're great looking though! Will check how much bigger they are tomorrow. Correction: This is a Dark Dagger moth caterpillar!

 Neal was working his plot next door to us  and found this hairy caterpillar.

It looks rather like a ruby tiger moth caterpillar we found before but it's a different colour. I'm checking this on the forum too to see if they agree with my identification. Correction: This is a Buff Ermine moth caterpillar!

Wild About Britain is a brilliant site. So full of knowledge and willing to share. It's brilliant to share pics and get beasties identified.

Lastly we found this common green shield bug. It's slightly more mature than the one we found on 1st September and is getting more green.