Pond Life - an almost alien beauty

It's nice this time of year to get up close and personal with the damp patch in the back garden we call the pond. This little beauty of a flower, oft overlooked, is a Bogbean.

RHS Show

I thought this year’s RHS Show in Cardiff (8-10 April) was the best yet, after my visit on Friday. It had expanded to include two floral marquees, the show gardens and farmers’ market area, bandstand and “café quarter”. Among the show gardens was Cardiff Council Ranger Service’s lovingly recreated road side verge (below) complete with tyre tracks and some litter to highlight the biodiversity of such habitats. The National Museum Wales stall featured a pot of 7 dandelion species – all found in the same Cardiff garden. There are well over 200 species of dandelion in the UK and, if the diagram showing the characteristics to look for is anything to go by they are not easily distinguished. The National Botanic Garden of Wales had information on Barcode Wales, a biodiversity project to identify unique DNA sequences for the entire native flora of Wales, which was the subject of a recent Cardiff Naturalists Society talk.

Butterfly Sighting

Last Saturday, (2.4.11), whilst excavating a new vejetable plot, I was delighted to see a Male Brimstone gently floating across the garden. This was the first Brimstone we've recorded in Morganstown since we moved into the area in 2008, so a first for us.

Compensation for the backache from digging out all the rubble 'kindly' left by the house builder.Now I've just got to get rid of it!

Phill Blanning

Sign of Spring

The first frogspawn in our pond in Dinas Powys this morning.