18 September 202

A quick addition to the last post on why we cleared the wildflower bed so thoroughly – someone asked me this morning where we put it all 🙂

Well, a lot of the dry stems and stalks are waiting to be incorporated into a pile on the preschool bed in a couple of weeks, to make a good hiding and hibernation place for insects. A lot of the greener things are in one of our compost bins round the back, ready to feed parts of the beds in a few months time, when it’s ready.

And a lot of the dead leaves, twigs and so on that had started to rot, have been tucked well under some of the larger lavender plants on the borders next to the wildflower bed. A lot of beetles like to live and forage among that kind of understory litter, so hopefully, they’ll find their way there.

This is one of the beetles we’ve seen a few times recently – it’s a thick-legged flower beetle (I love that name!). It’s a useful pollinator, too, spreading pollen as it moves from flower to flower.

© Bernard Dupont (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Flickr