Comma butterfly

The conservatory doors are wide open most of the time during this sunny spell and loads of insects - flies, bees, dragonflies and butterflies fly in. They are welcome to pollinate the tomatoes and squashes but I do try to evict them before the end of the day because they don't survive overnight.
Yesterday we were delighted to see a butterfly which at first I thought had been damaged maybe by a bird looking for lunch. The trailing edges of its wings were ragged and indented. But on closer inspection I could see it was that way on purpose and on the underside of the wings it had a distinct "eye" pattern. I hadn't seen one of these here before. I consulted UK Butterflies and discovered it was likely to be a Comma (pictures from their website). Great to see more variety of butterflies.

Comma butterfly - image from UK butterflies

See the ragged edges of its wings and the little "eye"
image from UK butterflies

Celebrating

August 12th was a day of celebration! Successful London Olympics and great closing ceremony. I loved the Olympic cauldron with the 204 petals. It was a beautiful, original and imaginative design by Thomas Heatherwick and a feat of engineering and workmanship. After the brilliant opening ceremony with the flaming petals rising together into a united cauldron we waited in anticipation of how it would unfold and die. A shame it will be dismantled - but with the individual petals going back to the competing nations it will have another life.

Our own little celebration - we picked our first ripe Big Boy tomato and had it for lunch. It weighed  11oz. I noted from our "sow and harvest" logbook that last year our first crop was on 13 August so fairly consistent there.

Saturday Night at Froggarts Cottage

Saturday night at Froggarts Cottage is spent:

• Podding a bucket of broad beans and putting them in ice-cream boxes to freeze
• Juicing yet more blackcurrants
• Sorting and spreading out 2 buckets (about 30 pounds) of potatoes dug this morning to dry-off ready for putting in store
• Cleaning filthy fingernails!

Earlier - dinner of fried courgettes and home-grown spuds with steak followed by raspberries and home-made blackcurrant icecream. Mmm!