Appreciating the 'loveliness' of nature

The Untamed Gardener

Aisling Blcakburn

Inch worm…Inch… worm…” The morning walk has been glorious lately with the warm weather, and far livelier as well. A flock of starlings are chattering on the powerlines above my head. And the hedges have come to life again, fluttering with many kinds of late or second season butterflies as well as those who have travelled from Africa. I can count brown, white and yellow species there as well as migrants such as the red admiral and lady painted whose food plants are nettle and thistle respectively.

Further along by an old empty schoolhouse a few fast moving birds swoop about. I’m not sure exactly what they are, so I take note of the white underbelly and slightly forked tale. Later I reckoned they were house martins, as swifts are brown all over and the swallow’s tail is long and forked.

Birdsong is up a few decibels from previous mornings, or maybe I am up a bit earlier. The blackberries are juicy and abundant, with flies swarming on a single berry, completely obscuring it, not going from one to the other. I’m not great at maths but I have (annoyingly) a song for just about every situation, in my head is one by Billy Staines…

“All God’s creatures got a place in the choir, some sing lower and some sing higher, some sing outside on the telephone wire, some just clap their hand, their paws, or anything they got now.”

Activity

There is a new survey designed by the all-Ireland-Pollinator Plan. If you want to do your bit for biodiversity then find a small area, about a square metre to study. Observe the insect activity there for 10 minutes. It’s a good idea to repeat this over a period and always at the same time of day. You can record everything – date and time of day and weather conditions etc. The fun bit is identifying the species there in that small patch of ground -both flora and fauna.

Sometimes it’s a good idea to capture a bug in a tiny container to observe it up close, use a magnifying glass. You can draw or photograph it, try to identify it later, just replace it in the same location. Maybe (if you are very still) other kinds of life show up, not only insects, but also mice, birds and frogs.

You might have heard about the cabbage white butterfly. Many white species feed on plants from the cabbage family or brassica as it is known. That is except for the Wood White, who prefers meadow vetchling and Bird’s-foot -trefoil and vetches, all very abundant in our hedgerows. And the Brimstone, a fabulous but rare enough to see species, who feed on Buckthorn, another hedgerow plant. I’ve often wondered about the cabbage whites. How come they are so abundant and where are their natural food plants? All they have (beside our kale etc) is lady’s smock, garlic mustard and water cress. Maybe a bit of rape and mustard here and there, all members of the cabbage family. Plants that I only occasionally see on my walks in this area, though there are a few about the garden in Jampa Ling. But I forgot about the horseradish, there are some on those but certainly in abundance on our kale. We use a decoy - which doesn’t always work. Ideally the butterflies are attracted to the plant that we want them to go to - whereas in reality, we must transport them there by hand. This year was particularly plentiful in caterpillars. The gardeners spent the whole week removing them from the smaller young plants to the very large (green and red is the name of the variety) and over five-foot-tall kale plants. These they completely munched, after which they magically disappeared.

Cycle of nature

Usually, birds see the *‘loveliness’ and swoop down and so the cycle of nature goes on as it is supposed to. I am aware of the shortage of butterfly species, even those understood to be pests, but birds must feed. I am glad that in this case there is no urgency to use chemicals, natural or other, that would annihilate an important link in the food chain and a potential nourishment for young chicks.

So, we don’t net them either; a net would prevent all this extra work, but in so doing there is less food all round, and those large kale plants will recover. While I think of it, nasturtium is also a favourite of the cabbage white, it makes a good decoy plant as well as an educational opportunity for young children who usually delight in the sight of caterpillars.

* ‘loveliness’ – a collective term for a group of caterpillars.

Aisling Blackburn is a visual artist and horticulturalist wgi nurtures the commuinty garden at Jampa Ling