Day 17, #30DaysWildCreativity: Nourishing Things That Grow Nearby

The world had hardly changed

when I planted twenty-five seeds, each one a dry husk from which the vibrancy of life would spring. I waited, willing the first shoots to spike through the soil, hoping the slugs and snails would find other sources of nutrition. Within a month, green plants began to take shape, bearing stems that became umbrella handles underneath a ring of miniature leaves.

Some days raindrops pattered down from brooding skies. A few bounced off the seedlings: others landed on the leaves and became tiny snow-globes of life. As rainbows gave way to bursts of sunshine, the plants grew and began to develop a range of markings. This morning there were three distinct colour forms; vibrant green, deep kale green, and mottled green and cream.

Each stalk propels its leaf towards the light. Each leaf spreads in diameter, providing the perfect wet-weather shelter for a mouse. I pick a single stem and twiddle it round between index finger and thumb. I check for signs of butterfly eggs and blackfly, but there are none. I roll the small leaf and squeeze it, inhaling an earthy draft of pepper. I am reminded of piquant pasta suppers in last year’s heatwave. 

But no eggs could mean no larvae, which in turn could mean a dearth of white butterflies.

 

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This post was written in response to Dr Miriam Darlington's #30DaysWildCreativity meme for Day 17 of #30DaysWild. We were invited to look 'more closely at things growing nearby and see how nourishing they are'.  

Nasturtiums (again) ... snail, trail and butterfly eggs

You can see the snail's slime trail lower right.

I took another look at the Nasturtiums yesterday. In fact I positioned a garden chair next to them so that I could have a proper look. Unlike the day before, there were no Small White caterpillars in sight, but there were a few snail trails. It was not long before I noticed the tiny snail in the photo above. Its shall was considerably smaller than my little fingernail.

I know incredibly little about snail identification. Certainly the spire was very flattened (a contradiction in terms, it seems to me!), which might suggest a species similar to Oxychilus cellarius, though the body is not the typical blue-grey.

There was also a cluster of yellow eggs, which I imagined would belong to the Small Whites ... I flipped the leaf over gently for a couple of photographs and let go afterwards.

... however, a bit of research showed that Small Whites lay single eggs. Large Whites lay clusters at the rate of four eggs a minute, so I think these are Large White butterfly eggs. 

As I made my way back to the house, I noticed this Cranefly checking out (or perhaps 'checking in to') one of our insect hotels ...

... I'm not sure how well it would fit through the bamboo holes!