Hawthorn Shield Bug

Hawthorn Shield Bug nymph - Acanthosoma Haemorrhoidale, about 5mm

Look at the Panda faced little fellow I founf in the garden this month. It's a mid instar nymph of a Hawthorn Shield Bug. There are very few Hawthorn berries around but they clearly like the Pyracantha too and get the goodness out of them with what I call their 'doober' a little sucking tube, which may or may not be similar to the proboscis of other insects. I know with butterflies they can curl theirs up whereas the shield bugs tend to tuck theirs under their body when they are not using it. I don't know what they eat the rest of he year but they are vegetarian.


Hawthorn Shield Bug hiding out in the Pyracantha berries


Hawthorn Shield Bug mid instar nymph

The distinctive red of this fellow is already beginning to take on some hints of green, which can be more clearly seen on the photo below from a week earlier. I didn't even realise it was there till I checked my berry photo's and spotted it. When I went out a week later he/she was still on the same clump of berries, posing for the shots above (too windy for good focus).



The webstite British Bugs is great for Identifying theses sorts of critters and shows photos and illustrations of them at all difference life cycle stages. I'd seen the much larger adults before but I'd never seen the tiny and variously coloured young. I'm very happy to have a garden they like since they are becoming rarer in Scotland. Below is an adult one I spotted in April and which I tend to see around the garden from time to time. I had no idea about all the variations they go through before adulthood.


Adult Hawthorn Shield Bug - about 15mm long

I'll be watching out for the wee thing over the coming weeks to see if I can photograph it as it turns green and grows bigger, though perhaps it will move elsewhere to blend in.

Another first was spotting a 5th instar nymph of a Parent Bug beside my Sweet Peas, I managed to get it onto a broken terracotta pot for some photo's before returning him to the foliage to hide.


5th instar nymph of a Parent Bug - Elasmucha Grisea

It's hard to believe but the wind here still hasn't stopped, I'd hoped the tail end of Hurricane Katia would mark the start of a calm period but I was very much mistaken. Last week continuing gales trashed my coldframe and lots of the propagated plants inside. They represented months of time and love and were going to make a huge difference to the new bit of my garden next Spring, and for filling out gaps left by winter casualties.

I've saved what I could but it was a very sorry mess, and now I have nowhere to house the 100's of plants that need winter protection. Time to cobble together something that can handle wind, rain, pest invasion and possible heavy snow (and on that note the men still haven't replaced the garage roof that collapsed in the snow in December).

Bugs, Buds & Birthdays

So much life in the garden after some fine Spring weather last week. The ladybirds (ladybugs) are making hay while the sun shines! I've only pottered gently but already I can feel my joints and muscles getting a bit more movement in them. Feels like I'm stretching out in tandem with all the buds and shoot tips. Here are the first red leaves and buds on the Berberis...



Clusters of Spring flowers have emerged in the dappled light under the trees and I imagine most of the trees will come in to leaf in April. So much change. See my garden in detail here

It's been a weird month, lots of crappy things at the start so I had to postpone my own birthday but when I finally opened my presents it was amazing, beyond my wildest dreams type of amazing. My brother bought me a MacBook Pro and my parents got me Adobe CS5. I was utterly flabberghasted. I don't think anyone has ever seen me speechless before. I don't think I can ever thank them enough. The whole drive home I just kept saying 'I can't believe it, I can't believe it'.

I can finally make my books and edit years of archived photo's and designs without it being an archaic grind. Well, I will once I can afford to get all my peripherals to work with it, it's so whizzy and new it doesn't recognise my scanner, cables, camera, printer etc. That was one reason I could never get a new Mac, because if I spent any money on it I'd have nothing left to get it workable with all the extra bits. Now I can afford to do that over the next year or so - which is probably how long it will take me to learn all vastly updated software.

I've been fiddling with some old designs just to get a feel for what's new in Photoshop CS5 (I was using Photoshop 7 and I abandoned Illustrator about 9 years ago). They are so much faster though freakishly more complex. I can see there will be tears ahead trying to get to grips with Illustrators bazillion new options. I'm glad I don't have any deadlines.



And as for In Design, it didn't even exist when I got my last Mac, I've always been a Quark Xpress girl. I can tell it's going to take ages to learn since my brain struggles to remember my own phone number these days, but it will be so worth it. Learning curve here I come. Just think, no more compromises, no more workarounds, no more frustration as I wait an hour for a book page to save. These things are annoying at the best of time but when you have M.E. every little bit of wasted energy is like a huge chunk of wasted life. With my memory coming and going I really want to get things put into more books to keep it all from slipping away completely.

I'm so excited I can barely contain myself. And so grateful. With all the shit happening around the world I feel guilty about something so good happening to me, but then I think that I should just appreciate how lucky I am, when lives can be upturned in an instant it would be crazy for me to make the most of something so positive happening.