Day 30 - 30 Days Wild project

Day 30 has arrived! We have managed to do something connected to nature every day for the last month. What would we do for the last day of the month??? Nature at home - on the hottest day of the year so far. We began with gardening and the ever growing weeds. Now we know that weeds are the flowers that most people don't want in their garden, but we are very tolerant about weeds. If they look pretty while in flower they get room in our garden. Whether they get the chance to go to seed is another question. Wild poppies, violas, calendulas, violets and evening primrose - to name just a few - sprout all over our garden. I do mean ALL over the garden, they grow in the veg plots as well as the flower borders. We do also have a wild flower plot which is looking very pretty at the moment. It isn't just wild flowers but has a few favourites along with them.

While weeding the path I was kneeling down with flowers either side of me, and in the moments when there were no cars passing by, it was lovely to hear the bees buzzing around. Ants and wood lice were disturbed by my weeding but soon scuttled off to find a new home. While looking around the garden during a rest break we found these spiders sitting in the hedge. A tap on the web certainly woke them up and scattered them.

We picked our first cucumber today - they are only mini cucumbers so are not very big but are usually very juicy. The flowers are beginning to set on the tomato plants in the greenhouse and some veg in the poly tunnel finally look as if they might be growing!! Some of our seeds don't seem to have sprouted very well at all this year, but the leeks, onions and cabbages are beginning to look good.
Another break from gardening, and as it is the last day of the month, it is time to collate our wildlife records ready to send to the local records office. Our monthly max for birds in the garden is as follows
Blackbird - 2 male, 1 female, 3 young
Blue tit - 2
Buzzard - 2
Carrion crow - 1
Coal tit - 1
Collared dove - 2
Dunnock - 1adult, 1 young
Goldfinch - 3 ( not seen these for ages)
House sparrow - our usual total of 40-50 adults and several babies, including one that had come into our conservatory and had to be removed!
Jackdaw - 1
Rook - 1
Starling - 16 adult, 4 young
Swallow - 2 (they nest in a building over the other side of our hedge)
Swift - 20 (swooping backwards and forwards in front of the house tonight presumably after flies!)
Wood pigeon - 2
We've not seen our baby Great tits since they fledged and we assume the baby sparrows we have seen to be the ones nesting above our garage, although we didn't see them fledge.We have had only 5 seven spot ladybirds as our max this month along with 2 Small White butterflies and 2 Gorse Shield bugs. The cold weather so far this year has a lot to answer for!
The weather forecast says this hot weather will continue, although that might cause thunderstorms as well tomorrow! But there was a nice sunset tonight and we are putting out the moth traps again in the hope of a good catch!