The Christo Bed

We have been instructed by readers to carry on blogging regularly even if it is about manure. Well you have asked for it! We have not exhausted our manure supply yet so we are now putting it on the "Christo" bed, i.e that pile of rubbish behind the barn. The builders left a bare patch of earth after they had installed the drainage field and I had the brainwave to turn it into another flower bed. So for about a year we have been putting compostable material on it so that it will have one end higher than the other.

You are no doubt asking why is it called the Christo bed. Christopher LLoyd (known as Christo) was a famous gardener and gardening journalist who died a few years ago. He was famous because he inherited the family pad and immediately grubbed up the traditional rose beds and planted " a jungle". In particular he completely disregarded colour and actually, clashing colours were his forte. So anything I like that doesn't fit into the other carefully crafted colour schemes will end up in the Christo bed.

More Monsters

John and Lesley and their grandchildren arrived at lunchtime carrying a washing up bowl. Inside the bowl was an enormous caterpillar (11+cms), even bigger than the one we found a few weeks ago. Of course we were enlisted to scour the internet to identify it.

It turned out to be a Death Head Hawk Moth, so named because the adult has a marking on its head that looks like a skull. Apparently they found it walking across the lawn and when they put it back there it began burying itself in the earth, presumably to pupate.