Steve Dongle's Nature Table for Two - No1

A Painted Lady Butterfly on a Japanese Anemone in Steve Dongle's garden.

"In the last couple of months things have been ‘quiet’ in the ‘Cabine’.  So this morning, when our old mate Steve Dongle showed up, we were delighted to see the loveable old eco-warrior back on top form.  Apparently, he has been out of circulation for sometime after a tree fell on him. Just goes to show that there are risks associated with ‘keeping your friends close’.

Steve assures me that now he has recovered, he will continue to write his series of blog reports for the ‘Cabine’ - ‘Steve Dongles top 100 trees’.  He also suggested a new one ‘Steve Dongle’s Nature Table for Two’. As the ‘Cabine’ is located in rural Suffolk, we thought this suggestion, rather like caterpillars, had legs. We hope you like Steve’s first report and follow future developments.

In the event of a ‘no deal Brexit’  Steve has offered to include practical and helpful tips on how to live off the land and cook human flesh with only a magnifying glass - amazing!".  George Roberts

Nature Table for Two

" I have been alive for 69 long  hot summers and I cant remember a better one for butterflies. My garden has been teeming with 'em. The number of 'Painted Lady' butterflies  I have seen this year is stupendous and fantastic!

Red Admiral on the Buddleia

 Everybody admires a 'Red Admiral' and I'm no exception. I can remember the summers of my youth spent in glorious Maidstone, located at  the heart of the 'desirable south east', where and when you could not find a 'darlin bud of May' that wasn't encrusted with 'em - fantastic and stupendous!

o

Peacock Butterfly

A lovely jewel like butterfly. My old friend Madge loved her peacock colours - fantastic!

Gate Keeper Butterfly

A small brown butterfly first discovered by Egon Spengler in Gosaria - stupendous!

A 'Queen' on on the move - a swarm of bees

We heard 'em first. A wonderful 'hum' of bees. Then they were all around us, in our hair and on our clothes. Neither of us panicked and neither of us were stung. Who doesn't' like a bee or honey come to that? - fantastic!

IPOD (Interesting Plant of the Day)

Never pass up a bush without giving it a look , for the hedgerow is nature's treasury of wonders! The cream covered football, ,centre stage in the above photo, is an 'oak apple' or 'oak gall'. An oak apple is not a fruit but the result of a tree's reaction to infestation by a gall wasp in the family Cynipidae. The adult female wasp lays single eggs in developing leaf buds. The wasp larvae feed on the gall tissue resulting from their secretions, which modify the oak bud into the gall, a structure that protects the developing larvae until they undergo metamorphosis into adults -  amazing, fantastic and stupendous " - Steve Dongle environmentalist and eco-warrior.

Signed copies of Steve Dongle's book  'Steve Dongle's Top 100 Trees' are still available from the Waveney Gazette price £10 or 5 Euros.