Nature – A Bug hotel

We have been adding to our wildlife corner in the garden and decided to upgrade the insects accommodation by adding a hotel.  There is plenty information online on DIY bug/insects hotel/homes.  Many of the plans use pallets, we don’t have the space for them and I can imagine Luath would use them as a climbing frame.  We planned a small hotel so it would be more stable and fit better in our garden.
For our hotel’s structure we found the bricks on the beach and the pieces of wood in our garden.  We had lots of fun gathering items for different themed rooms in the hotel. It cost us nothing to build and hopefully we will have lots of beneficial bugs making use of it.
   
I also found some broken patterned terracotta pots on the beach which we used to decorate the front of the hotel.  We added Luath’s stone ladybird so the bugs knew they were welcome.  As Luath would say “Come in, come in, you're welcome in”.
 
While I was hunting for wood I found an old bed post which we utilised to make an architectural unique bug hotel.  We attached some flower pots to the hole in the post and then filled these with grasses, twigs etc.  We placed this behind the bug house.
 

(Luath is 30 months)
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Gardening – First Harvest

It hasn’t been a great year so far for our produce but we decided to try digging up one of our early potato plants.  This year Luath has been very involved in the process.
Preparing the ground.

Planting, watering (her favourite part) and gathering some grass to help “earth” up the potato beds.

She was very excited to dig up the plant and wanted to do it herself.

A small harvest but a proud little gardener.

She went straight inside to help daddy scrub, cook and make potato salad for lunch.
   
The potatoes were delicious.
(Luath is 30 months)
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Nature – a colour scavenger hunt with two great finds

Luath was very keen to go for a walk and do her RSPB wildsquare bingo card.  It has various things to spy and also to listen for.  While I cleared up after breakfast Luath and daddy had almost completed the bingo in our garden (it was designed for use at RSPB sites so it has a hide and RSPB sign as things to spot).  Luath told me they had found a bee but not one wearing sunglasses as the pictured showed.

Luath still wanted to take the bingo card on a walk and to do some more I-spying.  One of the sections was to look for some set colours and we did this in the woods.  We had to look down low and at small flowers to find some of the colours.

There was an electric blue coloured dragonfly also checking out the flowers. We found two lovely red objects.  A cone which we took home to try and grow the seeds.  We looked up what tree the cones comes from and are sure it is a Noble Fir, which are supposed to be great Christmas trees.

I also found some small wild strawberries.  We each ate one, they were delicious.
      
(Luath is 30 months)
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Nature – Painting an Insect box

I can’t say I love all insects but they are important.  There are lots of information and links on national insect week about insects, insect spotting, friendly gardens.
Insect Box
I have been looking for some wood that we could use to make an insect box. I found a combined ladybird and bug box along with a bird box with paint for sale.    I am not sure what birds or insects think of colourful houses but Luath and I set to work with a rainbow of paints.  I thought that my painting the houses Luath would become much more involved in the process. I don’t think the bird box is ideal for nesting birds so we are using it as a decoration.
We had some new roll on paints to trial.  Luath enjoyed taking the lids on and off especially.  The rollers are a great idea but you need to keep them upright and give a bit of pressure so they are a little tricky for Luath.  She still enjoyed using them even if only a little paint came out.  I rolled some paint and then we used a paint brush to spread the colour.
 
 
A very colourful outcome.  We  left the insect box for a while before hanging out to give the paint time to settle.  We used non toxic paint but I thought it was safer to give a bit of time to remove any residue.

(Luath was 25 months)

Wildlife spotting at the beach

We had a fun morning at a nearby beach wildlife spotting.  Our previous adventures with Luath’s bandy net at the beach in front of our house has proved fruitless so we were hoping for a little more success.  We found nothing on our first venture into the water so we played in the sand instead.

While playing a six spotted Burnett moth landed on me – seemingly they are very common but daddy and I haven’t seen one before.

Daddy had a look in the dyke (stone wall) and found an old nest.

Luath wanted to fill her watering can.
    
This time as the tide had gone out further we spotted lots of tiny fishes.

Then I caught a small crab by gently moving the bucket along.  We spotted many small hermit crabs and then I spied and daddy caught a bigger crab.

Luath was a bit frighten of the biggest crab and was glad to return him to the water.
 
We have read about many of these sea creatures and seen plenty dead crab shells so it was lovely for Luath to finally see the real thing.
(Luath is 29 months)
Shared with Country Kids and Tuesday Tots via Rainy Day Mum

Seeds – looking at and saving flower seeds

Some of our flowers are ripening their seed heads.  Most of these flowers are great self seeders but it is still nice to save seeds to sew where you want them and that you are getting flowers for free. I thought it would to interesting to show Luath.

Welsh poppies grow in many gardens here and they can be quite weed like, however their yellow petals brighten the day.

I showed Luath unripe seeds inside a green seed head and also the black ready to sow ones in a brown ripe head.
 
After quite some searching I think this flower is Centaurea triumfettii (Squarrose Knapweed) and sounds as if it shouldn't like our windy, sea salted, wet location.
 
It has soft feathering blow in the breeze seeds.
  
We have a few different coloured Aquilegia, seemingly they often change colours.  The bees love them.

These seeds are still green but are different as you break each pod to see them.  Luath thought they were like pea pods.
 
Some of the seeds we found we directly sowed into the ground.  We have also placed some stalks or seed heads of each flower (although aquilegia are best sown immediately) in the shed to make sure they are dry and then will store in a paper bag. 
(Luath is 29 months)

Bumblebee Spotting

We went to a University May festival weekend.  We attended two events aimed at Luath’s age but we took in some of the side exhibits.  One of them was about bees.  The university is helping people survey what type and where bees are.  I didn’t know there were so many different bumblebees and ones called cuckoo bumblebees.  I picked up a leaflet that features the main bumblebees and we have been trying to identify the ones we see.  It is very tricky to get a good enough look as the bee buzzes from flower to flower to be sure exactly which type it is.  However it is lovely to take the time to stop and watch the bees at work.

The main bee we see is a white tailed bumblebee but we have seen two other types (we think).

I made Luath a peg doll of a queen white tailed (although she wanted it to have a face).
   
The only story book we found at our library was The Beeman by Laurie Krebs – this is a Barefoot book about honey bees, but Luath enjoyed the illustrations and text.  It is an informative book but did confuse Luath slightly and she kept telling me the bumblebee we saw was away home to make honey for us.
Resources
Bumblebee conservation trust has a leaflet on the eight main bees in Britain.  The leaflet we have contains 23 and there is a booklet you can purchase with the details of them.  It has a section called Bumble Kids, most of which is too old for Luath.

Scottish National heritage has a free eBook on Scottish bumblebees
(Luath is 29 months)
 
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