Storm Claudia swept through Coventry on Friday and now our pond is a lake and the water butts are all full! We even spotted a Grey Wagtail checking out the new facilities! If you really squint, you can see it … Continue reading The rain it raineth every day
Beautiful autumn day for a working party, and a good turn out. There was a bit of general maintenance of the mini food forest areas, but our main focus was on enlarging the pond/scrape/boggy areas in the mini nature reserve. … Continue reading November Working Party
The cobwebs acted as pretty effective mist-catchers this morning… Continue reading Definitely Autumn
Another beautiful sunny autumn Sunday. The plan for today was to see how far we could get digging out some ponds and scrapes to help intentionally store water on the land in the mini-nature reserve. We’ve tried to time the … Continue reading Digging in
The beginning of September already. The hottest, driest summer anyone can remember ended with a little rain. The rainwater collection tanks and damp meadow gratefully absorbed it, but where the ground was compacted, the rain barely made an impression. Rainwater … Continue reading End of summer working party
July’s working party was another opportunity to thin and trim the vegetative exuberance of early summer. We concentrated on a ‘chop and drop’ of the comfrey in the mini food-forest, and on pulling bindweed elsewhere on site. Comfrey is deep … Continue reading July working party
It was very windy, and the butterflies were sitting it out on this plum tree – so no purple wings were actually seen, but the underwings are definitely Purple Hairstreak! This is a butterfly that is reliant on Oak Trees … Continue reading Purple Hairstreak(s)
It was brilliant to have Mark and his drone back to capture (from the air) our progress on the project site. Here (below) are some of the shots – if you want to see the ‘before’ shots, they are here. … Continue reading Progress seen from the air
The sudden burst of wet weather following the very warm, dry spring has resulted in an explosion of nettles across the project plot, so today’s working party set out to pull those up and give the fruit trees and bushes … Continue reading Nettles and (Ragged Robin) petals
Wonderful to see a clutch of Small Tortoiseshell caterpillars on a patch of nettles on the project plot this week. Along with many other butterfly species, they’ve had a rough ride with the recent wet springs, but hopefully the dry … Continue reading Lots of lovely caterpillars!
Urban Allotment: climate resilience & community 