The Haunted Garden, a ghostly tale of a bewitching annual ritual. The setting for this orrery story is the eerie twilight of June 21st 2026, the Summer Solstice, rather than the eldritch dark of an All Hallows Eve. The ghostly goings-on portrayed below were filmed in the hour before midnight so, yes, I had to stay up especially late 🥱. Inexplicably, this snippet didn't make it into the blog back in the Summer but it is, to date, the most ethereal thing that has happen around here this year. Sadly, the accompanying sound hasn't transferred well from phone to computer, as it features a mournful Curlew call and a slightly more chipper Blackbird song (also, thankfully, none of my yawns). These are male Ghost Moths, lekking to attract and impress a female. At dusk, in June, they appear from the grassy sward and perform this swaying flight. Whilst the males are a ghostly white, the females are a pale orange and yellow. Their caterpillars feed on the roots of Docks, for which they ha...
Another pleasant day prompted me to stop work at lunchtime, ostensibly to spend the afternoon invoicing customers, ordering more stock and settling bills. But I was running out of time and nice weather to carry out October's Beewalk. To be fair, this is a month too far for Orkney's bumblebees, there's been precious few in the garden let alone out on the windswept moors. However, the lure of fresh air and exercise proved sufficient and off I went to Stromness waterworks. I have been meaning to photograph the whole transect for some time, but always seem to forget. This time, although I had remembered, the sun was shining directly down the first section, so here's the view back to the start (at the base of the dam). There are very few flowers in bloom now, I noted four species: a single Dandelion, a single Creeping Buttercup, the occasional bit of Bell Heather and some Cat's-ear. At the height of Summer I regularly clocked over forty species. No wonder there's no...