The green green (overlong) grass of home

By Ruth D’Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

As you can see, the Wildlife Garden’s lawn is anything but a bowling green. Due to a combination of heavy rainfall and being away at weekends I haven’t had a chance to mow it. I really should have cut it two weeks ago to avoid a frog-in-a-blender-style scenario as the froglets emerge from the pond. So I hauled my trusty Mountfield M3 out of the shed, gave a couple of (unsuccessful) tugs on the starter cord and Ping! Boing! Wiggle! the grass erupted round my feet as tiny, perfectly formed froglets leaped into the air to escape being minced. I couldn’t get the mower to start, and anyway I wouldn’t get it to start until these little amphibians move on. They have survived newts, water beetles, dragonfly larvae, water boatmen and the grass snake to get onto dry land. Who needs a manicured lawn when you have these undeniably adorable micro-frogs hopping about?:

There are still tadpoles in the pond that have only just developed back legs, so the Mountfield is going to be on shed leave for quite a while. And the meadow look for lawns is SO this year, darling… And Another Thing… In case my loyal readership think I just swan around with a bug jar and a camera all day, here’s a pic of the first trug of produce from the Wildlife Garden Veg Patch:

Purple podded peas, broad beans, first early new potatoes, a courgette, some raspberries and blackcurrants. Mmm. I feel a Summer Pudding coming on…