Broad bean safari

Good Morning Campers!
Wish I WAS camping.......a glorious week of weather & not a tent flap in sight!

I spent yesterday morning in the broad bean patch, picking the last of the crop (which would have been 4 times bigger had the local sparrow army not decided to hold a 'Who can peck off the most bean flowers in the shortest time' contest). I remember the first time I ever tasted a broad bean. As a very small child, I spent a week with Grandma as a break from my new baby sister (with hindsight, they were probably all having a break from me) Grandma gave me a home-grown broad bean to try & I thought it was one of the most disgusting things I had ever tasted. Now, of course, I love them & will be growing them every year.

I picked the last few beans & podded them over a coffee on our courtyard, then went back to clear the bean patch ready for sowing baby turnips. The plants were as tall as me (not difficult!) & it was only in pulling them all out that I realised what a great little wildlife area it had been - a mini-safari.

First, I noticed how many ladybirds there were. I hadn't really seen many this year, but the greengage tree, which overhangs the bean bed, has aphids, so the ladybirds have moved in to dine in style. All the ladybirds were different......(Albert Whiskers photo-bombed this picture. I made the mistake of rattling the chicken manure pellets & he instantly appeared in the hope of 'Dreamies').......

............including this big lad below.......

....who looked like he'd already eaten all the aphid pies. Could he be a Harlequin? I don't know.
Then, a few plants later, who turned up but this beauty?

I assume this is a moth caterpillar. It certainly isn't the green caterpillar of the small  white butterfly. I'm well up on them, having experienced what their robbing gobs can do to a row of cabbages! The photo doesn't really do justice to the chevron markings in different shades of green.

Well, I'd just about got all the beans out by this point, but under the watchful eye of the critter in this next picture. Can you spot her?

Wood pigeon nest! She watched me the whole time, but didn't once leave the nest, not even when I was trying to wrestle a polytunnel over the newly sown turnips. This is a later nest, as we've had one up behind the pear tree again this year, too.
Later, I popped back down to the shed to clear up & there was a distinct drumming noise from the shed roof. Der-dum, der-dum, der-DUM........ Most odd. Too rhythmic for it to be apples falling off. Assumed (like most weird noises around here) that it would be cat-related. I went out to have a look & disturbed the culprit - a large sparrowhawk using our shed roof as a plucking-post. Enough to send Chris Packham into a frenzy of trouser-rubbing! It flew off when it saw me, lunch firmly between its claws. I don't like to think of 'our' sparrows being prey, but that's nature, & I'd be lying if I didn't just slightly hope that the victim was the Chief Bean Flower Scoffer. I quite regularly see a sparrowhawk in the garden, so assume they nest nearby. I had already found part of a wing & plucking evidence earlier this week & would normally have blamed Albert Whiskers, but he is a very lazy cat & he was also at the vet at the time the 'evidence' appeared, so he's off the hook on this occasion.

So that's the broad beans finished & out, & the baby turnips sown. Everything else cropping reasonably well. 
Anyone out there who thinks it's too late to sow any food.......it isn't! You can still sow all manner of lettuce & salady stuff, spring onions, beetroot, turnips, radishes & some of the oriental stir-fry greens. Tastes better if you've grown it yourself, honest!
Till next time,
C x