This week’s selection feels slightly autumnal, even though its early August.

The wildlife star this week is this stunning little mint month, also known as the ‘small purple and gold’. It visited the mint, marjoram and thyme planted in pots around our back door and then popped into the Dahlegria flower to pose for photographs. The mint month and is teeny-weeny, less than an inch or 2cm, but with wonderful rich colours.

In less happy wildlife news, the pigeons nesting in our pergola did not have a successful brood, and this week two of their eggs fell (or were pushed?) out of the nest. It was sad to see the little eggs that didn’t make it, but I heard from forest school friends that pigeons are known for being a bit daft with their nest choices.

This morning in the garden I hear goldcrest, blue tit, coal tit and robin – as well as plenty of pigeons despite the pergola nest fail – and yesterday in Nunney we heard a nuthatch!

My bird song guessing game is still going strong. Over 340 players have tried the latest version, and I’m getting some nice feedback about it, as well as squishing many, many bugs in the game. It makes a pleasant change from updating the binformation, social care and libraries webpages in my local gov IT day job. It’s a fun way to learn my birds songs and brush up on my avian data crunching and guessing game making skill-set.

Dawn Chorus Quest is a free to play web-based game, where players guess which bird is singing, and travel in time to hear how the dawn chorus gets quieter as the city of Bath developed. It has an ‘optimistic’ solar punk level set in the future, when we have rewilded parts of the city, welcomed back the birds, and the dawn chorus is rich and vibrant once more. Try it at https://bird-times.lovable.app/

In the garden, Vanessa Bell rose is still putting on a smashing show of blooms, despite the scorching heat. There’s no rain forecast in the week ahead, and there’s been hardly any rain for weeks now. The apple tree is dropping fruits already, and the hazel nuts have formed already. It seems like nature is rushing ahead to get seed set as soon as possible. We’ll just keep deadheading and watering to see how long we can keep the blooms going for the rest of the season.

One thing that has survived, despite our brutal pruning and mistreatment, is the particularly scratchy purple hydrangea in the ‘den.’ I can’t touch it without coming out in hives. We cut it back in the ground half hoping to kill it, and it pops back up a couple of years later, with more flowers and a cheery, scratchy habit. With the ‘prettier’ hydrangea all crunchy and dry, I guess this spiky fellow has a useful strategy.

Well, that’s my six (ish) selected for this Saturday. I’ll pop over to Garden Ruminations to share with the six on saturday gang of bloggers sharing garden highlights and tips on coping with drought.

Have a lovely week!

Jen xx