Goings on in the umbellifers

So cold in the office today, I had to go for a brisk walk at lunch time just to warm up.

Not very sunny and a bit windy too but there were lots of insects about in the lanes. Every umbellifer head seemed to have a bee on it. There were also lots of these stripy yellow ichneumon wasps around. They seemed to be mating - and not only in twos....every now and then another one or two would try and join in and the whole pile of bodies would fall off the flower head and crash to the ground. You can see in the picture that one wasp has got its legs around the other one.

Saw some green dock beetles too - not sure what the big black blob under their wing cases was...will have to do some more googling. Nearly used the picture of them as they were a lovely shiny green but my finger made an appearance as I had to try and steady the leaf to get a good shot as it was so windy.

Very envious of some of my colleagues today - they all have their shiny new PCs and dual monitors set up now. We have our training this week and then the roll-out of the new equipment later on. Can't wait - it will be great to be able to have Word and Photoshop open at the same time without the computer crashing.