Gardening

Without doubt, it is an aphid year. The car was parked under a tree for 24h and it was hard to wash the sugar off the windscreen this morning - one wiper torn apart. I spent 10 minutes tidying a beech hedge and had to retreat to the house to wash hands and secateurs. We visited a friend to sympathise over poor workmanship on her fence, and moved on to sympathise over her whitefly-smothered currants. The growing tips on the spindle bushes in our hedge are encrusted with black fly

Aphids plug their mouth-parts into the vessels carrying sap around a plant, and allow the positive pressure in those vessels to force a continuous stream of sap through their bodies, exuding (polite term) surplus sap that they have not absorbed

Bees (and many other insects) take advantage of the free supply of sugary sap as an energy source. If you have ever bought 'pine' honey, pines do not have nectar producing flowers, but they do have aphids! I will take the positive view that aphids may help our bees through the 'June gap' that usually descends when oilseed rape and spring flowers are over, but blackberries and summer flowers have not yet arrived

It looks like summer but remains unconvincing. The sun is hot - now less than 4 weeks to the solstice - but the wind remains resolutely north or east and still has an edge if the sun is obscured. This looks set to continue for at least another week, along with a continued absence of rain. Aphids all smiling