The Scourge Of Terry Walton

Another one of those macro shots I've been wanting to do for a long, long time, and with us in the early throes of Autumn, time was ticking on getting it!

We chucked some nasturtium seeds into the border in the spring just to see if they would come up. Dad is forever getting packets of free seeds, so there is nothing ventured, nothing gained by throwing them in the borders here.

Amazingly they came up, and we have a vibrant splash of colour along the fence. We also have a nice colony of large white caterpillars. They love nasturtium leaves! I leave nature alone and let them get on with munching the leaves, the caterpillars will provide a food source for parasitic wasps, which in turn will provide food for insect catching birds next spring .. and so the cycle of life pedals on!

My dad, on the other hand, is not so keen on them eating his brassicas! He tries all sorts of organic potions to keep them at bay! Usually to no avail! He then compounds their misery by referring to them as cabbage whites on the Jeremy Vine show .. there is no such butterfly as the cabbage white! There is a small white, large white and green veined white, all of which have bassica in their latin names (this one is indeed a Pieris Brassicae), but none of them are a cabbage white. It's much the same as calling a white gull a seagull at the beach, there is no such bird, it's just a collective name.

There's more if you want to see him posing in various ways on Flickr ...

1500th blip tomorrow ... can't believe it!