Tag Archives: dragonfly
Silent Sunday
Four-spotted chaser
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge#99: Old and New
An old hacked tree with a beautiful new dragonfly. Dragonflies as a species though have been around for about 300 million years! They spend much of their life cycle in water as nymphs (often 2-3 years). As adults, they may only live a couple of months.

The newly opened flower of a Burnet rose, and behind ancient limestone (hundred’s of millions of years old).
Burnet rose
Inspired by this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge#99: Old and New
Six on Saturday
I managed to get another photograph of a dragonfly today. I spotted this one while cutting the beech hedge. It was a little worn, possibly having been caught out in a couple of the very heavy showers we had today. I think it is the blue form of a female common hawker, but open to correction. Neil has corrected me – it is a Brown Hawker, Aeshna grandis.

Dragonfly
Finally the coneflowers are flowering, but there doesn’t appear to be many flower heads.

Coneflower
The chicks are growing and they had their first explore of the greenhouse today.

Chicks
And look what my daughter found in the garden, left over from the Easter bunny!!
And finally we have been enjoying the first blackberries from the hedgerows and bog road!

blackberries
Thank you to The Propagator for hosting Six on Saturday.
Silent Sunday

Common Hawker Dragonfly Aeshna juncea
Raspberry jam and a dragonfly
It’s a wet and pretty dearly day here today, so after making another lot of pickled cucumber I made some raspberry jam from some frozen raspberries I found while cleaning out the freezer! These were last years crop and as this years autumn ones are just getting ripe it was time to use them up!
I came across a great post (http://highheelgourmet.com/2013/07/04/basic-jam-for-beginners/) as I was keen to try making some low sugar jam. So I have experimented with a ratio of 2:1 fruit to sugar. It looks like it has set and the kids were happy to clean the spoon and ladle afterwards! With a wet week forecast I am not sure how many raspberries we will get. We also picked some wild blackberries yesterday but they would also benefit from some dry days!
This beautiful dragonfly was also having a rest on one of the raspberry plants. I think it is a female common hawker.