As it's a mild night I just went outside into the garden, with the torch thing on my phone for guidance, and I shone it on random places in the garden. I was surprised to see, at 11:30pm, there were still ants going up and down the two trees they're always going up and down during the day! And on one corner of the patio there was a hive of woodlouse activity; where one will only normally encounter woodlice under rocks, or occasionally trundling along a floor in the house, the ones out there were scurrying around all over the place really fast and randomly! It's like they'd come alive at night. Then there were the slugs around the place, various spiders walking or creating cobwebs, little generic insects walking around on the wall - who knew all this went on the other side of our closed curtains!

Well, I did really but it has been years since I observed such things.

It sounds totally terrifying.

I wouldn't go into my garden at night without a flame thrower.

My garden is full of grasshoppers. There always used to be little ones in the front lawn, but this year the back lawns are alive with big ones.

That's during the day. I hardly dare to speculate about what's happening at night.

I'm not sure I've ever seen an actual grasshopper. Actually, I do remember a little brown thing once being in our back porch in amongst the shoes - I think that might have been a grasshopper or a cricket or something.

Or a katydid!

I went in the garden to harvest the last of the potatoes, and I received 6 insect bites. One on my ear, which has made it go all red. And another in a place which I wouldn't have thought an insect could get to.

How's Buddha in the Garden BTW?

Nightjar wrote:

How's Buddha in the Garden BTW?

How dare you ask in the wrong thread!

The title just, just... reminded me.

Buddha in the Garden is very disappointed in you.

That means I'm going to be reincarnated as a slug.

Still, could be worse...

My ear is still all red and itchy. I've put some Savlon on it.

Were you assailed by the infamous Colchester Midge?

Butterfield wrote:

As it's a mild night I just went outside into the garden, with the torch thing on my phone for guidance, and I shone it on random places in the garden.

I did this again with my torch just after midnight as recently requested! It was slug city, with several woodlices moving about the patio. The ants were once again going up and down the tree that is riddled with aphids and were congregating on higher branches. There was a fair bit of spider activity, with several small spiders in cobwebs on the various conifers I shone the torch on and I saw a harvestman walking across a bare area of soil. I saw some green spiders too. I saw one earwig.