A Fruit Machine and More Wild Kingdom

We've got some more stuff blooming in the garden. Our sage finally produced a flower stalk, a little later than usual, I think. It sat more or less dormant through the spring, but then I repotted it and it took off.

And we have a hollyhock! And more buds coming! Hollyhocks never work that well for me, despite the fact that everyone says they're so easy to grow, so I'm thrilled to get even a single flower. I grew this plant from the seed of one outside the school where Dave works (and where I used to work). It bloomed a couple of years ago too. Maybe our luck with hollyhocks is turning around.

I took a long, long walk yesterday morning up around the Clitterhouse Playing Fields, almost up to Brent Cross, and then back again -- about five or six miles, according to Google maps. It was a good day for walking. The weather was comfortable and as usual there were some curious sights along the way.

Someone set out these blue and white plates for the taking. You will be surprised to learn that I didn't take any!  The two left-hand ones were pretty old and crackled, but it did make me think I should get a plate hanger to hang up my pheasant platter.

I also came across this wrecked gambling machine outside a house near Brent Cross. The British call these "fruit machines," because they have internal wheels that spin depicting pieces of fruit, like American slot machines. In fact I suppose it's a type of slot machine but there's a lot of stuff going on up top there that I don't understand. (I've never used a slot/fruit machine in my life and I plan to keep it that way.)

Anyway, it's one of the weirder things I've ever found out walking. Someone must have been pretty angry at it!

After I got home I read "Juice" and had lunch. At one point I heard a lot of squawking in the garden -- and as we've established, that's not unusual so I didn't immediately investigate. But when I went out later I found scattered feathers, a leg and entrails from what I believe was a young starling. I don't know whether the predator was a cat or a fox, but I suspect a cat would carry off its prey rather than pluck and disembowel it right away. So I'm leaning fox.

And finally, in the afternoon, I found two of these little critters wandering around on our Phlomis, or Turkish sage. Google tells me they're nymph forms of a southern green shield bug, also known as a stink bug, or Nezara viridula. Pretty, aren't they? It's an "instar," which means it's between molts as it grows and matures. Eventually it will be all green. Stink bugs do cause crop damage but I'm not growing any food, and I'm not worried about them eating our Phlomis. They can indulge all they want. In fact, we could use some help knocking that stuff back. It's out of control.

We've found these bugs in our garden in years past, so this isn't anything new. In fact I'm pretty sure I've photographed this instar stage before but if I blogged it I can't find the post now.

Life in the Wild Kingdom of West Hampstead!