There’s an urgency to the swallows’ flight as they hurtle low over the field, snatching flies that the restless cattle have disturbed. With a late brood just fledged from the barn, they have a keen need for food. There’s also a sense of limited time in the frenzy of bees and butterflies rummaging through late flowers within the walled enclosure of the garden. This little domain within the valley provides them with an end-of-season smörgåsbord. Most of the plants I grow are for both day- and night-flying insects, chosen for their pollen and nectar or as food plants for caterpillars.
The sun has only been up for half an hour. A butterfly is pressed against the house wall to absorb warmth after the night. A red admiral with pristine wings. I inch up slowly so I can study its striped antennae, its black-haired body, its legs braced against the stone. It is one of many, drawn by the mass of sedums that are spilling their sticky scent onto the early morning air. I count 50 butterflies slowly working the double row planted either side of the path. As the day heats up they will become a restless throng, jostling with the numerous bumblebees, flies and honeybees among the deep pink flowers.
Black cohosh, Actaea racemosa, is as heady as hothouse jasmine, with its tapering flower spikes of white starbursts spiralling up a dusky stem. Kinked by westerly winds, the racemes are crowded with bumblebees and hoverflies, lured by its sickly sweetness. Nearby are tall asters, their rayed purple daisies like children’s drawings, and orange-red dahlias, a colour match for the stripe on red admiral wings. Silver Y moths and a comma settle on the thistle heads of cardoons. Yet more butterflies jostle amongst the fine gold petals of Inula hookeri. The air is full of movement providing, in turn, plenty of food for birds.
With gales and rain forecast, this day of warmth and plenty won’t last. Very soon the swallows will have left and there’ll be a space in the sky where they have been, and I’ll find faded butterfly wings as I weed the borders.
