Diary catch up #2 - snippets from the rest of September 2014

Crucial achievement by the Engineer #1 - at last the creation of my much-longed for 3 bay leaf mould heaps!
I fear these may in fact need further adaptation and reinforcement when bulk quantities of leaves prove to be weightier than we at first envisaged, however, something is better than nothing.  And they needed to be ready before the autumn and the Great Leaf Deluge which will come...

September achievement #2 - the last replacement stone being put in the wall...Our lovely builder Graham advised me of his ritual of putting a Time Capsule into each wall he completed - he always offers the householder the opportunity to do it and choose the contents, but if they aren't interested apparently he feels it is important so he usually squirrels a little something in of his own anyway.

So we set to and each one of us put in the little tin something which was important or precious to us.  The children chose to put in some loom bands, a nerf bullet and some lego, and I put in a little drawing and a written page about the history of the house as far as we knew it with our family, starting back in 1968 when Grandma and Grandpa bought it.

Then we popped it into the space in the wall that Graham had found and felt was a good place, before he fixed in the last stone.  Now it's on to the repointing and the home stretch for this phase of renovations.

Placing the Time Capsule in the wall

Here it is, tucked in safe - a boiled sweets tin wrapped in a plastic bag to keep out the damp

 Even though the weather is still incredibly warm and dry, there are signs that the moisture of autumn is silently creeping up on us and the season is turning.  One of these was less welcome - the appearance of a few random patches of this weird stuff on the lawn:

 It was the strangest thing. Almost like efflorescence, and if you poked at it with a stick it turned to dust almost.  Naturally I turned to google to diagnose...what did we used to do before the internet?

My diagnoses was assisted greatly when a day or so later it looked like this:

So I was able to state categorically that it was the gorgeously (and indeed aptly) named 'Dog's Vomit Fungus'...Seemingly innocuous and spores present in the air and soil simply activate when conditions are just right - which they obviously are, as there have been a couple of other patches here and there in the garden. But I just left it and it turned black and sort of disappeared.  Not that there was much else you could do - if I tried to scrape it up to wrap in newspaper and put in the bin it sort of dissolved.

And we had a visit from this colourful wee chap:

Pale Tussock caterpillar

Who is a Pale Tussock Moth caterpillar (Calliteara pudibunda).  Apparently he eats tree leaves including elm, birch, hazel, lime and oak.  I think he must have had to change his diet to ash, horse chestnut, beech and walnut to survive in this garden!  I didn't fiddle with him as his hairs did look suspiciously unfriendly but I think he must win the prize for the most outrageously attired village resident so far this year.