Dear Readers, last year there wasn’t a single leaf of duckweed on the pond. This year, however, it’s back with a vengeance. Where does it go, I wonder? And why is it so much more all-encompassing during some years? At any rate, today my husband set to getting as much of it out as possible, because we are shortly off on an adventure (of which more tomorrow), and we rather fancy not having it all over the pond when we get back.

It’s tricky to remove without catching up the new tadpoles, but we inspected it carefully as it came up. Unfortunately, most of the figwort came up as well, so then I spent some time throwing that back, and very popular with the tadpoles it is too. There must be thousands of the little wrigglers in the pond this year.

So, after much sweeping and pulling and rather a lot of bad language, we managed to clear at least some of the pond surface. I am under no illusion that we’ll get rid of all of it, but some light needs to get through to the oxygenating plants under the surface, and  hopefully this will give them at least some respite before the blooming duckweed gets going again.

In other news, green alkanet is everywhere this year: it’s easy to forget that, although it’s a weed, it is very popular with pollinators, as this honeybee would attest if it could talk.

And the flowering currant has just about reached its peak. It is such a splendid plant, and the hairy-footed flowerbees are all over it. At the moment it seems to be just the black females, though I did see a male on my geraniums. They come and go, these lesser-known bees, and are often unremarked, or described as ‘black bumblebees’. These are actually solitary bees, and very splendid they are too.