Sunday 22 July 2012

Entrez les limaces

Bonjour M et Mme les Limaces! Or Welcome Slugs, not a phrase often heard; and indeed in my Googling just now for the French for 'slug' I found warlike websites with such titles as Lutte contre les limaces advocating strategies ranging from growing 'slug-hostile' plants such as tagetes and begonia to strewing your flowerbeds with pine needles and hot chocolate grounds.


However, slugs are welcome here because I promised my daughter-in-law Abi who shudders at pictures of moths, that today's post would be moth-free. And who could resist a limace like this one with its orange petticoat, encountered crossing the lane outside the cottage where we stayed at the beginning of the month in Tarn?


Here to accompany it, is a limace Anglaise, gliding above our kitchen door, a height of some eight feet off the ground, and nicely showing its internal organs thanks to the outside light. Yum. Or Yuk.


I don't think Abi will be upset by butterflies, meanwhile, and here's a final selection from France, showing how many we in the UK share in common with sunlit spots such as Tarn. Above, a Small Copper. Below, Large Skipper, Peacock, Comma, one of the Graylings(?), Wall - under and overwing - and Hedge Brown.  Back in olde England meanwhile - would you believe it? - after yesterday's sun, we've just had another brief shower. But at least it's warm and officially the weather prospects are rosy.







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