The last daffodils finally faded in late May, after the wonderful, cool spring. Their memories are captured below in a final, brief video I stitched together once we’d replaced my failing desktop. All filmed on the day after Storm Dave, the last named storm of the 2025/2026 season, blew in from the South West, at the beginning of April. This video shows just how resilient they are, in all forms, as sturdy flowers for our challenging climate, on a quite exposed upland site.

Suddenly, with new hardware, the Clipchamp video software editing tool worked four times as fast, without glitches. No such chance with my own grey matter. I have to accept its failings and poorer powers of recall. There’s an interesting summary of the differences between how computers and our brains store memories in this article (Our Brains Have Unlimited Storage Capacity, But Our Memories Aren’t Always Reliable) in Discover magazine.

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The other video I’ve completed recently was the one below, taken early in May, when, after quite an absence, a Song thrush and other birds returned to serenade in and around the garden. A wonderful soundscape to complement the woodland flowers and fresh foliage.

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I’d wanted to write a poem about my encounter with the flower crab spider, which I featured in a previous post, but couldn’t get started on it. I’d given up thinking about it for weeks. Interestingly, I seem to have written only one poem in May before. Probably because I’m always behind the explosive curve of jobs to do in these dryer, longer days.

Then, out of the blue one morning, my brain presented me with the very simple opening words to give me an uncomplicated way in: ‘You caught my eye’. 

 

Flower Grab 

You caught my eye, atop the trumpet-petalled sea

An unexpected jolt against such harmony

I’d dawdled, slowly drifting through the sunlit crowd,

Of dancing flowers: some graceful, subtle; some plain, loud.

 

Old names which trace their springtime spread – the hopes, the fears

Through time and place, through countless hybridizing years.

Gwawr and Gwenllian, Cool Crystal, Maybole Elegance

Though Golden Echo trumps those well, between the trees:

His narcissistic gaze, her oread grace, entrance.

Romance, obsession, myth. Grown here, for you and me.

 

My scanning brain picked out your crab-like form.

Stopped me dead –  ghostly white, a gathering storm

Planned ambush: stealth, snatch, venom-fanged swift bite

You caught your flies, with ease, on gaudy Irish Light

Your killing zone, cool, stark, an unexpected blight.

 

Grabbed, held, sucked. Inconsequential lives fade slow,

For them no second chance, no bright tomorrow.

No earthly paradise, this false Welsh Eden,

Soon traps those rash enough to dream of heaven.

 

14/05/2026.

(This probably final version, was influenced a little by recent events in Wales. See a brief addendum at the end of this post).

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While working on this, I’d reflected on the fact that whilst ‘you, (or it), caught my eye’ is a common expression, it’s a factually very over-simplistic one.

Our eyes, or rather the light receptors of the retina, simply record in exquisite detail the reflected light from the world in front of us, in the spectral range of visual radiation that they can detect. They then send this huge amount of data down the optic nerves, to our brains for ‘processing’. Our visual cerebral cortex region gets to work on making sense of this data and creating a picture of the world that we perceive as ‘reality’ in front of us. Though, as with an image recorded on the light sensor of a digital camera, this is just one interpretation of the world as it is – think of how easily you can now change our visual record of an event (digitally) by altering contrast, white balance, depth of field or any number of variables.

The interesting element for me was discovering that there’s another much smaller, and less familiar part of our brains – separate to the visual cortex – which plays a key role in the process we can describe as ‘catching my eye’.

This is the superior colliculus, which consists of paired, layered elements of nerve tissue located in the midbrain. This sits beneath the much larger cerebral cortex above it. (There are some excellent images on the linked page, above.) Its seven internal layers are divided into superficial, intermediate, and deep zones. The superficial layers process visual information, while the intermediate and deep layers process auditory and sensory inputs. Its output messages, after assimilating all that’s been fed into it, will control head orientation, gaze shifts, and saccadic eye movements.

(A new word of the month for me. Such saccadic eye movements are incredibly fast. And what I’ve just outlined about their management is a gross simplification of what’s going on. Click here for more detail. (“Saccadic eye movements in neurological disease: cognitive mechanisms and clinical applications -Yong Lin Wang, Mahima Kapoor, Joanne Fielding, Stephen Reddel, Chao Zhu, Meaghan Clough, Mina Botrous, Mastura Monif & Anneke van der Walt”. This is an excellent contemporary review of what is involved. The way this works is wonderfully complex, and it’s just as well we don’t have to think about or ever learn how to get it all to work.) 

So now we’re getting close to what is summarised by those four simple words which my brain suddenly presented me with: ‘you caught my eye’. That subconscious processing of all of the visual data sent from my retinas, and the rapid search for something out of the ordinary. And when found, quick as an involuntary flash, the transmitted motor nerve impulses to move my eye muscles and head, so that the tiny element of my visual field which my brain thought worthy of greater attention, became centred over my fovea centralis. Which has the highest concentration of cone receptors capable of the highest resolution and colour data capture.

How amazing! My attention was indeed grabbed.

Two more examples of this process in action followed recent group visits to the garden. Early on in the morning of one garden open weekend, with this view, and potentially much to interest me, my brain had made me turn my eyes and head to the right to examine a barely visible pristine moth resting above the clumps of Aquilegia flowers on the newly white-washed wall. Probably a Grey Dagger, Acronicta psi.

‘Probably’, because there is an almost identical moth called the Dark Dagger. The two species can be differentiated only by genital examination. Which has never interested me…

As our guests wandered around the garden during the afternoon, I asked a few of them if they’d spotted the moth on the wall, and pointed it out to those (in the majority) who had passed it by, oblivious to its presence. I was confident, of course, that it would still be exactly where I’d seen it, until darkness fell once more. Completely unfazed – unlike most butterflies, by any passing movement during daylight hours.

Was it a coincidence that the two guests who had seen it were a beekeeper and an elderly gentleman who had spent his days working in agriculture? Perhaps. Although we all possess the same brain/eye connections, like many other aspects of our behaviour and abilities, they can be fine-tuned or heightened by experience or regular engagement.

The other drama of this open weekend followed the arrival of two couples that morning.

Greeting the second couple together, as we do, I commented as we set them on their way, that whilst my chat with the husband was all about our different grandchildren,  Fiona had been told (prompted no doubt by her usual explanation about the benign honey bee colonies dotted around the garden) the dramatic story of the wife’s first experience of a honey bee swarm. Ever. And just a couple of weeks earlier.

She’d got her bike out for the first time in years and was cycling the recently opened cycle track from Carmarthen along the Tywi valley, when she spotted the unmistakable, noisy, dark comet of a honey bee swarm heading straight for her, from the opposite direction, along the cycle path. She had no option but to quickly down her bike and dive to one side. In so doing, she’d hurt her shoulder, but was otherwise unharmed.

Cue the magic Gelli synchronicity.

About 10 minutes after this chat, I was crouched behind some Azaleas, weeding acorns from beneath the big oak, as I watched the pair walk quickly and purposefully, retracing their steps towards the house. This seemed a little odd to me – people usually spend much longer in that part of the garden, and then cross the yard the other way, past the house, not the way they were heading.

Shortly afterwards, Fiona found me and told me the news – they’d just seen a swarm of our honeybees take to the air and begin to settle out close to the tyre garden path. (Our earlier guests had passed this point about 10 minutes earlier, noticed the noise and bees, but just thought…. they seem noisy today!)

This swarm had likely emerged from the (closest) Swedish butterchurn hive – the colony which had survived being open to the elements for days after being trashed by Storm Darragh 18 months ago. It quickly settled out as several split clusters wrapped around a spirally trained apple tree trunk nearby. Since I have my full complement of colonies, and since there is great demand for honey bees nationally, after massive colony losses during the past wet winter, I called the lovely Sandy, a local beekeeper friend who came with her husband Alan, and spent a great deal of time and effort attempting to collect the bees from this tricky, cluster location. (Click here to review Paul Honigmann’s discussion on the winter losses of 2025/6 and possible lessons. Just why might losses of 45-50% of colonies have occurred over such wide areas of Britain?)

Shortly after this drama, we enjoyed another visit by a charming group of Belgian gardeners who have been embarking on pan-European, self-drive, self-arranged garden-based tours for decades. They could all speak and understand English brilliantly, and timed their visit to Gelli perfectly to miss the rain. They insisted on post-visit photos for their, and our record. Everyone, with Fiona, is happy in the sunshine.  As is usual, we enjoyed their company greatly, and left for a week-long break just after their visit, heading for the lovely Pembrokeshire coast. Just in time for a week of wonderful warm, and sometimes hot, weather. Only slightly spoiled by me going down with a respiratory bug we suspect might have been acquired from their visit.

However, the benefit of my lack of any real energy was that it proved to be the most relaxing holiday we’ve ever had. We could still walk from the door and be on the coastal path within 3 fields, and not only could I finish reading two books, but the cottage had its own wealth of lovely books to peruse.

Indeed, one in particular caught my eye (there I go again) early in our stay – a weighty high-end publication featuring striking images of an assortment of tree houses from around the world, with text in 3 languages. It led me to exploring the history and concept of Arcadia in classical and more recent art and literature. And in particular, 2 paintings by the French artist Nicholas Poussin, who in the early 1600’s had produced completely different takes of the same subject titled Et in Arcadia ego. The Latin can be translated as “Even in Arcadia, there am I”; “Also in Arcadia am I”;  “I too was in Arcadia”.

Or “even in Arcadia I (Death) (hold sway)”.

For a background to the subject of Arcadia in classical literature and the possible meaning of this phrase, click here. In essence, the thought is that even in Arcadia/Utopia/Eden, one cannot escape death.

Although for the best discussion I could find on the phrase’s use in art and literature through the ages, click here for Andrew Beer’s essay on ‘Etymologies.’

These turned out to be a few more words to pique my interest and an encouragement from my brain to write about a very special sequence of observations/experiences we enjoyed on just one day of our holiday in this rural idyll enclave of the cliffs around Dinas Head. The story could be told in many ways, through words or images, albeit taken with our mobile phones since I now choose to leave my camera behind for such jaunts.

Or indeed through music. Here’s an insight into the drama of a rural thunderstorm as conceived by Beethoven. The 4th movement of his well-known ‘Pastoral’ symphony, No. 6, which was eventually performed for the first time in 1808. Beethoven was a lover of nature, and spent many hours walking in the country. He frequently left Vienna to work in rural locations. He said that the Sixth Symphony is “more the expression of feeling than painting” and beautifully played and filmed, in dynamic fashion, in this recording, conducted by Paavo Järvi with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen orchestra.

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Here are a few of our images to conjure with, all taken on a hot and humid May 27th. From a coastal path walk, early in the morning (‘yn gynnar yn y bore’), to a shorter repeat trek I made, after a massive thunderstorm to rival any we can recall had passed through in the early afternoon.

And here are some reflective, stripped-back words of summary.

Of this day of dramas.

 

Et in Arcadia ego

Read the signs. Where earth meets cliff,

Where cliff meets sea, meets sky

Where life stalks life. Today, both live,

And then, today, yn gynnar yn y bore,

One dies. Memento mori.

 

Scan the flies, whose metalled suits, such vibrant green,

Had stopped our words. Coned our concentration

What was that slimy, dark brown? Turd?

Spread your view: grey corrugated caecum sac, short furry tufts.

Thoughts falter. Crime scene clues left clear, on bare, idyllic altar.

 

Heat builds, views thrill: mountain, ocean, coast

Life’s pulse, here, weak – no buzzing bees, few gull-cry ghosts.

Foxgloves conspired amongst their lichened, sheltering gorse.

Blown-back bonsai thorns, cliff-cling. Clouds darken, muster, course.

Far off, a kestrel demisemiquivers, hangs, scans.

 

Drama grows: shape-shifting swallows; wind gusts hotly, strong.

Distant cuckoo; tireless blackbird sings such fluid songs.

Thunder breaks, roils, rolls in waves – on and on and on.

Strange echoes in this vast, expansive space

Rain falls soon and slakes this thirsty, dusty place.

 

Dusk. The altar’s cleansed. Silvered sun, reflected, shone.

Jewelled flies have fled. Coprophagic gut has gone.

Read the words. Four centuries ago,

Poussin’s two artworks claimed it’s so –

His shepherds mused, traced pithy verse,

Paused.      Et in Arcadia, ego.

28/05/2026

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One of the features of our holiday was that, despite the stunning weather and glorious scenery, the coast margin was decidedly poor in insect and other obvious species diversity, save in the more wooded stream margins of the land surrounding our lovely coach house base – made very welcoming by our hosts, Mike and Aradhana at Ffynonoffi.

On the glorious sunny and warm day after the Bank Holiday Monday, we’d completed a nearly 3-hour walk from the cottage around Dinas Island. And for the first time, had been able to stand at the Trig point and cliff edge just beyond, with no other walkers visible in either direction. We also saw only 4 bumblebees and no honey bees during the entire walk.

We returned with mixed feelings, with just a couple of days to prepare the garden for another group of visitors. Little did we think the garden and meadows would have changed so much in our absence!

Clematis montana nearly all over, many roses in bloom, and the Nectaroscordum sicculum heaving with wasps, bumblebees, and honey bees in a way we’ve never witnessed before.

There must have been hundreds in this small part of the garden. One of our earlier garden visitors had made a point of saying they’d never seen so many bees in a garden before – now those numbers had at least doubled.

In the hay meadows, the orchids had emerged in numbers – around 250 plus in our (later started) lower hay meadow. As for the upper hay meadow, I’m guessing over 2,000. Frankly, far too many to count, with the very first Butterfly orchids beginning to open as well.

However, despite all of this, the most dramatic observation on the warm and humid Saturday, May 29 th, was the number of Painted Lady, Vanessa cardui, butterflies, and more particularly Silver Y,  Autographa gamma, moths. Nectaring on nearly every available flower in the gardens and meadows. Walking anywhere disturbed them from the grass. Completely uncountable, but we share about 11 acres of land with all our resident and migratory wildlife. This equates to about 11 X 4046 square metres, and since many areas of meadow and garden held several moths per square metre, I’m guessing total numbers above ten thousand. We have never witnessed anything like it before. Again, videos are needed to capture their movement. 

Both species of Lepidoptera are early summer immigrants to the UK, being unable to survive our winters. We always find a few in late spring, which will survive and produce a generation or two during their summer here, before some of them make the trip home in the autumn. Both species fly up from Southern Europe or North Saharan Africa in a migration of epic proportions for such tiny creatures, which has been studied, in the case of the Painted Ladies, in some detail in recent years.

Watch this wonderfully narrated short film, from 2017: “Vanessa’s Odyssey, Tribute to the butterfly Vanessa cardui and her incredible journey”. It demonstrates how they complete this epic journey – in reverse order!

As to their common name, it has a history of use dating back to the 1660’s or earlier, when “painted lady” was a popular term for women who wore vibrant facial makeup. At a time when the use of facial cosmetics was becoming more common in the court of King Charles II. The butterfly’s strikingly patterned colourful wings, including splashes of orange, black, blue and white, evidently reminded early observers of this vivid makeup.

I began to muse about what these, probably millions of moths and butterflies, will now do, having reached this corner of South West Wales. Will they fly on to Ireland, as is suggested by this map of major Vanessa flight paths? Or are they destined to stay here and try to complete their 2 to 3 generations this summer? In which case, with fewer predatory insectivorous birds in our skies, we might be in for trouble.

Both species aren’t that fussy about which larval food plants they will lay eggs on – between 200 and 300 have been recorded. Thus, if we enjoy a summer benign enough for them to proceed with their normal mating and egg laying… watch out. Expect marketing pushes from companies like Bayer, ever alert to the latest ‘pest’ threat, which currently has a benign-sounding product, just waiting to help you decide what insecticide you might need to spread across our landscapes – Field Mate 

Plague of locusts? Not quite, but the caterpillars of both species might get more airtime in the weeks ahead, I suspect, unless the majority of this influx has made their way to the nectar-rich fields surrounding our home, and thus numbers aren’t so vast across the rest of the landscape.

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The last drama I’ll record was a second honey bee cluster which an eagle-eyed garden visitor spotted, whilst standing next to me looking out at the view beyond our yard.

“What’s that on the tree?” she asked me. Scanning the few apple tree branches ahead, I immediately spotted it. I suspect it was a second, and smaller, cast swarm from the same colony as the earlier one. And thus complete with recently emerged, and as yet unmated, queen. I think it had probably emerged the day before in the humid heat, since it was so inactive, and as yet, had not found anywhere suitable to fly off to. With heavy rain forecast for the next day, another phone call was made, and once more Sandy and Alan arrived after our guests had left at tea time.

This time, with its more favourable location and a little bit of preparation, the swarm capture was swift and efficient. Shaken by Alan, up the ladder into the bucket on a pole that Sandy held. Then transferred to a small travel-suitable ‘nuc’ box, and left for a couple of hours for most of the bees to join the queen, before the short journey to their new home. Beekeepers are calm, patient souls, as you can appreciate in this short video of these 2 swarms.

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Not content with such fine observation, the same guest who spotted the swarm cluster sat in the shepherd’s hut above the orchid-filled meadow, and drew a marvellously inspired and titled “Symmetry of spiders” drawing to join others from the past few years, in our Bee Wild Book. In the Thought Box.

A complete Joy.

As indeed the earlier honey-bee-swarm-scout-visitor, had already proclaimed.

On reflection, my promised addendum comments about the recent Welsh Senedd elections would undoubtedly intrude on the riotous natural diversity, inspiration and creativity outlined in this post. So I’ll leave such thoughts for another post. Maybe.

And leave readers with another recording of Beethoven’s ‘The Storm’, but this time set to glorious, if dated, animation graphics in ‘Fantasia’. The skilful matching of imagery with music, as thunderbolts were hammered by Vulcan in the clouds before being tossed to Zeus to hurl to earth, was brought to mind by a chat with another lovely, elderly garden visitor yesterday, who had spent her childhood in Africa. I asked if she’d experienced the heavy thunderstorm last week.

“Oh yes”, she said. “And it was quite unlike any storm I’ve witnessed in Britain before”.

“It was more like a tropical storm in intensity”.

She then vividly recalled her memories, as an eight-year-old, of watching an African thunderstorm hit and split a telegraph pole right in front of her home into three parts. With a massive explosive bang.

And then watch as her father, who was using an old-style wind-up telephone at the time of impact, was showered in sparks from the phone. She’d then passed into catatonic shock and had to be hit by her father to snap her out of it. (Click on the link to a paper outlining the known potential long-term physical and neurological effects from near and survived lightning strikes.)

She has, unsurprisingly, been petrified by the sound of thunder, and other sounds – even flushing the loo – ever since! Although not, she remarked with surprise, by seeing lightning flashes. (Maybe something to do with powerful amygdala-based auditory memories, trumping anything from the visual cortex?)

Last week, across the valley from her in Glanaman, a house had its roof destroyed, and a fire ignited by a direct thunderbolt strike from the same storm complex which we’d experienced in Pembrokeshire. The inhabitants miraculously survived unscathed.

Dramas.

Dramas.

Here’s hoping for a more peaceful June.