Swallowtail butterflies and a fennel bush

A few years ago, I bought a bronze fennel bush at a garden centre specialising in herbs, near Chesterfield in Derbyshire. We kept it in a pot on our roof terrace in London, where it quietly survived. We then then took it to Normandy when we moved here, put in in a proper garden, and it has thrived: this year it reached nearly two metres.

It is not the bulb fennel, sometimes called Florentine fennel, sold in supermarkets and elsewhere for use in salads and with fish. This one starts with intensely bushy stalks, thickly covered with fronds; bit like dill on steroids. Gradually the stalks get longer and the fronds more separated. Eventually, it produces a host of yellow flower heads, flat with a mass of tiny flowers, like all the umbelliferae plants. These flowers are covered with bees, hoverflies and other insects. Finally the flowers turn to seeds. I gather these and keep them for cooking. Their liquorice taste adds a deep flavour to stocks, soups and sauces, to some salads, and as a component of any spicy dish. I probably use them at least five times a week. In winter, the plant just dies back to the ground.

Each year, for a day or two, in late may or June, we have a swallowtail butterfly or two flying in the garden, and always ending up on the fennel. Then we have caterpillars, starting as small, dull things a centimetre or two long, but within days becoming three times the size, and turning black and green. They sit on a stalk and eat the fronds until all that is left is the stalk, and they move to another. They don't damage the plant; unlike some pest species, there are usually only up to a dozen. Three weeks later they have all gone, each turned into a chrysalis out of sight. 

This year This year (2013) there has been a second brood, with four more caterpillars on the bush in August.

All photographs ©ManchePaul

Ecological beach cleaning

St Martin de Brehal is a seaside resort near Granville, in the Bay of Mont St Michel. It has a couple of miles of sandy beaches, a restaurant, a bar/brasserie, and a standard bar, plus a couple of shops selling beach stuff. At one end of the beach there are commercial mussel beds, which are visible at low tide.

St Martin de Brehal looking towards Granville, August 2013

Like most French beaches, local equivalents of bye laws forbid playing radios, and taking dogs on the beach from May to October. Unlike many British beaches, St Martin de Brehal has no litter problem. This is partly because in general the French take their rubbish away with them, and the French are very keen on keeping everything propre – clean and tidy.

Nonetheless, in high summer when there are a lot of people on the beach, some litter does appear. Some of it is odd bits of paper that blew away unnoticed, some is just odd items overlooked in the chaos of a family with a couple of young children trying to gather up all the clothes, toys, and other stuff they had to bring, and some of it is brought in from who knows where by the tide. The rubbish has always been collected at the end of the day, not a big job.

A week ago, when the temperature was over 30 degrees in the shade, and the summer season is well under way, I was sitting on the beach while my wife and a friend paddled in the sea, after a good dinner in the restaurant. Behind us, the few bits of rubbish left on the beach were being collected.

Each piece of litter was put in the appropriate dustbin on the donkeys' backs – the recycling rules are followed everywhere.

(There are other references to St Martin de Brehal, including pictures, on this blog: Here