The Bluestocking Women's Pub: Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs

[AngleofRepose]

Croeso/Welcome to the Bluestocking Women's Pub, with our lovely gerbil staff, the icy Mojito foot-bath for those of you fed up with the heat, a Quilting/Craft Nook, lots of yummy food and drink with zero calories, gluten, or allergens, the Gerbil World Cup, and a brand new magic pool that becomes a babbling brook whenever you want it to!

Come on in! All women welcome! (Men welcome at The Staunch Ally pub down the road aways)

(security provided by the capybaras, lovely folk, but try not to get in their way)

(oh, and don't mention triangles, please. Gubbins gets very overexcited)

(did we mention the Gerbil World Cup?)

I think your moth is spectacular, Angle, and I wouldn't mind if I was the 1,346th to spot it in my area, I'd still be as thrilled as you were!
It reminds me of a Vulcan bomber, and then in another photo it reminds me of two butterflies - clever little thing, isn't it?

Growing ragwort - or rather, allowing ragwort to grow - on your land used to be illegal in Ireland, under the Noxious Weeds Act 1936. Maybe it still is, I don't know if they ever repealed the Act. So just as well you're not in Ireland - but don't worry, I'd campaign for your release, Free the Ragwort One!😄

I love that you have named crows, Rum😁

Yes thank you Edith, I am relishing having a house that's quiet again, and only contains moi

It's still frightfully hot in lots of places, isn't it?☀ so here's something cooling with which to say g'night to all - and wishing Hunter and Horti a restful and healing night 🌛

Ragwort is very bad for horses.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/weeds/ragwort

Good for wildlife, fine in most gardens but in UK must be controlled if near fields used for grazing or harvested for forage. I read somewhere it’s particularly bad in the latter as when dried it’s still toxic and the animal can eat more of it than fresh.

I hope it helps! It took about five weeks for me to notice a big improvement. You take a double dose for the first two weeks and then drop back to the normal (¼ oz) dose. I didn’t realise what a big difference it had made until I didn’t take it for the two weeks I was on holiday, but even then it recovered once I restarted. I do think taking the resveratrol and turmeric alongside it helps too.

I was walking to work in Central London this morning, deep in thought about something, when i realised a bloke in a strappy top & long skirt was in front of me, staring & reaching his hand out to touch my arm.
He said “Love your top!” & walked on.
Admittedly my denim jacket is pretty gorgeous but nothing special about the plain T-shirt underneath. I think this must have been supposed to be a brief girlie bonding experience.

Do you feel enriched and affirmed as a result, Empress? Obviously you should, because a man has noticed you and engaged in social interaction with you.

Oh, terribly. How could I not feel grateful that a transwoman has approved my womanhood?

He was probably waiting for you to admire his fashion sense and affirm his womanhood 🙄

Loved all the pics of butterflies and moths. I planted pollinator-friendly plants and do get lots of butterflies, but they are mainly the common ones. I have had a failure this year though. I planted a dwarf buddleia when I moved here as I didn't want one of the large ones that would take over the entire garden. However, I moved it in the spring and it is sulking at the moment has hasn't flowered. I will prune it right back in the autumn and see what happens next year.

Keep your eye out with it as they can be notorious self seeders. Dauntless

Probably, but I was too dazed at that point to do anything except mutter ‘Thank you’ and keep walking!

I have one of those orange blobby Buddleias and the leaves are very popular with green shield bugs which gives me creatures to talk to. I love all your beautiful moths. Re butterflies I seem to mostly have whites (no idea which whites) meadow browns, the odd red admiral, and yesterday an unseasonal holly blue. But I'm mostly cowering indoors so probably missing a lot.

Yesterday I had a meeting at the local pub so spent the evening eating my dinner (cajun chicken salad), discussing women's local history and admiring the parent swallows swooping in and out under the eaves to feed the enormous offspring bulging out of their nest. I expect they have been learning flying this morning.

Ragwort talk reminds me of the time I few years back I invited friends for lunch and scrounged round the garden for some sort of flowers for a bunch to put in the fireplace. It was much admired, including 'those lovely yellow ones'. I let people babble for a while and then said I had been a little unsure how a group of people from farming backgrounds would feel about buachaláns in a flower arrangement.

Conversation instantly shifted to memories of childhood suffering, spending days on end pulling the stuff up and carting it off to be burned. It occurred to me afterwards they probably hardly ever saw it in flower because the aim would have been to get in out early.

And my final wildlife observation - someone very kindly left a dead shrew just inside my bedroom door. So relieved I was looking where I put my feet.

HAGADAPA

I frequently comment to passers-by how much I like their outfit/hair/accessories.

What I would NEVER do, and no other woman in my experience, is make physical contact with a stranger to do so. That's boundary crossing and creepy.

It's exactly like those blokes who want you to take your headphones off so they can say something. No, random dude, you cannot interrupt me or paw at me. Naff off.

When we first got serious about attracting wildlife to the garden, I had to fight MrPasta and his desire for a manicured stripy lawn.

Within two years we'd attracted breeding puss moths and a privet hawk moth - we spent all day watching it unfurl its wings. When we looked the next morning it had already found a mate.

Morning lovely women
Quick update as you all have been so kind, Hunter seems to be on the mend thank goodness. He's bloody starving this morning but I was told not to give him meat or dairy yet so this morning he has eaten haddock and tuna and he's still scrounging. The effects of the injection will wear off today apparently so I'm not counting any chickens but we had a short walk and he's asleep in the garden. Still pooping liquid tar 🤢 but the bleeding should stop soon hopefully.

I've seen a number of those little blue butterflies this year. Being in such well-informed company here, I thought I'd better consult the
British Butterfly Identification Chart with Pictures & Names list
so I could use its proper name.
Turns out the proper name for my little blue butterflies is ...Blue Butterfly😄😏
Common Blue Butterflies, probably, I don't suppose I have anything more exciting in my garden than Common Blues and Tortoiseshells.

I have had bad experiences with buddleias - I used to have a fine big one that the butterflies loved, but it just upped and died.

Fortunately, I had taken a few cuttings from it which were growing happily so I planted them in a different location, they flourished, and then they upped and died too.
All I have left buddleia-wise is about four scraggly little cuttings.

Given that buddleia will grow just about anywhere, see photo, I feel that my garden has been slighted- marginalised, even- by the buddleia community😏😠

That's such good news, Horti!!
Being hungry is always a good sign, isn't it? Wishing Hunter a day full of good food and rest and all the love that you give him and little walks and recovery

I am a bad tempered old mare and probably would have responded with, "Do not touch me and fuck off, MAN".

Marie I love Common Blue butterflies! We have lots of them here as I believe they particularly like coastal areas. It's lovely seeing a flash of iridescent blue in among all the green foliage.

Horti So pleased to hear that Hunter is improving. Lots of sleep is probably the best thing for him at the moment - and I hope you have managed to catch up on your own sleep too.

Dean ' I have one of those orange blobby Buddleias and the leaves are very popular with green shield bugs which gives me creatures to talk to'.

My first thought on reading those words was, I wonder if they collect stamps?
For our younger contingent, you would need to be over sixty to understand what that meant! 😂

I remember Green Shield stamps. I liked sticking them in the books.

The rosemary I planted is thriving despite the heat, as is the Tomb Thumb.

We discovered that our gardener hadn’t drilled drainage holes in our pots for the skimmia so it drowned. It’s now in shade having been repotted and half of it is dead but we will wait and see if the rest lives.

The herbs selected for their low need for water do not enjoy endless heat. We are going to move the trellis tub across the garden so they have more shade and see how they go. Interesting to watch everything develop.

Thanks everyone. I'm very much hoping to sleep in my bed tonight. I was babysitting GC at the weekend so 2 nights on a sofabed followed by a 200 mile panic drive home to a sick dog and 3 nights on a couch. I'm too old for this.
Your butterflies are all lovely, I have spent 5 years replanting my garden for pollinators and other insects and I do have a huge variety of species but sadly not puss moths. Re shield bugs ( and yes I remember green shield stamps) I have a patch of woundwort growing in the wild garden and am very excited to have a lot of woundwort shield bugs, they're tiny, pink and bronze and utterly adorable. I can't take a pic because not even I am allowed to go into the wild garden.

I remember Green Shield Stamps as being part of a Toxic Gender Culture War in my family!!

My mother collected them and was delighted to get something for free - we didn't have much money so anything free was very welcome.

My uncle [her older brother] kept telling her - the word 'mansplaining' had not been invented yet - that the 'gifts' were not free at all, that she had paid extra for the groceries because of the shop giving Green Shield stamps, with the clear implication that she was a silly woman.

She argued back that they were 'free' because she had not paid for them.

Yes you did.

No I didn't...

Very grown up, wasn't it? big grown ups still squabbling like kids🙄

I have kept one of her Green Shield acquisitions. That she got for free. Because she didn't have to pay for it.
Sorry, Uncle, I loved you to bits but at times you could be a annoying mansplaining so-and-so who delighted in winding up your 'little sister', my Mam

I remember green shield stamps too, @MarieDeGournay - my mum used them to get a new hairdryer, if I recall correctly. I used to look through the catalogue, pick a wish list of items and work out how many stamps I would need - not that my mum would ever have let me spend her stamps.

Co-op stamps were better. Discuss!

Nasty experience, @EmpressaurusKitty.