Bricks and mortar

Part of the garden wall was threatening to fall down, so we are having it re-built. Most of the bricks that were whole in the old wall can be re-used, and the new wall is being done with lime mortar, like the original, i.e. no cement at all. And thus was most of Camberwell built.

This isn't just conservation fussiness - lime mortar has a hugely lower carbon footprint than does cement. It also has the indirect effect that when you take a wall down you can get the mortar off the bricks. The only bricks we couldn't re-use here were the ones that had been repaired with cement. When you lay bricks with cement you doom them to single use.

So reclaimed London stocks are only available because of the lime mortar they were put together with.

Great tree

This wonderful tree, which I take to be a black locust, Robinia pseudoacacia, looks as though it belongs in a park or large garden rather than where it is, on the pavement in Wyndham Road. Certainly the tree is much older than all the surrounding buildings and, in its solitary splendour, it doesn't look as though it was designed for the pavement. Perhaps a large garden is where it used in fact to be, and Edwardian children played under it; but the garden has long since been taken away. How good that it has survived.

Biodegradability

What does it mean to say something is biodegradable? Our answer is that if an object is still identifiable after a year in a fairly cool compost bin, it is not biodegradable in any useful sense.

But it is difficult to carry out a comparative trial in a compost bin, so we are trying a substitute approach, putting stuff on the soil surface, covering it with a black plastic bag, and keeping it moist. On 4 July we started with an Ecover bag (A); an M&S potato carton (B and C); a Kanga incontinence pad (D); and an Earthfriendly eco baby wipe (E). More recently we've added a Weenee nappy pad. All the products claim 100% bidegradability/compostability.

The pads seem to be entirely wood-based pulp and tissue, except that the Weenee admits to having some gel ("superabsorbent polymer" - crosslinked polyacrylate). The other items all seem to be made of a polymer derived from starch, poly(lactic acid), or PLA (trade name Ingeo).

So we'll have a look at how they are getting on every couple of months.

Butterflies

We are seeing Holly Blues in the garden. The Holly Blue is a gift to non-butterfly experts like us - it is the only small blue butterfly that you normally get in Camberwell. So if you see a small blue butterfly you can say knowledgeably that it is a Holly Blue. According to the RSPB, "Adults drink oozing sap, aphid honeydew and carrion juices", not so charming, and "Caterpillars usually eat holly and ivy, but also dogwood, spindle and heathers." Ours are often flying round the ivy - perhaps ready to lay eggs.

Teabags

We changed to Fairtrade tea a few years ago, buying both Teadirect and Clipper. I only recently realized that Clipper teabags are biodegradable while Teadirect's are not - they hang around perfectly identifiably after a year in the compost bin. I suppose after a longer time and more disturbance they would physically disintegrate, but that would just mean small pieces of nylon in the soil rather than large ones.

So, anyhow, we have become obligate Clipper teabag buyers. Happily both Somerfield and the Co-op on Camberwell New Road sell them.

So what's it all for?

This little lovely is a lime hawk moth on the pavement just down the street yesterday. Our instinct was to take it to a safer place - a shrub outside the house.

But the life of the lime hawk moth doesn't quite fit the fairy tale. As an adult it doesn't feed - it mates and dies; perhaps ours was already on the way out.

Near the shrub there is bucket with water for pot plants. One of the local boys wanted some water for his water pistol and we had a look in the bucket and found that it was teeming with animal life: mosquito larvae, tiny red worms, water fleas (I'm pretty sure) and even smaller creatures going about their business. It's enough to make you believe in spontaneous generation.

Well, mosquitoes could have laid eggs, and anyhow the water came from a water butt, not from the tap. But a few years ago the water butt was a clean, empty plastic container and the rain came from the sky. Evidently the makings of water life are constantly lurking in relatively dry places.

In sum, Nature goes on in her mysterious and heartless way in Camberwell.

Young things

We first saw a great spotted woodpecker in the garden in 2004 and thought, what a rare and surprising thing. Last year a juvenile visited the fat feeder quite often and this year we have seen both an adult and a juvenile. Last week, briefly, the juvenile was on the fence and the adult was feeding it from trips to the fat feeder. So it isn't rare, but it still seems surprising - I thought you had to go into the country to see woodpeckers.

Of course it is the time of year for juveniles - the garden is full of young great tits and young blackbirds (a young blackbird being fed is of course what the photo shows). And we also identified a pair of young squirrels, a little smaller than adults and behaving in that exploratory playful way that seems to mark the young of at least all mammalian species.