Three weeks since our last visit. Three weeks which would normally see one of the greatest transformations in a garden, from winter to high spring: not this year though, when unseasonably warm spells in both mid-February and early March lit the flames of spring very early, and the cool northerlies of early April then held its advance at bay.

But the daffodils were largely over, their place being taken by fritillaries and Erythroniums…

…  Epimediums, Archangel and Uvularia.

Time for interesting angles and close-ups…

… and celebration of the spring greens, punctuated and highlighted by splashes of  colour.

From beds and borders, unfurling ferns rearing up like cobras…

… and Alchemilla leaves bedecked with dewdrop pearls, some magnifying the russet tooth tips, others reflecting the sky, before coalescing into the mercurial pools which give rise to the name of the ‘little alchemist’:

As always keeping our eyes open for the animal inhabitants, the more sheltered areas produced an array of basking bugs – Squash Bug and Green, Hairy and Gorse Shieldbugs:

… and beetles, including an almost spotless Harlequin Ladybird, and Rosemary Beetles, here transferring their allegiance to sages:

As befits the season, love was in the air for pairs of Green Shieldbugs and the large, wing-marked crane-fly Tipula vittata:

A few butterflies were on the wing, including our first Green-veined White of the year:

And of course, with insects showing, their predators were out and about, with Zebra Spiders well camouflaged on lichen-covered walls, and a Heliophanus jumping-spider waiting with hi-viz palps raised, ready to leap upon a suitable morsel.

Anyone who loves photographing flowers will know the feeling: when a burgeoning Spring releases a cornucopia of blooms in every colour that the past winter of relative inactivity is brought greedily to an end with an irrepressible flurry of snapping…

The urgency of this need, for me at least, is so strong that it goes well beyond the ‘normal’ approach to flower photography. Of course, the standard portraits are not ignored….

… but the visceral impact of the massed ranks simply cannot be ignored…

Equally, to revert from the big picture to the minutiae of Nature reveals the ‘Art in the Detail’, all too easily overlooked and unheralded….

… while interesting lighting and a focus on parts other than the flowers can bring other artistic rewards:

Given the cold northerly wind on the day of our visit, insect life was not as abundant, or obvious, as we had hoped. But in the woodland garden, the tree trunks served as something of the wind-screen and the absence of expanded leaves allowed sunlight through, enough to encourage the basking and feeding of some bugs and beasties:

And we were very pleased to see our first Dark-edged Bee-fly and Box Bug of the year:

Last of all, a question: coincidence or design? Is this Cicadellid really actively seeking to pretend it is a leaf serration?

February can be the cruellest of months. Spring is on its way, but so often just out of reach, held at bay by gloom and cold. Not so this year: mild daytime temperatures, often cloudless skies, gentle southerly airflows, and barely a trace (yet…) of ‘normal’ winter.

Our monthly venture to Beth Chatto’s was on one of those wonderful days of ‘Spring before its time’. After a winter’s dormancy, Nature displayed flagrantly to our hungry eyes – never mind the flowers, everything looked fresh and enticing, whether set against an azure sky….

…. or covered in mercurial dewdrops….

….or bathed in dramatic shadows cast by the low sun, throwing the saw-toothed leaves of Melianthus into sharp relief….

…or igniting the shreds of Paperbark Maple, as flames licking their way up the trunk.

Of course the flowers delighted as well, carpets of Snowdrops, Crocuses and Aconites sweeping colour through the garden:

The spring flowers en masse sometimes overwhelm the senses, both sight and smell, but such has been the dearth of flowery photo opportunities since last year, each flower beckoned, almost straining to show off its wonderful inner landscapes:

Even the less showy flowers have much to reveal in close up – witness the yellow pompoms of Cornelian Cherry and the translucent jade bells of Spurge-laurel – and of course getting up close and personal for a photo also highlights their fugitive scent, often lost among the brash wafts from the likes of  Christmas Box.

All the spring flowers have one function, to attract passing pollinators – sometimes in short supply – to their nectar and pollen resources. Look closely at a Winter Aconite and the bounty becomes clear: yellow petal-like sepals surmounted by a ruff of green leaves, embracing the pollen-bearing anthers and crucially the cup-shaped petals, in this species modified into nectar-pits:

And today the investment in flower resources was paying off. Despite cool overnight temperatures, all sorts of insects were on the wing and raiding – hopefully also pollinating – the flowers: Queen bumblebees, Honeybees, solitary bees, hoverflies and other flies,  amongst others….

One hoverfly gave us the runaround in identification terms, looking like nothing we have seen before. Nor like anything in the books.  So it was the internet which came to our rescue, showing it to be the unusual dark form of the familiar Marmalade Hoverfly:

But best of all, if only for the gruesomely-minded, was spotted by Jude. Her insect-eyes,  under-employed over the winter, latched onto the form of a fly at the very top of a spindly sapling, about 2 metres from the ground. In close up, the horror revealed itself: the fly had been devoured by an entomopathogenic fungus, now erupting from its abdomen and liberally producing a halo of spores, each potentially a death sentence to a passing fly. But before the end, the fungus takes over the mind of its host, changing its behaviour so that it crawls to the highest point available, all the better to be able to disperse the deadly spores into the wind…..

The burnished fires of Autumn were rampant under crystalline skies as we strolled round Beth Chatto’s today:

Foliage and fruit – a colourful feast for the eyes as well as the hordes of berry-eating thrushes:

Usually a feature of the autumn, in common with most of the droughted south-east it seems, fungi were few and far-between:

And the remaining flowers: some expected, others more surprising hangers-on from the summer, but all valuable sources of nectar or pollen for late-season insects:

But amazing to see the number of insects on the wing, a nod to the wonderful summer past and a promise that the days will again be getting longer in just six weeks’ time. Hornets, Red Admirals and Common Darters are perhaps to be expected, at least until the first hard frosts, but Caddis Flies and Willow Emerald Damselflies? Strange times are afoot as the seasons disintegrate…: