Something has eaten all the leaves off some young and newly planted Geranium maculatum, leaving only the stalks sticking up, having previously done the same thing to some white violets. I found a large green caterpillar on the violets, but haven't been able to detect the culprit on the geraniums. I feel this is a little hard, given how bird and toad friendly the garden is. Not a drop of insecticide or single slug pellet has gone on that bed in the dozen or more years since I dug it out, and I've been putting out sunflower seeds and bird cake made out of melted lard and porridge oats, as I was worried that in this drought there would be a shortage of worms and slugs. The least they can do in return is eat my caterpillars. I'm sure it doesn't hurt a mature plant in the least to lose a few leaves, but I'm not so sure about the effect of stripping all of them off a baby.
There are some who have elevated organic gardening to the status of a religion, who say that it is impossible to be a bit organic, any more than you can be a bit pregnant (snigger and air of moral superiority). I don't see it myself. If I don't spray the roses and leave the birds to do the job of picking off the aphids (which they do very well) that has to be better for wildlife than if I forget that The Silent Spring was ever written and blast everything in sight with insecticide. I don't see that its good effects are negated if I then use glyphosate on the emerging snouts of creeping thistle, or even spray the biggest weed rosettes in the top lawn with selective herbicide, while leaving the clover for the bees.
A couple of plants have sustained leaf damage that I don't grudge at all. A lime with orange twigs, that I'm aiming to train up into a lollypop (not having room for a pleached hedge) and a patch of epimedium have both had circular holes taken out of their leaves, which are the work of leafcutter bees. These are solitary bees, that use the section of leaf to line the nests in each of which they deposit a single egg, plus provisions of nectar and pollen to feed the larva when it hatches. I have seen pictures of them flying carrying the piece of leaf, which they roll up like a carpet and clasp with their legs beneath their body. They will nest in all sorts of crevices, including occasionally pots of greenhouse plants. This seems to me so fascinating that it is certainly worth losing some pieces of leaf. (The damage done by vine weevils looks quite different, as they make rectangular notches).
Addendum It is now raining lightly, not enough to do any real good, just enough to make it unpleasant to go on working outside. It has been spitting throughout the day, sufficient to prevent any progress with one of this year's outdoor projects, which is to paint the outside of the house (or whatever the verb is for applying wood stain to timber cladding. It isn't strictly paint, but there isn't a verb for to Sadolin). We waited a very long time for our local building company, who did some work for us before and made a good job of it, to give us a price for the external decoration, and when they finally did have time to come round and quote it was for an amount of money so eye-wateringly large that the Systems Administrator said that at that rate we'd buy some proper scaffolding and do it ourselves. Sadolin is not water-based and cannot be applied in even light rain. Proper rain is forecast, so fingers crossed.
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