Tag: Festival Garden

July 15th – This journal illustrates many things, but mostly, it illustrates my ignorance. 

Three weeks hence I stopped to admire this horse chestnut tree in Festival Gardens, Lichfield, and noted how fine it was looking, laden with young fruit, and that it was showing hardly any leaf miner activity.

It is now. The leaves have been absolutely infested with it.

The leaf miner is a pain – it can cause early leaf fall and there’s speculation that this tiny moth larvae can cause poor fruit development, but otherwise, this infestation doesn’t affect the overall health of the tree. It just makes the poor thing look terribly diseased.

Next time, I’ll keep my mouth shut. Can’t help feeling I cursed my poor arboreal brother…

October 4th – I was in Lichfield for a work meeting, then in the afternoon, stopped awhile to do some shopping. What started out dry but dull ended up rather wet – but the sun soon came out again. It was a day of contrasts, really – from shoppers scurrying from the downpour, to the earlier peace of Festival Gardens and the pretty little oriental bridge. Also in the gardens, conkers lay thick on the ground, the sign of this year’s excellent harvest. In the City centre, a hilarious animatronic puppet performed for shoppers, controlled by radio remote.

But best of all, I loved the way the raindrops on those oranges made them look fresh and appetising.