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Here are pink piggy and chicky cupcakes I made for Sylvia’s nursery fireworks cake sale tomorrow. Yes I’m showing them off because they took hours and I am proud of them! Handily I managed to use up some of the icing from S’s birthday cake. And marshmallows that have been lurking in cupboard for … ever! pic#2 | pic#3 | pic#4

Sylvia is quite possibly the only combined doctor/ballerina in the country. Her specialism is ‘getting babies out’ involving some rather rudimentary surgery using a wooden spatula and pair of tweezers.

The three of us set out for Kew Gardens today, a short walk up to Caledonian Rd station then round the North London Line to Kew. It was a classic autumnal day, damp but bright, bit chilly but warm when the sun came out. The colours were good, chestnuts aplenty (I brought a pocketful home) and Sylvia had fun on the treetop walkway and the kids educational play area climbers & creepers where you can slide into a pitcher plant, climb inside a flower and watch bees in an observation hive.

I love the temperate house, the tree ferns are so photogenic, especially when viewed from above. When I worked at the Jodrell Lab as a sandwich student I used to come over here in my lunch hour.

Full photo set:

view sets on flickr

The other day Sylvia found a bug on the window, we picked it up and had a good look. She was fascinated by it. It was a big brute, bigger than any bug (Heteroptera) I’ve seen in UK, the usual being the green shield bugs. Anyway, we took a few pics and thought no more of it until just now when I went online to try and identify it. Here it is:

I found it online by looking through the images on www.britishbugs.org.uk, and though I couldn’t find it in the UK lists I noticed a special news item on their front page. Apparently it is North American species (Leptoglossus occidentalis aka the western conifer seed bug), introduced to Europe in 1999 and now appearing in the UK since last year. Sightings are to be reported to DEFRA!

More pics on flickr.

I just worked out how to get my blog posts automatically feeding my facebook account … easy with this plugin for wp.