Our old trusty printer that we’ve used for years for printing seed envelopes, and everything else, has finally given up.
No problem we thought, we’ll just switch to using our newer one, (it’s about 6 years old as opposed to 20 years), and is an "improved, updated" model.
If only life was that simple.
This printer will not print onto our Kraft paper brown seed packets.
It thinks it's altogether too refined for that so it simply chews them up and mostly doesn’t spit them out.
To be fair, the brown seed packets have always been a bit smelly but I didn’t expect the printer to notice.
Our seed packets will now be white, (less smelly, still as recyclable), which this printer finds, (mostly), acceptable.
We have a guest for the winter, meet Pedro.
He, (or could be she), is a caterpillar of a Scarce Bordered Straw moth (Helicoverpa Armigera).
I cut into an iceberg lettuce and found a nasty mess inside, in the middle of which was Pedro.
He survived his home being harvested, wrapped in cellophane, transported from Spain to the UK, delivered to a supermarket, chucked into a trolley, then a cool box in a van and delivered to us where he had a very close shave with a kitchen knife.
Scarce Bordered Straw Moths are visitors to the UK, (under their own steam as well as by lorry), so after all the trauma he's survived, we’re going to try and keep Pedro alive with a view to releasing him next spring or summer.
At the moment he's in a tub with fresh lettuce daily and some soil should he wish to pupate.
I did offer him some lovely home grown lettuce from the garden but it seems only iceberg will do, perhaps it smells of home to him.
I'd like to be able to tell you what we've been up to in the garden but we've had rain for weeks and weeks which has stopped play at the moment.
The cosmos are still blooming albeit in a horizontal way, (gales as well as rain), and we're still getting the odd sweet pea flower.
I wanted to gather the sweet pea seeds but it's so wet that some are rotting on the stem. I found a couple of pods that were ready but when I checked them the seeds have already started to sprout so I've planted them in a pot and we'll see how they do.
As someone who always forgets to sow the sweet peas in autumn, this could turn out to be a bonus.
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