Failure and success – that’s stargazing!

On 24th I took advantage of another dark sky and the prospect of a quiet day at work to stay up late. I had very mixed success.

Butterflies and parasitic wasps

Remember those Large White butterfly eggs on my Nasturtiums (see here)? Well here is what happened….

Two under-rated sights

On Friday night the forecast for a clear night looked promising, so I had the scope out at 9.30pm with a totally clear and darkening sky.

Jupiter king of the sky

You can’t miss Jupiter at the moment; low in the South-East, it’s by far the brightest thing out there. Last year I didn’t have a scope, so was limited to spotting the four moons with binoculars, still a fine activity, and pretty testing. So I was all primed last week to view the king of the planets through a telescope for the first time. 

Postcards from Hungary (3): Balatonkenese

My wife’s cousin and his family (!!) own a summer house in the town of Balatonkenese. This is on the northern tip of Lake Balaton, Hungary’s Costa Del Sol, and most of the town is holiday villas. The garden of this summer house is heaven for me.

Postcards from Hungary (2): Szeged

Szeged is a decent sized and pretty town in the far south on the river Tisza. Being in a major river plain it is surrounded by lakes and ponds and sandy soil.

Postcards from Hungary (1): Budapest

One of the many advantages of being married to a Hungarian is making frequent trips to Hungary. We’ve just come back from one of those, and in between visiting extremely extended family and finding enough open-air swimming pools to keep the kids happy, I usually manage a bit of wildlife-time.