So far, moths haven’t made it into any of my books, although I do think that this beauty ought to. He’s a Jersey Tiger Moth, and he’s apparently common along the South Coast but we spotted them here in Poole for the first time last year. Then back in April and May, we saw the magnificent caterpillars munching on my Sweet Williams. There were only four of them, and I believe in sharing, so we left them to it and I enjoyed watching them.
Now he is a moth (or possibly she. I don’t know how you tell and I don’t suppose it matters unless you’re another moth. That’s the kitchen windowsill, and isn’t he gorgeous?
He’s been feeding on the nectar from the Sweet William flowers, because I cut some back so they’d flower later and keep providing food for the insects. I’ve got solitary bee houses too, which are well occupied, which is good because they’ve stopped tunnelling into the brickwork and a well occupied ladybird house whose residents have done wonders for my roses as they munch all the greenfly they can eat. The hedgehogs who live under our shed (mum and 3 babies) do the same for the slugs and snails so are very welcome and we have a hedgehog corridor that runs all along both sides of our rear access lane because so many people enjoyed seeing them and wanted them to come and eat their slugs and snails.
Add to that the bats that live in an old brick built shed four houses down and the seagulls who nest on the chimney opposite and we watch each year from our bedroom window and the murmurations of starlings and the swallows who come to the bird table in the front garden because the cats rule the back garden and who needs a wildlife programme?
And here’s the thing. We live close to the middle of a town, have a tiny front garden and a not much bigger back one, and yet it’s possible to garden for wildlife and just accept that some of our soft fruit and salad veg will go to the creatures who are the underpinnings of the food chain. In return, they do amazing things for us. I’ve been watching dragonflies and tadpoles this summer in a wildlife pond made out of a large, shallow plant pot with no holes in the bottom and a solar fountain in it. It’s about eighteen inches across, and the only pond I’m aware of for ages, so who knows where the tadpoles came from? But come they did…
That’s not all I’ve been doing. I’m starting the preliminary research for the Esther and the Professor book for next year, that’ll be set in 1942. That’ll be out next summer, but there are short stories in the Christmas Anthology ‘By Special Request’ that’s out in November to tide you over till then. I got incredibly lucky because I found a new book about our area in wartime, and the journalist whose notes it was based on lived in the next road but two to us, and was a member of the Home Guard. A lot of what he wrote couldn’t be published in heavily censored newspapers at the time but he kept a diary which has been edited and put in context. And yay! I now know exactly what’s happening in the background and it’s more personal than ever, because it’ll culminate in a raid that my lovely elderly neighbour told me about. She was our previous neighbour and is, sadly, dead now, but she bequeathed me her collection of local history books and told me stories of living there when she was a child and seeing bombers go over the house and the night one dropped near to the hospital that’s now the maternity hospital where my children were born and helping with a bucket chain while the bombs fell.
I expect you can guess how fascinated I am, and how I’ve been out and about, book in hand, looking for landmarks that remain and at the new buildings that were built to replace the ones that were bombed. I’ve also been reading casualty lists and seeing them coming from roads I often walk along brought it home to me how much civilian death there was and left me looking at the Middle East in a new way.
With fair winds and a following tides, I’ll be doing the first draft of that in September. Till then, there are some special offers this week at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US. As always, there are anthologies if you can’t get these offers, and I’ll add to them as time allows because I know how many of you don’t get them.
So, here we go with the sales bit.
There are three books in the Windy Bay series - Endings and beginnings, Building a future and A Healing Time. Nice and gentle as you’d expect from a place where time goes more slowly and people are kind and there is always time for tea and cake. My favourite was Endings and Beginnings because I don’t see why all romance should be between young people but I enjoyed writing them all, and I can’t resist putting in a quick plug for ‘A Place to Call Home’ which is the first book in the next trilogy and will be out in September.
Then there are the second three books in the Lavender House series, which are A time to fight, Sunshine and Shadow and Love Always. These are set down on the Sandbanks peninsula where the rich people build and knock down houses the way you and I once built Lego Houses. But not all of them are rich and some need the help of a matchmaking ghost. My favourite of that trio is Love Always because it’s about the BOAC flying boats that were Britain’s only air link with the rest of the world during World War Two but have now been almost forgotten. The boat girls who piloted the launches went out under enemy fire and were as tough as any man. I wanted to know why the ghost was haunting Lavender House and I thought she deserved a happy ending of her very own after all that matchmaking.
I think we all deserve one of those, so have a great week and we’ll catch up on Sunday when the sun may have started shining again. If it hasn’t, I can tell you about my baking plans for autumn, because if the weather’s autumnal, it’s time to put them into practice!
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