Unexpected guests

A common theme in magazine articles throughout the run-up to Christmas is what to do about ‘unexpected guests’: what to cook for them, and what to buy as presents, should any of these inconsiderate beings descend on you over the festive season in need of food and demanding gifts.  I can’t say that such ‘unexpected guests’ have ever arrived on my doorstep at this time of year (and they might get short shrift if they did), so I pay little attention to this advice, and certainly don’t buy things on the off-chance that they might appear.  But this Christmas we’ve had a few unexpected visitors in the house.  None of them has required feeding, nor would any of them have thanked me for a pair of gift-wrapped socks, in fact they have needed very little if anything from me.  All are insects, and much less troublesome than the journalists’ (probably imaginary) human guests.

I was sitting in front of a cosy log fire in the sitting room one evening this week when something suddenly started fluttering around.  It was a peacock butterfly, seemingly a little bemused by its surroundings.  Peacocks hibernate in winter, normally in crevices in places like sheds, and I don’t know how this one got into the house.  Its chances of making it through to spring indoors wasn’t great, so I scooped it up and put it out into the front porch, which is enclosed but unheated and has plenty of suitable hibernating places; I hope it survives there.

Shield-bug (at the base of the flower)

Our current orchid (phalaenopsis), which has flowered spectacularly this year, has one last bloom on it (another spur is showing a good display of buds, still to come).  This final flower is fading now and will soon drop off.  The other day, I bent to examine it more closely (to see if it was time to pull it off) and found a shield-bug sitting there.  Like the butterfly, it had probably been lured from its wintering quarters by the heat of the room.  It had disappeared by the next day, I hope back into its hibernating place.

We had neighbours in for drinks on Christmas Eve, which necessitated a move from the cosy sitting room into the slightly more spacious lounge, and for the first time this winter the fire had to be lit in that room.  When D started preparing it he found in the chimney a papery sphere, a little larger than a golf ball; we assume it is, or has been, a wasp nest, because two wasps also appeared at the same time.  One wasp escaped outside, while the other is still hanging around the room and has currently taken up residence above the window-frame, where I hope it will stay.  The nest is quite a work of art; perhaps it’s the wasps’ Christmas present to us!

A Christmas present?