Butterflies are my flight of fancy

“DO I dare to eat a peach?” J Alfred Prufrock, the sad anti-hero of TS Eliot’s eponymous love song asked himself in his old age. I recently dared to eat an Irish-grown peach in a Kinsale garden, and very fine and sweet it was, too, every bit as juicy as the peaches my brother grows in Spain.

It came from a tree grown by a retired veterinarian whose hobby – vocation, dedication, obsession – is his garden. In the glasshouse are peaches, apricots, cherries, figs, oranges, melons and grapes, to mention not all but most. Outdoors there are apples, pears, plums, quinces, kiwis, currants of many colours, goosegogs, raspberries, strawbs, and berries black, cran, logan, tay, mul, blue and justa. I’d never heard of, let alone seen or tasted, half these fruits before.

The veg garden has all the regulars and the exotics, like courgettes and chard, while the herb garden has a dozen aromatic plants to enhance any culinary concoction. There is a budding arboretum, with walnut, sweet chestnut, maple, ginko and more. All of this has been created around the home he bought just nine years ago.

One of the most exciting sights for me was a tortoiseshell butterfly, basking resplendent on a leaf. In spite of going for a stroll every day and observing all sorts of wild things in meadows and hedges, the only tortoiseshell I’d seen was the one in Frank O’Keefe’s garden. Next day, I saw a couple of thought-to-be tortoiseshells chasing one another. Like all the ‘aristocrat’ family, the red admirals, painted ladies and peacocks, they fly at a high rate of knots.

I assumed the gorgeous creature, with its newborn wings and brilliant colours, was a first-flyer of the seasonal hatch and soon there’d be tortoiseshells everywhere, like there have always been in Ireland in July. But not so far. I have seen only two more to date. Perhaps the hatch is late this year.

Some tortoiseshells will fly here from the continent in August, but even if the numbers are low we will be compensated by Painted Ladys, the caterpillars of which (hatched from eggs laid by the influx from Morocco we saw on June bank holiday weekend) are now fat and forming dark chrysalises suspended beneath the leaves of the thorny thistles on which they feed. They’ve been munching away for a month.

Those that have survived hungry horse’s teeth, insecticide spraying, and other hazards will shortly pupate and, in three week’s time, emerge transformed from spiky, black, creepy-crawly eating machines into glorious flying creatures with wings of orange, white, and black gracing our gardens, parks and hedges. By the wayside, I see a host of bramble flowers and ripening blackberries. This August, we should have blackberries and Painted Ladys galore.

Readers will know that different butterfly species fly in different months. But for a few, their lives are brief, just a few weeks, although tortoiseshells and peacocks, which hibernate in our outhouses and behind curtains, live for 11 months. They emerge from hibernation in March, lay a brood in May, and die soon afterwards. The eggs hatch in July and this generation lives to hibernate until the following year.

Speckled wood butterflies, common throughout June, are now no longer seen. They are replaced by Ringlets, a dark brown, fluttering butterfly, low-flying, with weak wings. Last week, meadow browns began to appear; these have a rust-red upper wing with a distinctive black spot. Meanwhile, red admirals, flying here from the Mediterranean, are “occasional”, as are small blues, heaths and fritillaries. “Cabbage” whites are, so far, not common; welcome news for gardeners.

Not all caterpillars are welcome. Maize crops are suffering an onslaught by a moth caterpillar that eats the roots.

Farmers are advised by Teagasc to spray the crop. The Government’s decision to stop REPs subsidies may put many farmers out of business. The exchequer saving will be equalled or surpassed by dole payments to farmers who cannot manage without REPs. The loss to the ecology and tourism will be incalculable, with no REPs money to plant nature-friendly crops or set aside scenic wild land and hedgerows.