All goes on under the surface of ponds

I was chatting recently with a friend in the village about the beautiful dragonflies and damselflies we had seen in our summer gardens and in the countryside nearby. These amazing insects come in a variety of vivid colours and I’m always thrilled to see them near my garden pond. Dragonflies and damselflies are closely related, both have two pairs of wings, but the dragonfly has a bulkier, shorter body and the damselfly is slenderer with a very thin body. They are both highly efficient predators, catching hundreds of smaller insects. I love having them in my garden, and feel especially privileged when I see them laying their eggs into my pond. My friend told me that he had just been pond dipping for the first time with his three-year-old granddaughter. I love to think of her wonder of that hidden underwater world and it made me realise that this was something I hadn’t done for some time. Summer evenings when my boys were younger were often spent with a net, carefully sweeping it through the weed and seeing what we had caught. We would then excitedly pore over our haul of tiny tadpoles and minibeasts in a plastic box of pond water before returning them carefully back to the pond. A quick dip with my net this June brought several dragonfly larvae, known as ‘nymphs’, up wriggling. These nymphs can be in the pond for as much as five years and, like the adults, are efficient predators, though they are also an important food source for the garden frogs and newts. Taking a close look at the everyday but dramatic underwater world of the pond is a great way of getting children engaging in nature. n dorsetwildlife trust.org.uk/ actions/howcreate-mini-pond

I used to cause great excitement at my boys’ first school when, as a volunteer, I took small groups of children to see what they could find in the pond at the ‘Butterfly Bus Stop’ – their school nature area.

After running several sessions over three summers, I managed to send only two children back to class with wet shoes and socks! But hopefully it inspired some of them to think differently about what goes on under the water. Of course, a pond isn’t right for every garden and we didn’t build ours until we felt our children were old enough to be safe around it, but even a very small garden can have a mini-pond. Dorset Wildlife Trust shows you how even an old washing up bowl can attract wildlife, it’s just very important to make sure wildlife has a way out.

Cerne Giant captured on a mobile phone camera

… a vast ‘object’, in which the stars appear as densely packed as grains of sand on a beach … Wow!

Aim for a moonless night over the coming months; a pair of binoculars will help. At one of our recent gatherings in Cerne Abbas, myself and a few others were treated to the awe-inspiring sight of the Milky Way (pictured) rising over

Giant Hill, with more and more detail coming into view the higher it got… the accompanying photo, taken with my phone, gives just a hint of what could be seen.

The moon – a recent post on the astronomy forum Stargazers Lounge prompted me to take a closer look at our nearest celestial neighbour, the moon.

The topic focused on something called ‘the stars of Aristillus’, a group of mountain peaks in the centre of the named crater. The tips are only illuminated on one night of the month, and appear as bright pinpoints of light … This is just one of the many ephemera that make lunar exploration so fascinating. n My latest book, WOW! List - 50 Stunning Deep Space Objects for Amateur Stargazers, is out now.

KIM BERLIN – A newcomer to the Rock

It’s scruffy, still rather weedy, and I love it.

It is, of course, my allotment, 1,170 square feet of democratically allocated space, rented to me by Portland Town Council for the bargain price of less than £25 per year.

I first took it on in 2018, before the pandemic hit us, but being able to go there during lockdown was a blessing I shall never forget. I have been lucky with this plot. Although it was a bit weedy when I took it on it wasn’t as bad as some and the soil is deep and fertile, so although there’s constant competition with bindweed, couch grass and groundsel, I still manage to keep it productive: potatoes, onions, garlic the size you’d expect to find in a Provençal market (top tip: Solent Wight does very well in Dorset) and beans dominate my harvests, interspersed with salads, roots and brassicas. And there’s