While parts of our school are playing reluctant host to foraging ants the Nature Garden continues to turn up all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures.

Just the other day a new species of butterfly was seen (new to us anyway) - a large skipper. It was too quick to get a picture that time, but the photo here shows what to look out for.

Meanwhile, the children continue to find interesting minibeasts, a couple of which are shown here. The groovy one with the long antennae is a bush cricket and the little round one looking like a strange-coloured ladybird is a leaf beetle of some description. If you can help to name them more accurately please let the office know through an email.

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Is it a wasp? Is it a fly? Is it a beetle? No, it's a wasp beetle! click the photo to see a larger one.

Katie, Isabelle and Mary-Jo in Year 6 found the little critter in the payground and brought it into school, where it obligingly posed on a window sill.

We looked it up and found out it is a kind of beetle that has evolved to look like a wasp. The 'don't mess with me' look is certainly going to give it some survival advantages, one would think - makes you wonder why all insects don't look like wasps!

Well, you missed it. At Saturday's Nature Garden work party we had a huge bonfire and children got to throw stuff on! Never mind, I'm sure your X-Box session was equally exciting.

While attendance was fairly low, we actually got a huge amount done. After a punishing winter much of the most urgent work was tidying up and trimming back old growth, and searching to see what had survived the ice and snow. Didn't winter drag on this year?

It was a beautiful autumn afternoon as many parents and children came out to enjoy a breath of fresh air in the school nature garden, as part of the annual Family Learning Day at St John's. The garden is so sheltered that you could have been forgiven for thinking that it was August!

You will soon be able to read a full report on the day from Liz Wright; meanwhile, here is a short run down of what we got up to in the garden.

It's high summer and the Nature Garden is buzzing with life. The rainy weather since the end of the summer term has kept things looking fresh. Usually by now the pond is in need of a top-up from the hosepipe, but not at the moment.