This is the time when the leaves of your gooseberry bushes are shredded into doilies by the tiny caterpillars of the gooseberry sawfly, which rear up into a fearsome S-shape as you approach. They're easy enough to kill by spraying with a contact insecticide, but consider this. You eat the fruit, not the leaves. The loss of foliage reduces the vigour of the shoots and makes the fruit easier to locate. The creatures don't harm the fruit and only attack gooseberry bushes. Should we just live and let live? You decide.
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From California to Cornwall: How surfing became a cornerstone of Cornish cultureA new exhibition at Cornwall's National Maritime Museum celebrates a century of surf culture and reveals how the country became a global leader in surf innovation and conservation.
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18 magnificent homes for sale from £550k to £20 million, as seen in Country LifeFrom a charming thatched cottage to a 300-acre estate with its own vineyard, here's our pick of places to come to the market via Country Life of late.
