caterpillars, parsley and poppies

On the lime trees in the road round the corner are long caterpillars who rest stretched out amongst the leaves like a brown stick. I have googled lime tree caterpillar and then found a couple of butterflies, then more googling to find a picture of the caterpillar, but no luck, so presumably my caterpillars don't just feed on lime trees.

I sowed some carrots in a trough with some parsley down the middle. The carrots germinated a little while a go, but parsley has just started showing too. Parsley is recognised as a slow germinator - it is supposed to go to the devil and back 7 times before it germinates.

There are poppies in full bloom on some roadsides and roundabouts.

herbs

I brought some pots of cutting herbs at Waitrose yesterday - basil, corriander and parsley. 

Gardening writers are usually very sniffy about buying these pots of herbs and planting them, but I have been reasonably successful.  I have some flat-leaved chives from some years ago that I have to weed to stop spreading too far, parsley which I plant fresh each year, basil which I get fresh each year, planting into a larger pot and keeping in the conservatory (they wouldn't survive the slugs for a night in the garden!), and I had a pot of mint outside last year which I thought had died at the end of the summer, but it is growing again now.

I am not sure whether corriander would thrive outside, so I will have that with the basil in a trough in conservatory.  If I see some more at the supermarket on Saturday, I might get a pot to plant out in the garden to see how it fares.