Walk on the Wild Side

British Summer Time is here - the weather doesn’t realise and it’s been mostly dull and windy plus we’ve had a lot of rain; 35mm in the last week.

That sounds a bit moany considering we had a pleasant few hours on the plot on Sunday afternoon and lots more flowers have bloomed in the last week providing such welcome spots of colour. Those cowslips in the above photo are putting on a lovely show on the HAHA Wildlife plot and there are 'common' daisies popping up in the grass paths.

Plenty of pollen for emerging insects but I only saw one bumblebee. The grape hyacinths are appearing in various places where we thinned out the bulbs from our plot and planted them around the site. And we have lots in pots where other bulbs are also growing. I wonder if the succession planting will actually work for once..!

The blackthorn blossom has now opened in the hedge. Such a pretty little flower.

Along with 2 robins singing their tuneful ditty trying to drown out the church bells, there were several tiny birds flitting about in the hedge. It was difficult to see what they were but Jamie managed to get this shot - thanks Sue for the tip to use ‘photo burst’ on our camera. Lovely to see a tiny goldcrest!

In the path alongside the hedge we have a lot of violets growing - white ones, and they don’t smell so must be common dog violets. 

A little tint of colour on the petals to direct the insects in.

And here’s another common plant alongside the hedge which flowers at this time of year. Creeping Charlie or ground ivy. The flowers are tiny but bees love them. The leaves have a lovely minty scent and can, apparently, be used for various ailments and as a herbal tea (though I expect it tastes nasty like most herbal teas 😏). Apparently it has been used in cheese-making as an alternative to animal rennet!

It seems to be treated as an invasive pest, but perhaps that's for people who want grass lawns - I prefer to see a mix of plants personally.

Apart from scrambling around the ground taking macro shots of tiny flowers, I did get up-close (down-close) and personal to the writhing mass of tadpoles in the HAHA Wildlife plot - as you can see, they have their external gills. They do form quickly, these have grown in 12 days, although there are some which are still little dots or commas in their spawn bubbles. 

Including the ones in our little pond. The spawn sunk when I added it to our pond and the spawn is still only at comma stage from what I could see in the murky depths. Quite interesting that you can see where they're eating their way out of their bubbles.

We did actually do a little work on the allotment too - our broad beans have been weeded, but left under their protective covers. The chocolate spot on the leaves is annoying but hopefully won't spread too far into the plant. It's probably caused by being under the covers but that offers protection from pigeons and heavy rain/snow.

Some of the plants which were sown at the end of October have flowers on, but many didn't survive the really cold spell. The plants are better where we popped a bean into the empty spaces more recently (was it before Christmas? Can't remember!)

And finally, at last, some purple sprouting brocolli to harvest! Nearly 12 months on from sowing! Mmm, it is lovely though so worth the wait. This mostly wild blog post has the song provided by Lou Reed - do...do..doo...do..di.di...doo