Making a meadow, day 3

Where were the showers we expected in April? After a month of drought and with heavy rain forecast, a group of us spent May day preparing the cemetery meadow. Most of the time was devoted to digging up docks that would obliterate more welcome wildflowers given a chance. Although April’s cold dry weather had held…

Winter/Spring

It was definitely still winter on Three Barrows and Wacka Tor today, but in Didworthy it was spring. Water everywhere, but flowers coming up despite the snow, hail, sleet and high winds we had yesterday. It was good to see a few sunshine-yellow dandelions out as they are an important early source of nectar for…

Snow and spring

  There was snow in Sheffield last weekend but back in Devon it feels like spring, with celandines, saxifrage, ivy-leaved speedwell and new growth of English stonecrop in the walls.   Frogs have been busy in the pools by Ludbrook and there are bright green new leaves of lesser spearwort under the flowing water of the brook.

Leigh Lane and Lud brook

New oak and hazel leaves, holly and blackthorn flowers, and the last few catkins overhead in Leigh Lane. Under foot, bluebells, three speedwells, two violets, and three umbellifers. Yellow dandelions, lesser celandines, and creeping buttercups in Leigh Lane, and gorse and tormentil on the moor. Also in Leigh Lane, pink purslane, herb robert, and campions and white wood…

Along Bittaford Road

Spring has definitely arrived along the verge. Near the houses, there are bright blue forget-me-nots and carpets of yellow celandines and primroses. Ivy-leaved toadflax on the walls, and cornsalad. On the grassy verge, daisies, primroses, common mouse-ear, greater stitchwort, Alexanders, dog’s mercury, cow parsley, and a rather early greater burnet saxifrage.  Purple and white sweet violets and early dog…

Shopping

Off to Ivybridge via the moor. This has to be the best walk to the shops. Along Leigh Lane, shade-loving wood sorrel is just opening and there are new marsh violets unfolding in the bogs near the Lud brook. The sunshine brings out the vivid reds, greens and yellows of the moss. The mysterious hole, with some new scratches nearby….

Lizard

I spent an hour on the moor while it was sunny this morning and almost stumbled on this beautiful lizard. Other signs of spring are plenty of celandines, new leaves of pignut and bluebells coming up in Leigh Lane.

January

My plan this year is to catalogue flowers on the southern verge of Bittaford Road, between Bittaford and Ivybridge train station, while keeping an eye on what is flowering along Wrangaton Road between Moorhaven and Green Lane. In the garden, there was ice on the pond but there are some beautiful flowers out too, including climbing…

mid-May sunshine

Greater celandine has appeared this month, a relative of the Welsh poppy and not of lesser celandine. It is named after the Greek ‘chelidon’ or swallow, as it flowers when the swallows arrive. The bright orange sap is said to cure warts and for this reason, greater celandine was often planted around the walls and gateways of houses, where indeed it is still…