Yesterday’s snow lingering on at the lower end of Coxley Valley.
Lingering Snow
Category: Meadow
Knapweed Seedheads
Seedheads of common knapweed, Centaurea nigra, from my patch of wildflower meadow at the end of the garden.
Hoverflies in the Herbage
Hemlock water-dropwort grows amongst curled dock and nettle alongside the car park at Newmillerdam. A holly blue butterfly rests on the hemlock while hoverflies visit the flowers of creeping buttercup, occasionally chasing each other around. A micro moth resting on a buttercup looks, at first glance, like a tiny fragment of plant debris.
High Batts
Sawfly, bee-fly and hoverfly, dame’s violet, orchid, crosswort, briar rose and goutweed, orange rust and King Alfred’s Cakes fungus, on a Wakefield Naturalists’ Society field meeting at High Batts nature reserve this morning.
High Batts isn’t far from Lightwater Valley, north of Ripon. Visiting this reserve adjacent to a working quarry is normally by arrangement only but next month they’re holding an open day.
Woodland Walk
The woodland walk at RHS Harlow Carr this afternoon.
Down in the Meadow
My small patch of plants for pollinators now looks a bit more like my idea of a wild flower meadow since we cut back the grasses and chicory and dug out their creeping rhizomes.
The chicory used to swamp everything else but now we’ve got creeping buttercup and dog daisy plus a few flowerheads of red clove, with teasel, foxglove and marjoram yet to come into flower. False oat and cocksfoot grass are so far the tallest plants but they’ll soon be overtaken by the teasels.
Bee Orchid, Date Palm
Bee orchid, date palm and the laburnum arch at Brodsworth Hall this morning.
Thanks to the English Heritage garden staff for pointing out the bee orchid which were growing on a south-facing grassy bank, left un-mown, alongside the formal beds and lawns.
The date palm grows in the shelter of the sunken gardens, at the sunnier end.
Wintersett in May
Sessile oak, dandelion, timothy grass, plantain, yellow flag, hawthorn blossom and seeding willow catkins at Wintersett Reservoir this morning.
Cowslip
We planted a single cowslip four or five years ago which bunched up into a clump, so we’ve into four plants, which are all doing well in the raised bed behind the pond.
The Buzzard on its Rounds
4.10 pm: A kestrel hover over the meadow and dives as if it’s about to make a kill but abandons the dive at tree-top height and flies off over the neighbour’s garden.
The buzzard was doing its rounds over back gardens and the meadow at breakfast-time this morning and it’s back again as the light fades, just thirty feet above me, as I sit at my desk by the skylight studio window.