Garden Clearing

March has only one week left.  Despite the cold air, the spring has been marching all over around here.  The spring equinox was on the 20th March; the day is longer than the night.  The dynamism of plants are rapidly activated in the last couple of days, which means our garden need to be cleared for the coming seasons.  I'm not a very keen gardener, I'm afraid.  During the last autumn and the winter the garden had been just abandoned as usual.  Every weekend now I have to get rid of dead plants and weed so that I can sow seeds and replant seedlings.

Some weeds have survived over the winter and some have overgrown so quickly.  Grass invaded onto the flowerbed and vegetable patch....  My youngest son helped me to extend the flowerbed to plant my lavender seedlings I planted in planters last year.  A patch of the grass was removed and the mixed soil with sand and compost was put in the extended area.  My son transferred my lavender into the patch.  We'll see how they grow.

The hazel bushes have a lot of female flowers this year.  Hopefully we have a good crop of nuts.  But there are not only us who are waiting for the nuts.  Squirrels, magpies, black birds etc.

The green leaves of rhubarb have been growing and the stems are becoming vibrant red.  Though we have to wait for picking them for baking until they grow enough.

Early dog violet and green alkanet are normally considered as weed.  Early dog violet wasn't in our front garden when we moved into the house.  They spread every year and now occupy and cover the flowerbed in the front garden.  It's very hard to get rid of them.  The roots are very hardy and the seeds spread everywhere, even at the tiny gaps between stones.  I gave up to get rid of them.  Looking at the small pretty flower, you can't just weed out them.  Besides, the petal of violet is edible and a kind of herb.  I can use them for petal jelly, tea , garnish for salad and cake etc.  The green alkanet is our new comer; this plant is sturdy as well.  Though, it is a borage family and I like borage.  (I have borage in our back garden every year to enjoy the beautiful blue flower for eyes and mouths.)  Which is why our garden keeps a lot of weeds all round the year???

 early dog-violet

green alkanet

Foggy Days

It's been dry, no rain.  But it had been foggy for a couple of days this week.  Everything outside had been sunk in the milky cold atmosphere.  Animals, especially birds and squirrels,  were interestingly silent as if they had put a mute on them.  Fog appears in this area not very often.  They must be awake somewhere in the thick fog, and be waiting until they can see that they are safe to move.

I was walking at a sea shore.  It was low tide.  I couldn't even hear the noise of the sea waves.  A man with a dog appeared vaguely from the milky vail on the sandy beach.  I walked to another pebble beach.  Tiny reddish leaves between pebbles caught my eye.  Perhaps common storksbill?  They probably survived the mild winter there, safely protected by the pebbles.

I walked on a lakeside park on the same day, too.  There, animals were silent.  Even though I saw a lot of birds like swans and seagulls, they were silently floating on the lake.  It was like being in a huge fridge.  The air is misty and cold.  The usual places looked now mysterious.  The mute landscape is enigmatic.

No wind, but I could see the tiny bits of moisture drifting in the air.  The moisture sometimes stops over the surface of plants while drifting.  The sun must have been further above the thick fog, and been shining as ever.

Finding Spring!

After the horrendous stormy wet winter, the spring has come very quickly to us in the south Wales.  The clear blue sky tempted me to go out for a walk when I woke up.

Honey bees were busy with collecting nectar from the early cherry blossoms on our front garden.  As the vegetation is activated, the animals get active, too.

We went for a walk to the woodland near by our town at noon.  The sun was shining gently yet we wore a thin jacket, just in case.  In the shade it can be still chilly.

At the beginning we saw the scars of the wet stormy winter.  The ground has been becoming firmer but still muddy.  On a footpath of the woodland, there were deep cracks on the ground resulted by the excessive rain fall.  We then noticed the path was actually closed due to the cracks when having passing over the end of the path.  There was no sign at the beginning of the path (for us not for other people from the other side, perhaps).  It was too late.  We went through safely anyway.

Various plants were now showing their beautiful flowers; primrose, lesser calandine, daffodil, wild anemone, etc.

When we were walking toward to the beech woodland, the subtle smell drifted.  Wild garlic!  As I expected, the young wild garlic leaves were sprouting everywhere on the ground.  We picked some of them, young soft leaves, for our today's supper.  (We made the wild garlic dip sauce.)  An elderly gentleman with two sticks (presumably Nordic Walking?) said to us with a wide smile as passing by the woodland footpath, 'Are you going to have a fresh wild garlic salad tonight?'  'Yes, maybe' (I wasn't bothered to object his kind suggestion.)  Maybe it tastes nice, mix together with other baby leaves, splash balsamic vinegar and olive oil....

People with children and/or dogs were walking leisurely in the warm spring sunlight.  Children and dog were enjoying running around in the woodland.

In the woodland curiously vivid red fungi (scarlet elf cup) were growing here and there like fallen red rose petal.  I don't know if they are edible and taste, but saw some fungi eaten by someone (maybe snail?).  I'm not keen on foraging fungi, better to enjoy the humorous shapes and colours.

Toward the end of the walk, we went out of a field where a kind of pussy willow bushes (goat willow?) with furry catkins were.

Blackbirds, robins, probably sparrows and other small birds were chirping somewhere we couldn't see, to find their partners, or maybe just enjoying the warm dry sunny day.