English (or rather Welsh?) Bluebells Blooming

Now Bluebells are blooming here and there in the UK.  Here, in the South Wales, in a small woodland near by our house, the bluebells have just started blooming.  English Bluebells, well, I have to correct to call them, especially the ones growing native here in Wales, 'Welsh Bluebells'.  A friendly gentleman with a friendly dog told about this to my friend and me on a footpath in one of the woodlands about a year ago.  And, I ran into him this week again, with his dog on a different footpath.  'We might have met around here before?'

I walked in the woodland with a hill after having said 'See you again soon!' when he went along outside the woodland.  On the hill top and on the slope they have just started blooming in the beech wood.  What I was pleased was that there were the white ones exactly the same place I found the last spring!  I would try to find odd ones, white milk vetches (Japanese: Genge), which have usually pink petals, four-leaf clovers and such as a young child.

In fact, the pretty white flowers of wood anemones started blooming before the bluebells in the early spring.  Unlike their fragile appearance they are actually strong.  They are thriving in the whole woodland.  I thought of early dog violet in our front garden, which scattered everywhere in a few years and hard to get rid of...  Nevertheless, I can't help liking both of them.

Outside the woodland (or, correctly between woodlands) the fields were freshly ploughed, ready for seeding, maybe wheat or barley, maybe maize; I'll see in the summer what will be.  It is hard to recognise in the picture, but a tractor was resting at the corner of a field.  A farmer might have been having his/her lunch in it right now, or went home for lunch.  It will be the busiest season for them.

Paper Cut: Early Spring Woodland

It's not early spring more, almost the early summer is coming.  But here is a scent of the early spring.

The woodland protected the plants from the harsh weather in the last winter, though, it was mild and wet.  The flowers were blooming here and there on the sunny spots around the woodland.  The wild garlic were showing their young soft leaves from the ground with the subtle but distinctive scent in the beech woodland.  Animals were enjoying the beginning of the lively season.

Early Spring Woodland 2014

(A3, from original paper cut, processed with GIMP)

Flourishing Spring in April!

After the foggy days the summer time began on the last Sunday.  We feel the evenings are brighter and longer.  The buds are growing everyday which make the trees greener, and spring flowers are splendid  everywhere.  I enjoy walking in my town, watching spring flowers like vibrant yellow forsythia, smelling the scent of magnolia.

The weather hasn't been very good, but I took a chance for a walk yesterday in the early evening as the blue sky emerged between thick grey the late afternoon.  It was a sunny pleasant evening.  There were some people walking leisurely without thick coat, who had the same idea like me in the meadow.  Birds, probably black birds, robins, blue tits and possibly skylarks, were chirping somewhere I couldn't see.  Other than that, it was a calm pleasant evening.

Blackthorn blossoms

The white flowers of blackthorn (sloe is better known) were full in bloom now.  I feel the spring has come when seeing them in fields.

Alexanders

The young leaves of carrot families are thriving vigorously.  Their fresh green colour brightens the smokey colour of the ground.  I always wanted to know one of them; the plants, above, which looks like celery, is Alexanders (smyrnium olusatrum).  The shiny light green stems attracted me to pick, but I resisted my temptation. (It is edible and I am a keen forager.)

Hazel

Hazel's green buds are growing and I could see their fine pleated young leaves stretching.  In a week their branches must be covered with pretty bright green pleated leaves.

In the end of my evening walk, around half past six, I reached at a farm.  Horses were grazing in the field in the evening sun, next to the farm.  Tranquil warm evening in the beginning of April.

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.

Still Very Wet, Yet Spring Approaching

This January was one of the wettest in the past 100 years; I have read such articles in the various mass medias.  Every day someone is reporting about the bad weather, disasters such as flooding, high tide and storm...

Now it is in the second half of February, and the rain fall has been still going on.  I caught a few sunny hours last week for a walk last week.

The buds of English Oak on the field were caught by my eyes.  The red bronzy buds in the blue sky pleased me.

But, as I walked to the edge of a woodland, there were streams everywhere, from higher to lower level.  The footpath, pictured above, became a stream, in which the clear water was streaming and it would be wonderful if it had been a real stream.  But it was to be a footpath. Wearing a pair of sturdy wellies was reasonable.

I walked in an oak and beech rich woodland.  There I walked a lot, and yet didn't notice the oak trees were actually downy oak until I saw the fallen leaves on the footpath.  I sadly witnessed several big fallen trees there.  Presumably they could not keep their trunks against the gust of wind and could not keep their roots in the loose ground wetted by the enormous rain fall.

At the edge of the woodland there is a long row of beech trees.  In the summer it is like a green alley.  In the early summer there transforms into a fairytale-like scene with the white flower of wild garlic.  I walked into the beech land.

There!  The shiny young wild garlic leaves were sprouting out from the ground between the fallen beech leaves and twigs.

On a beech stump these fungi were thriving in the winter.

I saw bunch of snowdrop on the sunny slope of a farmhouse at the end of the beech alley.

At a side of the footpath, protected from wind and cold, I found tiny cream white primrose. 

This winter has been wet but mild, which wake the plants up much earlier than usual, I suppose.  Today the temperature has gone up over 10 Celsius (actually, thermometer showed 12 Celsius!).  The plants cannot keep their dormancy (I didn't know this word; the slow metabolism) in the warm winter and the early visit of the spring!