Coming up roses ….

Well, it has been a little over two months since our last Post. In that time the garden and immediate countryside have been transformed. As we said back in early April, some warmth and plenty of rain had led to shrubs, plants and trees rapidly coming into flower and blossom - but it turns out that was just ‘first gear’, as since then a cocktail of quite cool nights, but rapidly warming mornings and then heavy rain and storms by mid-afternoon, often ending with sunshine again, has provided near-perfect growing conditions. 

During May, on many days by about 3.00pm, clouds started to gather in the blue sky and on no fewer than seventeen occasions a storm arrived, lasting anything between under an hour and four or five hours. So, the humidity has been high and this has meant that all vegetation has grown very rapidly. It has been interesting to see the effects of this - well, interesting up to a point …. not quite so interesting with grass needing to be cut twice a week and more - and anyone proposing a “no-cut May” should just try existing with the results of that! As Blog readers will know, we have a significant number of ‘wild areas’ of the garden and of course these have remained so and we have never seen so many insects existing here, in terms of numbers and varieties. Our ‘wildflower/weed’ areas have never been so abundant and alive in terms of its ‘creature population’:

With the proliferation of available insects, the bird population in the garden has been amazing - in the last few weeks it has included golden orioles, hoopoes, nightingales, blackbirds (not usually evident here), pheasants (a pair, being very bold and strutty), house martins and, particularly fascinating for us, a pair of Lesser Kestrels have nested in a small window opening high up on the south wall of the house:

With the rapid growing conditions, the grass crops in the surrounding fields have grown very swiftly, with the farmers cutting regularly to generate additional cropping. Of course, when the grass is cut we see the buzzards fly in, circling and diving to take the creatures that have been exposed by the now bare fields:

‘Our kestrels’ do not take kindly to the buzzards and, although they’re not in reality very close to their chosen nesting place, they fly up and harass the buzzards …. pretty plucky, given that a kestrel weighs around 6 ounces/165 grams and a buzzard weighs in at around 3 pounds/1.4 kg. But the flight of the kestrels is quite something to watch, with high-speed flight, and then braking and fluttering and instant change of direction.

In amongst all this, the butterflies are having quite a hard time. A number of familiar varieties have arrived quite early, attracted to the masses of flowers  -  but then they have got caught by the sudden and often very heavy rain and we have found large numbers of them on the garden pathways, soaked through and stranded. So, it has been a delicate operation to very gently lift them up and place them in a dry, sheltered place, if possible on that is warm again after the rain has stopped: 

- it is remarkable how often they recover and, within a few minutes, fly off again.

​So, having gone on a lot about all the flowers I can’t resist a bit of an ‘online flower show’ …. here’s a bit of a walk around the garden:

Right, that is probably quite enough! But we are very struck this early Summer by the sheer abundance of colour, patterns and vignettes as we walk around.
Once again, we have focussed in this Post on our garden here and the immediate countryside. We have had some visitors staying during the last couple of months and they seem to have enjoyed the peace and tranquility. They have also enjoyed the broader countryside and kayaking trips down the river Tarn at a time of year when the river has some movement and one can drift down, away from any roads, and with the water there is still the freshness of a Spring day. Appreciation of and contact with the natural world is very important at the moment - my goodness, an antidote is required to the world that is portrayed to us at the moment.

So, as ever, we wish you an enjoyable and peaceful late Spring and Summer. And as I have been writing this I have to report that, having assessed the increased humidity and rather tropical conditions, Graycie the Cat has decided to become a tiger: