Saturday 22 May 2021

My meadow

At this time of year the notices go up that long grass on roadsides must be cut  before it becomes a fire risk.  Not only do people clear the verges they cut under their olives too.  From early morning, I’m talking around 6 am, till lunch time we hear strimmers, its the signal summer is coming.  

I’ve told you before Mr FF likes country music and the more stupid the lyrics the better.  He keeps playing and singing along to In the Field of Opportunity its Ploughing Time Again, it drives me mad. Now he’s changed ploughing time to strimming time, it’s no improvement.

There are so many wild flowers in the orchard,  I want them to seed before we mow them down so once again MrFF has cut paths through the long grass, we and the cats can get around easily, no wild flowers have been harmed.  
Recently a friend directed me to a free plant identification app PlantNet which I downloaded.  It’s easy to use and covers Europe so I’ve checked out quite a lot of things I was never sure about including wild flowers, or as the app calls them weeds.  

These are gladiolus italicus, field gladioli, for me much nicer than the cultivated ones.  There are about a dozen in the orchard, I’d like more, hundreds more.  There are tiny sweet-peas, herbs, grasses, so many varieties I have yet to identify from alpines to big daisies.  I’ve been making a wild garden where we used to burn our cuttings, moving a few things from the borders and throwing down seeds but I might as well let nature take over, I could never reproduce this colourful display that has established all on its own.  




5 comments:

  1. Interesting site that Jenny - must try it - thanks for letting me know.

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  2. A lovely piece of wilderness - too bad it has to go. But I understand the need to clear possible fire hazard areas.

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  3. I love the wild flowers too. When I went up to a plâteau near here called Cenise last year the wild flowers were just stunning! Oh, and I also downloaded an app to check what they were - Plantsnap I think.

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  4. It looks beautiful, my lawn is turning into a meadow too as I've not been able to find anyone to cut it. Great for the wildlife though and Flo likes to hide in it and then pounce on next door's unsuspecting cat!

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  5. Wildflowers are flowers too, my mum used to say, when everyone else called them weeds. They are given more respect these days I think but wildfires respect nothing in their path so it's a reasonable sacrifice.

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