After the dark short days of November, the wet and windy days of December and the long dreary month of January I look forward to signs of spring. Luckily late winter flowers in February of snowdrops, winter aconites, crocuses, early dwarf irises and hellebores help revive the spirit and fill the gap until the real…
Tag: spring
Six on Saturday | Middle-March
The month of March is marching on with only a couple of days until we reach the vernal equinox when daylight hours equal the hours of darkness. This is when spring truly starts for me. I was going to do a post purely about the yellow flowers appearing in my garden this week, but could…
Six on Saturday | The Big Chill
Forget the start of Spring, winter returned with a vengeance this week to many parts of the UK and northern Europe. Fortunately in the south-west it was rain and not snow. Still too cold and wet to do anything much in the garden, but the only thing I need to do is go round and…
Six on Saturday | Spring Forward
Although the first of March is considered to be the beginning of spring in meteorological terms I tend to stick with the astronomical terms – the Vernal equinox falls on Monday March 20th this year. But there is no doubt that life in the garden is beginning to emerge with the longer hours of daylight….
March 1st
1st March is not only St David’s Day – the patron saint of Wales – but also the first day of spring according to the meteorological calendar in the northern hemisphere. To celebrate both here are some of the earliest daffodils from my garden. (The daffodil is the national flower of Wales). The daffodil symbolises rebirth…
festival of spring #10
A flower that is quite common around Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly is the Gladiolus communis subsp. Byzantium better known as ‘Whistling Jack’ or the ‘Sword lily’. It is a relic of the Scilly bulb fields and is extensively naturalised where there is little frost. It flowers from May to July. You can buy bulbs for…
Six on Saturday | In the Shade
Long-standing readers of this blog will know by now that I don’t have a proper front garden to my property. We are in a courtyard shared with four other neighbours and the only outside space is a granite ledge and steps to the front door. To make matters worse it is north-facing so receives no…
festival of spring #9
Introduced into gardens before the 1600s, this plant from the Mediterranean soon escaped and became naturalised in the wild. Despite its non-native status, it is a good source of nectar from May to October for bees, butterflies and moths like the Hummingbird Hawk-moth. This is Centranthus ruber var. coccineus. Often known as the red valerian,…
Six on Saturday | What heat wave?
Whilst the rest of the UK – well the south east anyway – reached the highest temperature of the year so far here in the far west of the south-west it has been a challenging week at best. Torrential rain, wind, muggy mid-teen temperatures and some sunshine. At least it meant I could get my…
festival of spring #8
May in England means one thing above all else. Frothy white country lanes. Suddenly they erupt with the white umbelifers of cow parsley / Anthriscus sylvestris. The umbrella-like clusters of white flowers are a familiar sight along the lanes of Cornwall and one of the prettiest is where I live, on the way to Wheal…
Cornwall in Colours 