Midsummer

Here we are, halfway through the year, basking in the sunshine 

yet starting on the count down to Christmas!

For now, at least, the weather is perfect, and it's time to slow down a little and appreciate the moment. I'm finding time to laze around in the garden, admiring my un-cut lawn cum mini meadow, smelling the roses, letting the laundry blow gently in a breeze.

 Both garden and allotment are starting to be productive - peas, beans, potatoes, blackcurrants, and radishes from one; sugarsnap peas, rocket and land cress from the garden; strawberries and lettuce from both. It's that fun time when home-grown harvests are a delight, rather than the processing chore they'll become in a few weeks.

It's not quite all lazing about though. I walked up to the wood to pick elderflowers for fizz, and chopped garden mint for (perhaps obviously) mint sauce. 

The garden apples trees are in the middle of their 'June drop' when tiny fruit litters the ground allowing bigger better one to remain and grow on the tree. And I was delighted to spot this more unusual fruit - the first quince on my tree. Several years ago I was given some quinces, and saved the seeds, from which this tree grew - so it's truly homegrown fruit. 

On Midsummer itself we went out in the late afternoon to find this stunning field of poppies high on a Derbyshire hillside. Aren't they wonderful?

And I picked a bouquet of slightly-wild flowers from my garden - foxgloves, grasses from the lawn, feverfew, sage, and the first sweet pea. 

Good, quiet ways to mark the turning of the seasons.

 

Midsummer Flowers at Shardlow

 I'm not sure how six months has passed since Christmas, but here we are at (just after) the longest day - it feels like time has flown by. The actual longest day was wet, so this trip out was a couple of days later.

 Shardlow is one of those places that it's easy to drive through without really paying attention, even though its main road is now classified as a 'B' road and most traffic whizzes past on the A50. My previous explorations have been along the Trent and Mersey canal but I'd recently seen a post about poppies in nearby fields and wanted to track them down.

Our route started at the car park on Wilne Lane, and followed the canal back towards the main road, walking between wild flowers at the canal's edge on one side and gardens on the other. 

  

At the main road we turned right (west), over the canal, and followed the pavement past the village church, to the junction with Aston Lane where we took a footpath heading more or less north, signposted for Great Wilne. 

After a short distance threading its way behind houses, the path led to suddenly open countryside which felt miles away from the bustle of the village. The cows were curious about us - and what we were doing taking photos - but fortunately were in another field :)

Shardlow lies between the Trent and Derwent rivers and the countryside is very flat, with the path actually raised up on a bank rather like an east coast sea defence bank.

 Soon we came across the first sighting of poppies, along with ox eye daisies and cornflowers. It wasn't possible to get really close because we were standing on the raised bank with a ditch and fence between the path and field, but the flowers were stunning, particularly at the edge of the field where the three flowers grew in blue, red and white stripes.

At this point I thought we'd maybe seen all the poppies - after all it's easy to make a few look like lots on a social media post, but as we continued we found another field with flowers growing at its edges. I guess most of these were deliberately sown rather than actually 'wild' but they look lovely and are excellent for bees.

Mixed in with them were small blue-flowered plants which I think are flax.

We'd now definitely walked past all the poppies, but as the path continued towards Great Wilne it turned through a field where flax was being grown as a crop.

You can already see a haze of blue above green stems but in a week or so I think it will be amazing, so I'm hoping to return

The path was now mostly following the edge of fields with wild roses and blackberry bushes flowering in the hedges, and grasses and wild wildflowers alongside them. 

This section seemed very popular with butterflies - I spotted a couple of  tortoiseshells, cabbage whites, a brown butterfly which darted away but which I'd guess to have been a speckled wood, and a cinnabar moth. Not back for a short section of path. 

I'm always unduly excited to find a brook or ditch with actual water that needs crossing by a bridge - so was delighted to find we had to do just that. It's childish no doubt but life's about  enjoying the simple things.

Walking alongside the brook took us to the road at Great Wilne, which led back to the car. As with the previous walk at Shardlow there's one aspect that's not visible in photos - traffic noise on the A50. It's not loud at this distance but it's definitely there as a rumble in the background. Also this day there seemed to be a lot of air traffic out of Castle Donnington - most of them taking off and turning straight towards us on the last section. A lot of places in this area suffer from noise from the A50 and airport, and while they aren't major disruptions but it's as well to expect them.

 

30 Days Wild - week 3

It's been a busy week for wildlife in the garden, particularly round the bird bath with robins, pigeons, blackbirds and even a magpie dropping by. One day a baby robin sat  in the water while one of its parents flew back and forth with food for it! No more appearances from the squirrel though.

If you can separate wildlife into two categories of 'good' and 'bad', birds and even the squirrel fall in the former. In the other group are slugs (found nestled in the middle of one of my cabbages), and these sawfly caterpillars which I found eating away all the leaves on the solomon's seal. It's fortunate for the caterpillars that they've got a rather niche taste in food, and are reputed to not eat anything other than this one plant; it's finished flowering, and doesn't look attractive with its leaves stripped, but will recover, so I squirted some of the bugs away with a water spray, and left the rest to their dinner.  

One evening, after yet another wet day, I went out for a stroll around the nearby playing fields and found signs of autumn already on the way!

And on the solstice I went out to see the sun set. It wasn't remarkable but I listened to the birds singing their goodnight songs, and on the way home saw bats flitting about

Midsummer

The longest day started wet and unpleasant, short bursts of sun disrupted by heavy rain, but by midafternoon the sky had cleared leaving high clouds and a change to catch the solstice full 'strawberry' moon.


















Appropriately, the first strawberries have ripened this week, and from the allotment we have lettuce and peas. Apples are starting to swell on the trees and grapes in the greenhouse.

The flower beds have moved on from their Ikea blue and yellow (forget-me-nots and welsh poppies) of a fortnight ago to the pink and purples of foxgloves, flowering sage, lavender, hardy geraniums and even some pink-tinged love-in-a-mist, against the backdrop of the creamy-white climbing roses.

...and now while the weather stays dry and bright, for a couple of days at least, it's time to get out, pick elderflowers and make wine