Watching a garden or a meadow come to life is wonderful. At the beginning of the year it is seems impossible that those small clumps of newly emerging plants will grow to fill all that space. I usually fall into the trap of planting new things to fill in the gaps, only to have to move them a few months later as they are squeezed out by the established plants. Cat mint, for instance, especially Six Hills Giant, starts from nothing in the spring and by June is a foot high mass flowered fronds.
Every morning before work, if I have time, I stand at the edge of the meadow and look to see what has grown. Sometimes, you have to look for a long time before you really see what is happening. Most exciting is that the yellow rattle is well established. It is a short spike of a plant studded with little yellow flowers, and it has colonised the rotavated part. This should help the flowers to continue to spread year on year. Then in the middle is a whole clump of brilliant red field poppies and nearby some oriental poppies in bright pink and others in a dark mauve. Oxeye daisies have established themselves along the edges of the meadow and there is also a clump further in, amongst the long grass. The vipers bugloss has sent up its spikes and the blue and pink flowers are so intense in colour that they almost glow. But best of all are the cornflowers. There are two tall plants each bearing a constant flush of those glorious sky blue flowers.
As you can imagine, the meadow is full of bees who can hardly decide between the different flowers. They seem to have a special love for the flowers of the purple thistle and the cornflower. They land on the very soft level cushions that these flowers provide and, having waded around them for the nectar, seem to go to sleep. Perhaps they provide the perfect platform for a snooze in the sun.
So, the meadow story is up to date. My next task is to upload some pictures so that you can see all these plants I've been talking about, and how they look in the meadow.
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