I’ve been staying with my mother over the weekend, which is why I was so late with the blog post yesterday, and again today. It’s not that there’s nothing to write, just that coffees, meals, washing up and word puzzles take up an awful lot of time if you let them.
My mother hasn’t been able to get out much recently, so when I went to the village shop for a paper, I took some photos to show her what was going on down the road. Here, then, are a few, mostly local, flower photos with some haphazard notes:
I thought it was April that was supposed to breed lilacs, but here May seems to be doing just that:
It poured with rain last night and this morning, meaning that when the sun came through later, the air smelled of British summertime. And that includes not just lilacs, but the scent of wall flowers. These are clearly Ronseal wallflowers as they were found precisely where you’d expect: growing along the top of a wall:
A while ago, I took a picture of these tree blossoms, which I didn’t recognise:
Looking at the centres, I wondered if they might be a type of magnolia, but further investigation has revealed that they are in fact dogwood. Here in south Wales, I found some real magnolia blossoms:
Last night was the first night of the year I slept with the windows wide open. The birds started singing early, but I am hopeless at identifying birdsong. One I know I haven’t heard yet is the cuckoo. But I did find a cuckoo flower today:
I don’t think my mother was very impressed when I showed her the photos; after all, half the pictures are of weeds. But we looked through them and identified what they all were and where I’d found them, and we did some fairly random reminiscing.
This weed, which I’d call plantain, is one that we used as children to ‘shoot’ at each other, by looping the long stalk around and snapping the flower head off at the neck so it flew like a bullet (only a lot more slowly, a lot less dangerously and usually – for me, at least – with very little precision.)
Finally, an aquilegia, one of my favourite flowers. Also known as columbine or granny’s bonnet, though I’m fairly certain my granny never wore such a frivolous bonnet:
don't confuse the narrator 