Lawnmeadow: June

June is where the promise of spring is fulfilled.

May is all about daisies and dandelions, and inbetween green shoots of the next flowers to emerge, and June is when they explode into life and colour.

After a break of two years thanks to the construction of the path and beds meant that we haven't had much red clover. But 2021 we had clover, and that means next year there'll be even more.

Two patched create a carpet, well more of a rug really. But insects live the tiny flower heads, with each spindle being an indevidual flower.

Kidney Vetch is another favourite of our native pollinators, and one monte there isn't any, next there are hundreds of plants.

Just about everything uses Kidney Vetch as a food and larval plant, but it quickly fades.

The tiny yellow stars of Herb Benet made their debut in the meadow, growing in the shadow of the easterly hedge, another new species for the garden.

And among the much more numerous Bulbous Buttercups, a few spikes of the taller, more slender Meadow Buttercups also arrived for the first time. This one was over two feet high.

Then on June 6th, Jools came running in to announce that she had found an orchid in the back garden. Could it be true?

Yes it could.

At first I thought it was a Common Fragrant, but a fried correctly ID'd it as a Pyramidal.

Still, happy with that.

And as the days and weeks went by, I recorded its progress. This weekend coming it should reach its peak, the pyramid shape turning into a cone.

Last year I bought some Corncockle seeds. Corncockle is a flower that used to florish on the edges of corn fields, but herbicides meant it has all but become extict in the countryside, but I fancied some, so sowed a packet last September, and by the middle of the month, the first flowers were opening.

In the formal beds, we een had some native invaders as a few Stinking Iris appeared and were quite happy there. We let them be for this summer at least.

This was the scene on the 21st as rain hammered down, meaning even more plants and flowers were sure to grow.

More Corncockles opened among the Ox Eyed Daisies.

We have great drifts of Ox Eyes Daisies, many of great heigt, over two feet, and flowers that have last three weeks, and magnets for bees.

Meanwhile, the Corncockle thrived in greater numbers. And two Musk Mallows appeared, doubling the number from last year.

And so July is round the corner, with one final flush of colour before all goes to seed and then it will be time to harvest the hay.

And the cycle will begin again