Lawnmeadow: April

We left our former back garden in the middle of March, just stirring and showing signs of life.

April is when plants begin to reach for the sky, all flush with the vibrant green of frsh growth, and the first of the flowers begin to open and welcome insects.

ON the first, the first cowslips opened. We bought six plug plants a few years back, but five died in the heat of late spring, one survived, even then we were not sure it had. The next year a small plant flowered, which then prodced three the year after, to the point now there are a half dozen plants or clumps, in disperse parts of the old lawn. This, the first grows beside the path, underneath where Jools would normally hang washing, she still does, but it careful. That one small plant has now produced this group, which in nearly four weeks has morphed to this:

Same group as the first picture.

Meanwhile, this is how the lawn looked on APril 3rd.

Biggest surprise was the group of Snake's Head Fritillaries I planted three or four years back, each year fewer and fewer appeared, so I had little hope for them this year, but the wet winter must have suited them, and one morning, the rays of the afternoon sun picked out this group with the fresh grass as a backdrop:

Within a week they looked like this, all very healthy:

As usual, on a warm sunny morning, the air just abve the meadow was full of Ash Mining Bees, looking for bare soil to bury into th lay eggs, I even managed to snap one as it rested.

And finally, on the 11th, the first signs of the Yellow Rattle plantlets could be seen, their distinctive leaves spreading out in the sunshine, feeding off the roots of grasses, thus making room for other flowers and plants.

The same day, a new species was found by Jools when looking at the tadpoles in the bigger pond. THis is Salad Burnet, a good native plant, and much loved by bees and butterflies.

And finally, the grasses we want to grow, like this Ribwort Plantain have begin to flower, and this really is the flower of a grass:

Not many butterflies so far this year, just a couple of Peacocks, but that will change, as in the next could of days the Hedge Garlic will flower, then we shall see Orange Tips.

And then comes May when the lawn will just EXPLODE with colour.