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Winter is over, spring has sprung, summer is on its way………
It was a hard winter here in Sussex but the wild orchids, like so much else, seem to have come through. Every spring I check my known locations of early purple orchid; this year they are all present and correct and in about the same numbers. No decline; on one roadside they even seem to have increased.
With green-winged orchids, less common anyway, the news is not so good. They grow on a nearby front lawn but new owners of the house have planted beech hedging around the orchid patch and now they have too much shade. Perhaps they are unaware of their precious jewels, or maybe they don’t want to share them. I only hope the green-winged orchids at Great Dixter, magnificent on the front lawn, are multiplying to compensate for this loss.
I saw marsh orchids in France in April, tall spires in an olive orchard, (nowhere near a marsh) and birdsnest orchids in roadside ditches, rare in the UK but mercifully still plentiful around Montpellier.
In England, in spite of the cold, bluebells and lilac were a week early, then nature put the brakes on with a cold snap but the spotted orchids had already got going, it is not yet June but their spires are already up keeping time with buttercups, vetches and dog daisies.
Everything else is as it should be. The starlings are nesting in the eaves protected by masses of yellow Banksian rose. I hear them in the mornings as they land with a clonk and then shuffle to their nest. Last summer I am sure the magpies got some of their chicks but this year under the blanket of thorny rose they have more protection.
Only the cuckoos are missing……..
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 9:18 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.