A small adventure!

I didn't travel far today,
but I saw some beauty in nature
and thought I would share it with you.

I took a 5 minute walk around my garden


A peony, just beginning to drop it's petals


a reddish clematis, the first flower of the year,
many more buds on the plant,
which is climbing up a tree


a purple clematis, which is fighting with the honeysuckle to take ove the fence



a pale yellow iris in the pond



2 little frogs, who thought they were invisible



this one posed nicely!


this one didn't realise I was looking!


this is where he always hides


sometimes his friend joins him



we dug the pond, with the help of friends, in May 2003. It's not very big, maybe 5 feet by 8 feet, and 2 feet deep in the middle. We positioned it at the back of our garden, in an area where we knew frogs passed through. We had frogspawn in spring 2004, and now have a colony of frogs living in the pond, with new tadpoles each year. We don't know how many frogs there are, but we counted 11 adult frogs last weekend. I also often find very little ones in the flower borders when I am weeding. We have noticed that we don't have a problem with slugs in the garden any more, but I wish they'd learn how to eat snails, so that my hostas could look majestic instead of holey!!!!

A Welsh wild flower walk

I was staying at a fabulous Bed & Breakfast near Caernarfon:

http://www.ygoedeneirin.co.uk/index_eng.html

and I went for a walk before breakfast, as it was a beautiful day. Fifty yards from the front entrance to the B & B, I came across this inviting gateway:

which led to a path alongside a small river, where there were masses of wild flowers. I only walked for 15 minutes, but saw and photographed 15 varieties of wild flowers.


This is stitchwort, which is common in hedgerows in country lanes



the small river was burbling and beautifully clear



Ivy Leaved Toadflax, the Welsh name for which is - wait for it - 'Trwyn y llo dial iorwg', which means 'Ivy leafed calf's nose'. The plant was introduced to Britain in the early 1600s.


Dog Violet. The word 'dog' means that it is a smaller variety than a cultivated variety. There are several varieties of violet, some are beautifully scented. Sadly, this one had no discernable scent. I love this pretty little flower with its heart shaped leaves. it likes to hide in slightly shadier hedgerows and woodlands.

The Welsh name for this plant is 'sanau'r gwcw', which means 'Cuckoo's socks' - and this name is obviously associated with the fact that violets flower at the time that cuckoos are first heard. In the language of flowers, the mauve violet means 'faithful love'. Medicinally, the leaves are supposed to help cure cancer, strengthen the heart and calm the nerves. In Wales, a treacle was made from the flowers, which was considered unrivalled at curing colds, coughs and chest complaints.



Ox-Eye daisy, which was called 'dog daisy' or 'moon daisy' until the 1500s. It was also called 'thunder daisy', as people believed that if they hung some of these flowers onto their thatched roofs, the roof would be protected from lightning strike and consequent fire. This plant was also used medicinally, to treat breathing problems such as asthma or 'consumption' (tuberculosis). Stalks, leaves and flowers were boiled up together, made into a posset, and drunk. It was also supposed to help heal wounds and ulcers, whether inside the body or on the skin, and cure wind.




Herb Robert, also called Cranesbill (because of the shape of the seed heads). This is a useful herb, being used as an eye lotion, a mouthwash to treat sore throats and mouth ulcers, as an aid to wound healing, and to treat bladder and kidney stones, and apparently if you crush the leaves and rub them on your skin, it acts as an insect repellent. It has been used as a cancer cure, and the Scottish name for the herb - cancer weed - reflects that usage. The whole plant has a lovely smell, and looks pretty!



Red Campion, a common and pretty wildflower. The name campion has French and Latin origins, and means 'field'. The modern word 'champion' comes from the name of the plant, as in the middle ages, people used to make wreaths of chaplets to put on the heads of winners of public games on village greens.



Greater Celandine. This looks completely different to the common Lesser Celandine which tries to take over my garden every spring! The leaves and flowers are different, the only commonality is that they both have yellow flowers. This plant is harder to spot, and seems to flower for a shorter period.



Cow parsley - this plant is quite tall at 2-3 feet, and often grows in drifts, but each individual flower head is delicate and individual flowers are tiny. It looks pretty when you see a whole verge filled with drifts of white, waving in the breeze.




Field forget-me-not. This flower was used as a symbol of great affection. Women used to wear a corsage or posy pinned to their bodice, and if it contained a forget-me-not, they would not be forgotten by their lover. It was also used to treat dog and snake bites, and steel tempered with its juice was supposed to be able to cut through stone.



Foxglove. The name is probably a corruption of the Swedish 'folk's glove', meaning fairy folk's gloves. There are many folk names for this plant across Britain but a couple of nice Welsh ones are - 'gwyniadur Mair' (Mary's thimble) and 'menig Mair' (Mary's gloves). From the 1500s, foxgloves were used to treat sores, ulcers and flesh wounds. In the late 1700s it was discovered that a susbstance in the plant - digitalin - now called digitoxin - was an excellent treatment for heart problems. In 1962 further research into digitalin showed that it is also a good treatment for glaucoma and muscular dystrophy. Today, foxgloves are farmed in large quantities (mainly in the US) for medicinal use.



Hawthorn blossom, also known as 'May flower'. This thorny tree, often used as stock proof hedging in Wales, has leaves which can be eaten when young, beautiful flowers in May, and red berries in autumn. When you look across some Welsh valleys in May, the hedges all look white as the whole hedge seems to be covered with blossoms. Some blossoms are tinged with pink, and hawthorn has been selectively bred to produce varieties with deep pink flowers. I prefer the simple pale coloured variety!




Bird's Foot Trefoil. This low growing plant has around 70 different country names across the UK, some names refer to the flowers, some to the seed pods, which can look rather like bird or animal claws. Names vary from 'butter-and-eggs' & 'boots and shoes' (Somerset), 'boxing gloves', 'bread and cheese' & 'bunny rabbits ears' (Sussex), to 'bird'sclaws', 'bird's eye' & 'bird's foot' (Devon). The Welsh names 'basged bysgota' and 'pys y ceirw' mean 'fishing basket' and 'pea of the stag/deer'.

Closer view of a bird's foot trefoil flower


Bluebells. This isn't a very good picture, as the bluebells have almost finished flowering. They can look stunning in huge drifts under trees. The Welsh name, 'clychau'r gog' means cuckoo bells, as the flowers come out when cuckoos are heard in the countryside.




Meadow Buttercup. Children often pick this flower and hold it under their chins - if a yellow glow appears on the skin, the child is supposed to like butter!

The picturesque gate at the end of the walk. Walking here and back was a lovely way to spend half an hour early on a beautiful late spring morning.

Christmas day walk - aka the Holy Tree walk

We went for a walk on Christmas Day morning, as the weather was good.

We started off about 4 miles from home at a small village called Llanfrynach, and I saw the magnificent Yew avenue leading to the church door. Yews are often planted in and around churchyards, and can live to be very old - thousands of years old - they are the longest living plants in Europe. Every part of the yew is toxic, but some birds are immune to the toxins and can eat the berries. The yew was exceptionally important to the Celtic people, and perhaps the planting of yews in and around churchyards is another example of the early church taking existing pagan symbols and ceremonies and incorporating them into the 'new' religion so that it would be somewhat familiar to those who joined. yews were also a very important tree in medieval times as the wood was particularly good for making longbows. In fact, there was a serious shiortage of yew wood for longbow making in 1350, and king Henry II ordered his bowyer to enter private land and cut as much yew wood as he needed.

The church porch window with holly branches as decoration.

A large oak tree, with an enormous growth on the trunk. I wonder what causes this?

A close up of the growth

This is also oak bark, but with lichens and moss growing on it.
I love the texture and colours.

We saw many trees with hollow trunks and holes, I took pictures of a few of them. This one appears to have very little inside, and yet it didn't look dead - I did wonder how it remained standing, though!

This was another hole - this time at the base of a tree.
We decided it would make a nice hole for fairies to hide in!

This was quite a large tree - you can see a small hole roughly in the centre of the picture but the large irregular shape at the bottom right was also a hole right through the tree...

This tree was just spectacular - unfortunately there is nothing nearby to give any idea of scale, and I had to stand quite some distance away to be able to get the whole tree in shot.
We estimated that the distance from the ground to where the first branches leave the trunk is about 12 foot, making the tree over 100 feet tall... and wide...
I must come back in summer and take a picture of it in leaf.

This is an old abandoned farmhouse. The views are fabulous in all directions. I guess there were either no children to inherit the farm, or maybe it was just too small to be profitable. There is a deep valley between the front of the buildings and he hills in the distance.

This is a close up of the farmhouse wall - wonderful colours
and textures provided by the local stone, ferns & lichen.