Lush is one of those words that puts a pout in your mouth. Apparently the photographers ask the models to say ‘lush’ when posing for a photograph. But for me the word equates to now: this marvellous month of May in England.
We have reached that point in Springtime when everything is so lush around the countryside. The hedgerows are green and lanes are lined with Cow Parsley (anthriscus sylvestris) and Ox Eye Daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) which I think are early this year, among the tall grass seed heads and many other flowers; the honeysuckle is rampant, the elderflower is out, the dog roses are coming out and all the trees are so full leafed, with fresh growth. It is a fantastic time to get out and walk or cycle.
Cow parsley
And suddenly there’s Cuckoo Spit.
I had just been wondering where the cuckoo spit was this year when a couple of mornings ago I went out of the front door to pick some rosemary to find frothy bundles of it distributed over the bush and over the lavender. Over night this tiny insect, the Froghopper, had been at work… well probably more than one of them.
Well the Cuckoo Spit is here: but I haven’t yet heard a cuckoo this year.
Yesterday I was constructively destructive. I have scratches up both forearms and a driveway full of trimmings.
I have decided to rid myself of the awful yellow-pink clash that happens every year. It so offends my eye!
I have already removed one clump, but this clump grows through a dogwood. So I have cut down the kerria as far as I can, reaching in and pulling out….and once the dogwood has finished flowering I shall dig out the yellow peril. If I get around to it that is… which will depend on what other tasks are pressing at the time. Unfortunately all my cutting out has left the dogwood looking rather bedraggled – I hadn’t accounted for the fact that having grown up together they may have been dependent upon one another for support. Hey ho. A gardener’s work is never done. Especially when the gardener is distracted by blogging.
(Cow parsley by the way will soon be followed by Queen Ann Lace – which until a week or so ago, I had thought was an alternative name for Cow Parsley – or rather I had been told. I’m learning, Christina)
Boadicea's Chariot 
Super photos Pseu, the cuckoo spit is especially good. You are right, its time to be out and about, things change out there rapidly.
I can’t take the credit though Val.
Pleased to see that you’ve at last got a camera back in your household
(Shhh… I borrowed images to illustrate….)
Oh dear, still no camera?
Oh dear indeed 😦
Sob.
Oh Pseu, thought you’d found it by now. Aaargh. Insurance claim?
Lovely blog. Yes it IS lush out there. Loads of pink campion growing in the verges too and Cotswold cottage gardens looking too beautiful and smelling super-fragrant with orange blossom and roses all blooming together.
Those there umbelliferae go from 12′ to about 20″ and they are all different!
You need a flora of the British Isles pseu.
Get one for your birthday.
One with a good key that allows you to track the identity from a shape, time and colour of bloom backwards into genera and species and is basically pictorial. Not a fancy professional one that hits obscure taxonomy first that is not in your memory banks so to speak.
No use if you can’t understand it!
December birthday- I tend to forget I wanted something back in May. Maybe I should put it on my list now!
It’s a joy to see, but the downside is that everything is just storming ahead in the garden; including weeds, of which I seem to own plenty.
I’m trying to keep them down, but……
Pseu, following on from Tina, I recommend The Wildflowers of Britain and Northern Europe bu Richard Fitter, Alastair Fitter and Marjorie Blamey. Publisher: Collins. Blimey, mine’s old. It was only £4.95! It’s got keys at the beginning so you get the gist of where to look and what family your plant might belong to. The Collins Guide to Insects of Britain and Western Europe by Michael Chinery is fab too. These are the things that weigh down my luggage on hols! 🙂
I have taken note! Thank you, Jan
Yes, Ara. let’s not linger on the weeds? Docks, lords and ladies, dandelions, goosegrass, buttercups, groundsel……
nettles, thistles, elder, ground elder, …..