Hayfield flowers

Walking this morning up on the racecourse through the mist I wondered how many flowers still remain in the wild grasses of the hay fields that surround the course. The skylark young are finding their wings and the lush grassland still murmurs with birdsong. Yesterday I spied my buzzard sitting on a fence with another alongside him, much darker, I took a photo but this is the time that I wish I could handle a complicated long-lensed camera for close up shot of things far away.
A hayfield is particularly beautiful at this time of year, the grasses are seeding, soft purples, greens and golds, the bronzes of the plaintain and dock flowers standing amongst the graceful fronds of seedheads.
Looking at my handful, there are red and white clovers close to the paths, small white meadow parsley, laces its delicate way through the green of the grasses. Cow parsley, or Queen's Anne Lace, is over now, but the giant hogweed is coming into flower, its purple bracts straining to burst open and its great jagged leaves reminding me of the acanthus. Yellow buttercups, coned flowerheads of the plaintain and the soft reddish pink flower stalks of the docks. Dew from the mist hangs like tiny crystals along the grass seedheads, and there is a tiny white flowered plant, that holds the promise of its opening but never does.

Docks flowering

Plantain flower