The time of the flowers

This morning when I woke up I thought of the little wild white wind or wood anemone.  It is strange how the mind unconsciously remembers the time of the flowers. Well I know it will be flowering up at Langridge near Bath and also in Blake Wood near Chelmsford, so I wish them well in their sanctuaries.  I turned to Richard Jeffries writing.  He came from Swindon, not exactly the town you would expect to have such a fine 19th century writer but there you are.

The tiny windflower jostles amicably with the violet

One needs to get away from the constant throb of stupidity in the news. Perhaps even get on one's bandwagon and yell about the terrible encroachment by Man on the natural environment.  For instance in  Jeffries  writing on the countryside, you will see the great amount of insects that once 'plagued' the countryside but in truth fed the birds that we see disappearing from our view.

Did you know that the bright green of our fields so beloved by the farmer to feed his herds, relies on nitrogen and the nitrogen will slowly work outwards destroying the wild as it goes.  Our rivers are so polluted by farm waste and sewage that the abundant water life ceases to exist.  I don't really worry about people being able to swim in the rivers and lakes but I do worry about the fish that once lived in clean waters.  An earlier blog.........................

"This photo shows the delicate wood (or wind) anemone with its finely dissected leaves, it nestles amongst dog mercury, a woodland plant which is supposedly an indicator of old woods. But it is the white starry anemone that is the subject. Apparently, according to Marjorie Blamey (The Illustrated Flora) there is a yellow one as well. It belongs to the somewhat larger family of pasque flowers, monkshoods and that dainty elegant flower of the garden - larkspur.

Grigson has many local names for the anemone, bread and cheese and cider, candlemas cap, chimney smocks, drops of snow, Moll o' the woods, moon-flower and so it goes on..

Its actual name of anemone is borrowed from the Greek legend of Anemone Coronia, because the flowers nod and shake in the wind, and the Greeks called it Daughter of the Wind.

And to pasque flowers, they have become garden flowers because of their beauty, pasque of course since it blooms at Easter, William Turner gives an apt description...

The firste of these Passe flowers hath many small leaves finely cut or jagged, like those of carrots; among which rise up naked stalkes, rough and hairie; whereupon do grow beautiful flowers bell fashion, of a bright delaid purple; in the bottom whereof groweth a tuft of yellow thrums (stamens) and in the middle of the thrums thrusteth foorth a small purple pointell; when the whole flower is past there succeedeth an head or knoppe, compact of many graie hairie lockes, and in the solid parts of the knops lieth the seede flat and hoarie, every seede having his own small haire hanging from it'  .

A concise description of a flower that I have never been able to grow, though it has acquired the name of Dane's Blood or Dane's Flower, (unusual beauty deserves unusual origins says Grigson)
But it did grow on the Devil's Dyke and Fleam Dyke which were associated with the Danes."

It is quite an exciting time of the year, the small Pasque flower (for Easter) is making an appearance and also the Snakeshead Fritillaria flower, a rather exotic flower and though cultivated now, the one place you can see it in the wild is North Meadow near Cricklade in Gloucester.

Fritillary

Matilda recovers well, came down this morning to make coffee and found the two girls bickering in usual fashion.  Did the Lucozade Matilda demanded do the job? though apparently rather than making you feel better it is now an energy drink ;) well I suppose it is the same.  Who would have thought the Lucozade bottle which stood by my bedside as a child and probably every other sick child bedside would make it to this time in history.