Wildflowers in May

It is May.  Is there any month more beautiful?  I have been making a new herb bed in the kitchen garden, digging out an area which has become full of grass and ground elder.  At this time of year you could work in the garden all day long and still not finish what is to be done so if we are to seize the moment it is important not to fall prey to the endless to do list, either written or mental.  It is important to seize the day.

We walk up the drive, through the farmyard and out onto the hill.  Cowslips are blooming at the edge of the drive.  In Welsh they are called Briallen Fair, Mary's primrose.   A little colony of these was growing up here when we came nearly twelve years ago now.  For a few years they appeared every spring, the patch never really growing.  Then a couple of years ago they took off and began to spread.  Now there is an area perhaps six feet long crowded with them.  Unlike primroses, they hold their heads high on long stems.  The colours vary from rich buttercream to clear yellow.  This year one has leapt across the drive, one solitary flower looking rather bemused to find itself so far from its sisters.  Shall I dig it up and move it somewhere else?  I like the idea of cowslips in the orchard but I know from hard experience that things often do far better up here if you let them go their own way.  Human interference doesn't always pay off.

Maybe I will leave them to see what happens.

Out in the lane we walk down the hill.  Sometimes we walk up, into the sun and the wind to where the Vale of Clwyd spreads and the mountains of Snowdonia hang mistily in the west.  Up hill brings sheep and lambs, the call of the cuckoo and the rising march of the Clwydian range.  Downhill is less dramatic in terms of views but it is hard and steep and coming back up makes the heart pound and the breath labour.  Sometimes it is good to make one's body work and to resist the urge for ease and beauty.  Besides, it is May.  There are wild flowers at the edge of the road all the way down the hill.

There are the white flowers of stitchwort, starred against early fronds.  In parts of France this was known as the Virgin Mary's herb, l'herbe a la sainte-vierge, and in many parts of Europe it was renowned for its ability to ease stitches and pains in the side.  In Welsh it is called serenllys, star of the  court.

This I believe is a form of dog violet but it is not viola odorata, the sweet violet, which is common up here.  This one has a longer, more delicate flower, with pointed rather than rounded petals.  It is a beautiful, delicate thing but there is only one growing all by itself, easily missed in the bottom of the hedge.

By contrast this is very common, at the bottom of every hedgerow in the country and in wasteland in towns and cities too.  It has a multiplicity of names but is commonly known as jack by the hedge, or garlic mustard.  You can eat it, picked young and away from exhaust fumes.  It has a crisp, slightly mustardy flavour and is good eaten in a sandwich.

And there are bluebells.  Has there ever been such a year for bluebells?  They are everywhere.  Look into the wood and they are misted amongst the trees.  Along the verge they hang their delicate heads.  These are English bluebells, as distinct from the Spanish variety with which they hybridise.  English bluebells have flower on one side of the stem, rather than all around as the Spanish ones do.  As a result they bend over with a delicacy which the more upright Spanish flowers do not share.  The colour is darker and more intense.  In Welsh these are bwtsiasen y gog: cuckoo's boots.  Isn't that fabulous?  "Gog" is the Welsh word for cuckoo, the call sounding from the woods carpeted with bluebells.  So the bluebells and the cuckoo calls arrive together.

Is there any month more beautiful than May?