welsh hills again

The gorse is in flower, its warm cocunut sweet scent blows up from the valley as I walk down to the river. The wood anemones are opening everywhere under the still bare trees.  I love these. I love their delicacy, the way they shiver in the slightest breeze, the way they turn their open faces to the sun.  Soon the leaves will be on the trees and the track down to the river will become a cool green tunnel.  I know I will like that when it comes but just now the track is clean and clear, full of sunshine and with open views into the fields. My son and daughter in law's dog runs ahead but always pausing and checking where I am when the gap between us gets too wide. Down by the river in the damper ground the strappy leaves of the wild garlic are pushing up.  There are no flowers yet so the smell of garlic is only released when I crush the leaves between my fingers.  I must remember to come down again very soon and do some foraging. There are...

May is a time for wildflowers here. The primroses have gone, the wood anenomes are disappearing and the foxgloves have yet to come. But everywhere along verge sides and at the base of the hedgerows wildflowers are crowding out the grass. The wild cherry blossom and the blackthorn are fading but hawthorn, known also as may for the month of its flowering, is frothing along the hedges. Our hawthorn hedges here on the hill are still resolutely green, but for the sake of a couple of hundred feet (sorry, I know I should think of height in metric terms but it is a painful translation from feet to metres and doesn't mean anything in my head so I will old-fashionedly stick to feet today) the hawthorn trees at by the river in the bottom of the valley are just coming into bloom. Here is the first, the flowers flushed ever so faintly with pink. Walking today with a heavy pack (practice, practice for the Offa's Dyke, a little easier each time) I saw the impact of height on both plants and ...