Who is First to Bloom in 2023?

 At the weekend, I took myself out on my bike and on foot  - if it wasn't far! - to see if anything was in bloom, especially after that brutal spell of cold weather that although hadn't dropped any snow on the ground, there had been some very hard frosts. 

Of course, there's one location that always seems to have the first flowers emerging, and when I rode off down there on my bike, in the same little patch of ground as ever, snowdrops were out. 

I swear it's always the same bulb that comes up first every year, the first of the little white flowers always seems to be in exactly the same place by the Polish Air Bridge memorial in the cemetery.

I wonder how many years this has been the case - I'm sure I've been finding them in that spot for over ten years or more!

The other place I like to look is in The Friary Gardens, where the aconite grows. I've been down a couple of times, and haven't spotted any little yellow spots of colour under the trees yet. However, they've been beaten into flower by red dead nettle. 

I think it might be a bit early for them yet. 

At work, we have some rather sorry looking daises poking up, but the most vivid sight is not a flower at all. It is the vivid pink coral berries, where a mere couple of months ago there were bees feeding off the bright coral berry flowers 

I will keep you posted - we also seem to be a bit ahead of the rest of you here!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 06.01.23

The Buzzy Coralberry

 As I've alluded too in other posts - well at least I think I have - the tiny flowers of the workplace coralberry bushes are proving to be a vital source of late season nourishment for the honeybees still on the wing. 

Even in the rain, the bees visit, dangling upside down from the tiny pink drooping flowers, not stopping for long, hard to photograph. Where their colony is, who knows? How many colonies do they come from? How far have they flown to get here?

Questions questions questions.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 22.10.22

Studies in Bees

 We are now into October, the middle month of autumn and it is true that the nights are chilly even if the odd day has a bit of warmth when the sun shines, 

You know the cold is coming when late into the night you see the stars of Orion peeping over the rooftops. 

Nonetheless, there are still pollinators about; large white butterflies to watch while I have my tea at Rumbles cafe, and bees and wasps upon ivy flowers, sedum and - at my workplace - coral berry flowers which are a major attraction for both bees and bumbles alike in this late season. 

I always find joy in their autumn flight, it takes my mind off the "dead months" until the snowdrops appear in December. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 03.10.22