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

A Celestial Event

 We have had a period of unbelievably gloomy weather the last few days - continual fog and mist, the air full of moisture that made the rim brakes on my bicycle scarily useless at times, and a sun that may not exist anymore for all I've seen of it. 

Earlier in the week however, I accidentally saw a wonderful sight in the night sky as I was cycling home from work, and stopped to take photographs. The moon, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus were all in a line across the night sky just after sunset, with Venus just hovering above the lights of the industrial estate of food factories and chicken hatcheries. 

Sadly Saturn was a mite too faint for my camera to pick up. The next mobile phone I get better have a night photography mode on it!

This weekend, I've managed to get some decent walking done, although there hasn't been an awful lot to see apart from bare trees in a clinging damp fog. However, my attempts to find the first flowering plant of the new season in the cemetery have succeeded, and it was not what I expected. 

Was it a snowdrop or a winter aconite? 

No. It was a red dead nettle, which come March will form a vital source of nourishment for early pollinators. 

Of course, at the moment there is nothing flowering. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 19.12.21