Hedgerows!

The native hedge surrounding our one acre field was planted thanks to a grant I managed to get when I was studying horticulture in the mid nineties. It only cost us £50!!

We now pay the man who cuts the hedges on the surrounding farmland £20 to do ours every autumn.

So many hedges were ripped out on in East Anglia during the seventies, we're very proud of it.

It's the Woodland Trust site as well.

www.naturescalendar.org.uk/bsw

Big Spring Watch want to know about seven spot ladybirds and swallows, hilda.

I've planted my own hedgerow this month of wild rose, Rosa Rugosa, 2 alba and 3 rubra. Very small at present, but will eventually mature, and apart from the flowers, the rose hips will be lovely winter interest
My neighbour also has tiny violets coming up in her lawn and I have a white bluebell which I have never seen before.

It's raining this evening just what we need.

Devon is always good for hedgerows. Presumably the council do their hedge-cutting at the right time to encourage growth.

We used to have an exceptional display of wild flowers down our lane, but this has gradually dwindled due to the verge cutting. Mind you, no car could get through if they did not - and we still have an attractive grass strip down the middle of the lane!

No, not Stanley. Apparently he is sunning himself in Cornwall. We must have an untagged cuckoo. A cuckoo in Stanley's nest!

We hear a cuckoo every year, flying along the river. He arrived early last week. He is my signal that it really is Spring. I think we have Stanley. The BTO is only a few miles away, and their land virtually reaches ours, so they monitor our cuckoos very closely. Our river goes through their land.

So here you are - track your cuckoo!

www.bto.org/science/migration/tracking-studies/cuckoo-tracking

I love the hedgerows too. All very frothy at the moment. As well as hover bees, there is a fly that looks remarkable like a bee.

www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2014/apr/bee-flies-and-false-widow-spiders-confound-public129835.html

DBH is currently fast asleep when he is meant to be cooking dinner. This is because he has spent 6 hours walking 'old people' around the local conservation area teaching them butterfly identification. He told me he was half the age of any one there (he's almost 50) but I bet they were all only in their late 60s, early 70s and probably not all needing a nap!

Sadly I haven't heard a cuckoo for a long time, probably 5 or 6 years.

Hi TriciaF, lucky you, hearing the cuckoo, I live in Dorset and Southern England is supposed to be the place to hear the cuckoo first, it is almost May and not a sight or sound of it....hearing the cuckoo to me, is a positive sign that spring has officially arrived. We have all the beautiful flowers and blossoms and budding trees, but NO cuckoo. Maybe they have decided to stay in Spain, it has been rather cold down here this last few weeks.

Greyduster - yes I think it was speedwell.

Not exactly hedgerows, but we heard the first cuckoo on April 13th. I looked it up and evidently it was probably Dudley on his way from Spain, via the Pyrenees to you in the UK. We're just 50km from the Pyrenees.

I've got so much speedwell as a result of putting bagged manure on the borders
Blasted stuff is lovely in the wild, not so in my garden!
Bluebells coming out in the woods, wonderful perfume on a warm day.

Yesterday I saw a peacock butterfly and a seven spot ladybird. And this morning I'm sure there were two swallows on the telephone wire near my house. Last week, at DD's house, DGS 1 picked a lively bunch of dandelions and proudly presented them to the lady behind the counter in the village shop.

Your tiny blue flower could be birds eye speedwell - I've noticed it here too. But there are a lot of forget me nots around at the moment as well.

One of the early wild flowers out here is cuckoo flower - its all over. Also periwinkle and ragged robin have just appeared.
Plus dandelions, purpl- dead nettle and stitchwort and a tiny blue flower.
The grass and everything else starts to grow like wildfire here in March- April . We've both had mobility problems so some of it is now knee-high.
But the wild flowers make it look pretty.

I've got those strange 'hover bees' too Teetime,no idea what they are, plus umpteen bumble bees, some with red bums!

Hover flies have appeared and quite a few ladybirds which is lovely and I'm hoping hedge sparrows are nesting outside the living room window in the berberis. No swallows yet.....

I love violets, I seem to have two sorts, one of which is the Sweet Violet, so dainty and both are as tough as old boots!

Tee I bet those strange hover type bees are hover bees!! The do hover just like the birds and come out this time of year.

Deadheading my daffs - blimey they came and went quickly - and now enjoying the tulips.

Glorious on the Downs especially with the skylarks - I love skylarks - gives me goosebumps - so nostalgic somehow.

I have got violets popping up everywhere too! And noticed some on some local grass that haven't been there before. I have tried to get them to grow before without any luck.

A good year for the roses violets.

Violets everywhere, pompa, but I'm not complaining. They are so pretty and are also good ground cover. The flowers on my rather scrawny rosemary are a huge attraction for hoverflies at the moment and there have been a lot on bumblebees which liked the blooms on my white rhododendron. I had to rescue one from my kitchen window the other day.

Yes we have bumble bees and some strange hover type bees that I haven't seen before. The blossom on our fruit trees has just started and I go and stare at it- its so delicate and perfect. I'm also spending more time looking at the trees on the golf course than my ball and now we have swans for the first time on the pond on the 18th instead of not looking at it I am entranced and my ball keeps going in.[ smile]

I have a plethora of cowslips (as well as the dreaded dandelions) in my fairly wild garden - more than usual
in other news - I heard the cuckoo this week and my usual swallows have been swooping around checking out their old nest site - I assued them that it was as they left it but might need a bit of a spruce up to make it 'home'. I do like to see them return each year but as their favourite site is in the car port (part of an old outbuilding) I have to move my car out of their reach

It is a lovely time of year. I've seen several large ( bumble?) bees in my little back garden. Are they early?

We have a lot of violets coming up all over the garden. Couldn't understand where they had come from, then I spotted one in one of our sink gardens that was probably planted, so they must have spread from there. LOve plants that just pop up, we have a cottage style garden (chaos) so never know what might appear.

I agree with you about the dandelions - there seem to be many more this year, but DH and I agreed that we had yet to see bees feeding on them. We had a walk yesterday and there seems to be more of everything this year - celandines, wood anemones, masses of wild garlic, and our woods here are aready a sea of bluebells. I also noticed last week that there were tiny violets coming up in my front lawn. I have never seen them before and I don't know how they got there. DH dug some of them out and planted them in a pot, because he needed to mow the grass, but they are so delicate I don't think they'll survive. Hopefully they'll come back again.

This is such a lovely time of year to see everything coming to life, especially the tiny plants which grow in the undergrowth, the dandelions, the daisies, the wild violets, a pleasure to walk the fields these days.