Ooh!

Ooh, this is the third or forth morning in row now that we've had a fairly hard dusting of frost. I'm glad I've not got anything in the ground yet down the lotty; the last few years of increasingly predictable unpredictable weather has taught me that early planting isn't necessarily the good strategy is was.

Lotty

The lotty's coming on nicely; the fruits  of the Goddess and the Green Man's beltane activities are becoming apparent. In the ground (so far) we've got runners, courgettes, tatties, onions, shallots, cabbage, black kale, curly kale, purple sprouting broccoli, calabrese broccoli, leeks and parsnips; in the greenhouse we've tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, chilli peppers; and in the fruit cage we've got strawberries, raspberries, gooseberrys (green and red), blueberries, rhubarb, and blackcurrants.  We've been collecting rhubarb for months, though now we're collecting strawberries, raspberries and gooseberrys too, as well as our first courgette, and the tomatoes wont be too long. Nice.

Pyramidal Orchid

Now there's a thing I wasn't expecting to to see today, a Pyramidal Orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis), beautiful. We were on our way to the lotty when I spied this solitary orchid in a spot I'd never seen them previously, uncharacteristiclly in a rather shady spot too.  I'd usually have been keeping my eye out for the orchids we'd see across the varied landscapes we roam, of course, not this year. So this was a lovely thing to see, a welcome treat. We're blessed with a wide range of orchids around the places we visit, in fact some rather rare ones. I'm hoping to go watch the Summer Solstice sun rise from Badbury Rings, which is always particularly abundant, both in variety and quantity...hoping.