9th April 2009 (Thursday)
Weather-wise it's been a pretty awful day down this way, with strong winds (a nightmare for photography...) and frequent heavy showers, but I was still determined to get out for a bit; yesterday had been a late night, fuelled by far too much liquid (
) and I reckoned some fresh air in my lungs would do me the world of good. And where better to get it, than a cemetery...?
I've visited so many churchyards & graveyards this Spring that my girlfriend says she's going to start calling me Dracula, but I find them thrilling places to explore; around each corner, you just never know what you're going to find
Unfortunately at today's venue, what I found was a couple of (expletive deleted) council workers mowing the feckin' grass
- obviously not good for my hopes of finding anything naturalised from old gravestones! Thankfully they couldn't mow the tarmac, where a pretty little self-seeded crucifer was, thanks to Tiggrx's kind confirmation, added to the list as my first "wild" example of
Virginia Stock (
Malcomia maritima)
The best I could find elsewhere, though, were Hybrid Bluebells (
Hyacinthoides x massartiana) coming into flower, a clump of
Poet's Narcissus (
Narcissus poeticus) and a huge patch of
Common Dog-violet (
Viola riviniana) - it must have covered a good half-dozen square yards, probably the most extensive I've ever seen
The good news; tomorrow's weather forecast, and the weekend's, is meant to be better. The bad news; it's a bloody bank holiday, which means the North Somerset coast (which I'm planning to visit in search of Snake's-head Iris, amongst others) will be packed with people & their dogs
Ah, well...