The ‘lawn’ has been cut for the first time since the autumn.
You can see that this end of the garden is a bit rough and ready. I think I might have preferred it uncut!
I’ve left a strip of unmown grass on one side to participate in the Plantlife ‘Say No to Mow‘ ‘campaign’. It’ll be interesting, or depressing (we’ll see), to see what plants come up in this unmown patch between now and August.
My mower seems to be a bit of a wimp – it kept overheating and needing a rest. Still, this meant that I could have a sit in the garden and look for wildlife. Overhead, Red Kite, Buzzard and Sparrowhawk passed by. Nearer to hand, Holly Blues, Brimstones and Orange Tips flew past. Four House Martins flew past, my first of 2014, and I expected them to come back now and again during the afternoon but they didn’t.
The best thing though, was a brief sighting of a ‘Flying Nose’ a bombyliid fly, or Bee Fly. Aren’t they amazing?
![By Richard Bartz, Munich aka Makro Freak (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://markavery.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Grosser_Wollschweber_Bombylius_major_detail.jpg)
I spotted my first bee fly yesterday. It was fascinating to watch it busy on the forget-me-nots, inserting it’s probiscis like a tiny needle!
Emily – thank you. They are great aren’t they?
Hells Bells Mark
Can I respectfully suggest that you get a ‘goat’ and house it in your outside loo I can see there in your first photograph ….. I’m impressed with your ‘Skylark Patches’ but where’s your Red Kite bird table?
From the direction of the shadows (in both pics) the whole job has taken you no more than 11 minutes 32 seconds
My guess young man is that you’ve been on the Pinot Grigio !
Regards
It is worth leaving a bit of grass uncut – at least for a few months out of the 12 month year anyway. My grass patch was, up until 10 years ago, a grazed field. Now it is my fruit, veg and wildlife garden. Since I have started managing it I have left parts of the grassland unmown until about August, then it gets one or two cuts before winter – the first time leaving the grass to lie for a day or two so the seed can drop out and hopefully germinate and hence produce flowers next year. I regularly inspect my plot for wild flowers – and some appeared, Lesser Spearwort, Marsh Bedstraw, Tufted Forget-me-not for example (its a damp grassland/veg plot). These plant species were probably in the seed bank. Some species I have added by collecting seed from local wild flowers (e.g. Ragged Robin, Yellow Rattle), propagating them in pots and then planting them in the grass sward. Then last year I had a lovely surprise. A Southern Marsh Orchid appeared and produced a single flower spike. I had certainly not sown seed of that species and there are no other Southern Marsh Orchids growing anywhere nearby. The seed must have travelled from its parent plant for some distance and landed on my patch where it found a garden in which no weedkillers or artificial fertilizers are used and where the gardener makes space for nature. So it is worth leaving some lawn uncut – you may just need to be patient and perhaps something out of the ordinary will turn up!
Bee flies are really amazing they mate back end to back end. Then they both fly around hooked together pointing in opposite directions. Some fancy computer control there. Seems to be masses of them about this year in the garden
Orchids can often grow in damp lawns, go round now and start looking for them. Marsh Spotted orchids are easy to identify by their spotted leaves then when you have your eye in on the shape look for the marsh orchids. Not as difficult as identifying “little brown jobs” Mark
The usual crop of bamboo markers is in for the spotted orchids.
If you have a dry lawn (and don’t spray it) you may have rosette formers like hawkweed if you don’t mow and let them flower they will die and next year there will be none till the population builds up under mowing again.
Plants communities change a lot. We had ox eye daises and they seem to “exhaust” the soil and die out so they have moved round the garden and track side like a tide flowing along. I visited one organic conservation farm which had a field named daisy field. Pretty but not one in sight. Obviously it had them when they bought the field.
Wendy – Your orchid seed was more likely to have come on your soles of your shoes when visiting other sites. An old friend had a chamomile lawn and one year Northern Marsh turned up. Over the years the whole lawn was covered with them! If all gardeners had patients they would not have to spend £5 billion a year!!!
Last Wednesday week I cut the grass for the second time before setting off to vist my aged P in Long Sutton so naturally I went by the scenic route via Kirkbymoorside expecting to see quite a lot more wildlife than usual but probably the most interesting bird I saw was a 7′ headless purple chicken. Apart from that a curlew and two pied wagtails were the only things outside my usual range of garden birds and buzzards, and some Swalies with a death wish. Happily watching Wisbech getting smaller in my rear-view mirror last Sunday I made my way home via the A605, red kites over the road waiting to clean up a badger at Titchmarsh, passing a lot of grey sheds and what looked like a funfair entrance at Shapwick Lakes. Lo and behold someone had taped the head on the purple chicken and turned it into a cockerel. After an involuntary excursion to Banbury – a pleasant run back to Salisbury. I must work out how many hectares of linear woodland I passed on this journey. I don’t ever see it mentioned as a habitat – probably not looking in the right places. And how many dead badgers there were
on the As 303, 34, 43 and 605. I’m sure they outnumbered the corpses of Gooney birds by some margin. No hedgehogs or foxes, though but. Anyway I digress and
what I really wanted to say was that in the 4 days I was away the grass had grown 1″ each day and needed cutting again on Monday when what I really wanted to do in my free time was sit by the Dame’s Violet watching Orange Tips. While Mrs C likes the ideol of a wildflower meadow I can’t persuade her to accept that tall and unkempt is a desirable look for grass even if she likes me being that way. I have won a concession that the edge of the wood would look OK with long grass – but it has to be cut as soon as she finds a tick about her person, mind! What she does now accept is that it is stupid to feed and water grass – but I didn’t use the S-word, natch.
filbert – brilliant! You should write a blog. You are welcome to a Guest Blog here if you can string a whole series of witty remarks together…
I leave bits and pieces of the lawn uncut. To let the cowslips flower and the violets. I’ve managed to get knapweed established in one area and ox eye daisies, which have spread like mad. I might try and get some birds foot trefoil in next.