Butterfly identification update – that’s a Painted Lady. I hadn’t realised they were here yet!

All in red and gold this evening for the #WildflowerHour #WildFlowerShow: a great swathe of Meadow Buttercup in an old meadow; a dense stand of Red Campion, and a satisfying patch of Common Bird’sfoot Trefoil in the evening sun, complete with Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly

It’s the #ChelseaFlowerShow2026 this week so why don’t we have a #WildFlowerShow for #WildflowerHour? Find wildflowers or combinations of several wildflower species looking absolutely spectacular & share your pics this Sunday 8-9pm! I wonder, if there will be a best-in-show?😉🏆

Still one or two places left on this super-detailed intensive Regenerative Farming course, taught by the multiskilled Richard Perkins, at fabulous Henbant Farm in North Wales #regen www.henbant.org/richardperkins

Interesting post on the plotlands - thousands of self-built shacks, chalets, recycled buses and railway carriages erected on mall plots across the country ... www.culturematters.org.uk/the-plotland...

Just 2 weeks to go now until Big Meadow Search 2026 gets underway. I’ve already got a long list of places I am hoping to search and the list keeps growing 😊🤓 All welcome to join in www.bigmeadowsearch.co.uk

Thyme-leaved Speedwell Veronica serpyllifolia, performing nicely for the #WildflowerHour theme this week of #tinyplants

Constantly adding all sorts of erudite and radical texts to the TBR list, while repeatedly comfort-reading Georgette Heyer and Nevil Shute

Thank you! A great read - and spot on about the 80s:

Constantly adding all sorts of erudite and radical texts to the TBR list, while repeatedly comfort-reading Georgette Heyer and Nevil Shute

This was fun:

Looking up Orobanche aka Broomrapes for a friend who is working in the Channel Islands:

Pure wholesome Horticultural joy and expertese: preparing for #ChelseaFlowerShow2026 #Chelsea2026 youtu.be/9Hks58bZxEQ

An update from our County Recorder. 1st Swallowtails have emerged, a big influx of Painted Ladies & Peacocks are being reported all across the county. #savebutterflies 📷️ Iain Leach BC

Hello—The Book of Birds by me & the artist Jackie Morris is published…today A re-imagining of the field guide/bird book for our age of wonder & loss, from Avocet to Yellowhammer. Jackie has painted over 300 original artworks for it; I’ve tried to let language soar, glide & plunge. For the birds!

I think Melissa Harrison writes so beautifully here about Philip Larkin and the complicated thoughts and feelings he evokes, and perhaps embodies. (I second her recommendation of Elizabeth Jennings, fwiw!) Link in next post.

In the lead up to the start of Big Meadow Search 2026, I shall be posting some ID tips to help beginners know what to look for on certain plant groups. For example Speedwells, Forget-me-nots, Vetches, Orchids, St. John’s-worts

Thank you @englishassociation.bsky.social for sharing this research on the power of young people's narrative writing to increase empathy & reduce political polarisation. A very important message for schools in our times & with a new NC in English under construction. www.psy.ox.ac.uk/news/new-stu...

Bluesky is so polite

The first flowers I've seen this year of Common Vetch, Vicia sativa, in a patch of rough grass adjacent to a Farmyard. #WildflowerHour #carrotsandpeas

Here’s a poem called ‘Life of a Naturalist’.

Book people of Bluesky: this is what's happening in UK English teaching. Damning final para: #BookSky

I awake and realise what an excellent visual metaphor this is. What Reform supporters think they're voting for/what they'll get.

Find a member of the pea or carrot family, that’s the challenge this week from Wild Flower Hour! Don’t be tempted to eat them up though, as some members of the carrot family are extremely poisonous ☠️ Post your finds for #wildflowerhour this Sunday 8-9pm using #carrotsandpeas!

The first www.commontreasures.org collection is great too, covering land, food and farming:

Bodley's Librarian Richard Ovenden wrote the book (literally) on the destruction of knowledge and what’s at risk if we don’t protect it. Hear him speak at the Friends of the Bodleian Annual Lecture. 🗓️ 14 May, 5.30-7.30pm Book now: https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/fob-annual-lecture

1/ 🧵 The Festival of Britain opened this day in 1951 - according to its official guide a 'united act of national reassessment, and [a] corporate reaffirmation of faith in the nation’s future’.

#WildflowerHour Every year, in the woods by the brook, this little Wild Garlic plant comes up in a hole in the horizontally leaning trunk of a Small Leaved Lime tree:

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.” ― Wendell Berry

& last of april, visit a copper beech - a stunted thing but not young - a kind of metal deerguard merged with it - those ruby leaves emerging, beltane-eve & the moon 1 night from full

#Photography Tony Ray-Jones (c. 1968), Weymouth, Dorset, England.

🚨 New on BBC2: 'Set against the postwar period of debt, austerity and rationing, the 1951 Festival of Britain showed how to carve out a bright new future through design and ingenuity' ... www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...

Lots of St Mark's Flies about the last couple of days - hedge & damp pasture – no, they don't show up in this picture but this is where they were!

It's getting dark, so for my last-minute #WildflowerHour photos the camera flash is in paparazzi mode. Here are this evening's stars of the woods: Bluebells, Carex sylvatica, and a bank of Wild Garlic and Wood Anemones

A great question, and some lovely answers:

Malvern

Nipping in at the end of #WildflowerHour #WoodlandPlants with a white Bluebell and the first of the local Wild Garlic

Is this the message the government wants to go into the local elections with?

There is a chance that we can rid the NHS of Palantir by excercising a break clause. But your MP needs to know that you care about this - email now www.foxglove.org.uk/campaigns/pa...

Unexpectedly emotional about Chelmsford: loved this conversation about queer suburbia - recommended listening while tidying the greenhouse or other suitable weekend occupation. Thanks for sharing @iammilliam.bsky.social and @grindrod.bsky.social

Almost any building, school, or parking lot could be turned into a #solarpower plant and provide #cleanenergy for our cities and homes. RT if think more buildings should get a #solar upgrade. #ActOnClimate #ClimateEmergency #ClimateCrisis #GreenNewDeal #renewable #energy

These seasonal books are beautiful, lovely to read with small children, and make lovely gifts:

Been looking forward to this one.

What’s the tiresome task in your workplace, that they give you when you’ve come in late again or they’re fed up with your awful jokes? On a plant nursery it’s “go and untangle the Clematis tunnel”

I quite like how weird and stupid my brain is, but I do consider repeatedly waking up at 4.45am with an ear worm of Onward Christian Soldiers a drawback

“English apple blossoms always lift my spirit. My grandfather dreamed of having an orchard when he was a prisoner during WW II; it helped him to have hope and survive. Apple trees & orchards are not just for fruit, they are for our mental health and our joy all year long,”-our Patron, Mark Rylance

Diagonal daffodils in the shops again: