Return of the Rain

All good things must come to an end so, sadly, we've lost the brilliant sunshine and warm temperatures of earlier in the week, replaced by the customary grey skies of these northern parts. However, the warmth has....

....done a wonderful job of speeding up the coming of spring. In our now two-year-old garden the very deliberate planting of insect- and bird-friendly plants, such as the early-flowering aubretia, has paid dividends though....

....we do have some worries. A couple of chaffinches have been behaving oddly, not flying off when we approached. This may have been that they were suffering from heat exhaustion but another grim possibility is that, despite trying to kept the feeders clean, we have an outbreak of the dreaded trichomonosis, a disease which particularly affects greenfinches and, to a lesser extent, chaffinches.

The cowslips have spread even further across the meadow down by the A9, and are obviously having a good year. The seem to come out shortly before the primroses, so are one of the bright flowers of early spring.

Then there are one or two wildflowers out which I associate with full summer, their arrival providing a glorious splash of colour. This very lonely common vetch seemed to glow on our walk yesterday, just as the rain was arriving.