Make a Rainbow...

Mowing the Meadow

Today was the day when I had to say goodbye to our little meadow.  Measuring about 10 feet by 6 feet it made for an interesting study.  In all I counted 13 different wild flowering plants, although some of them didn't flower probably because I started it off late in the year.  There were also at least 3 varieties of grass.  I saw plenty of insects, mostly of the flying variety.  I didn't see creepy ones probably because it was hard to see in through the jumble of plants once they had really had a chance to grow.  Today, however I did see a shiny black beetle scuttle away as I mowed down its home.....:(

Here is the mower, ready and waiting.  The reason you have to mow the meadow is actually to ensure that it grows back healthily the following year.  I think that the plants smother themselves in some way if left to their own devices.  When I have a bigger area to experiment with I will test this out.

Before I cut them down I checked for unrecorded plants and found four more.  I still don't know what these are called.  Having looked up a couple of books trying to identify some of the other plants I've ended up confusing myself.  There are lots of plants that look very similar and it can be hard to tell if you have an exact match or not.

Here is another one.  This fella was huge....about 15 inches across.  It never flowered either.

This guy looks like some kind of mint but I can't be sure.  I could only find one example of this guy in the meadow so I hope he made some seeds on the quiet, while I wasn't looking. 

I think this is some kind of buttercup, or something similar to a buttercup.  I seem to be very confused about buttercups as there are a few plants that seem to have the exact same flower but quite different leaves...I think...or am I imagining it?

Here is another flower that I recorded in an earlier post that is doing its job of ensuring its survival.  There are probably thousands of seeds all over the ground now...yay!

This is the meadow after it was mown.  It was easy enough to do and the mower coped fine with it although I had to keep emptying the grass collector really frequently.  It is a bit browner than the rest of the lawn but it will sort itself out over the next couple of weeks.  There was some grass that was lying down and so the mower missed it but I'll probably get in on the next go around. 

Here you can see it a bit closer.  I reckon that this meadow made a nice home for a lot of insects over its four month existence.  I'll definitely be doing it again next year but I will start off earlier and see if even more varieties of flowers turn up.

Meadow Beauty

While looking closely at the meadow today I decided to take some arty shots of the bits and pieces growing there.  I've given up trying to photograph the insects so I'll stick with the immobile but beautiful plants.

The meadow always highlights recent showers much more beautifully than the short grass.

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Just emerging, this could be ragwort....not sure yet.

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One gone to seed and one still beautiful.

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Top view.

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And side view....

That's it. 

Baby Swans on the Shannon

Not strictly in the garden but just down the road the Shannon River flows.  On our way back from visiting Stella a few days ago we passed a little family of swans.  There were two adults and two beautiful little babies. 

Here is one of the babies with its watchful parent standing by.  This is in the old Corbally baths where people used to go swimming not so long ago.  Unfortunately the water quality suffered and so the bathing finished up but due to all the sewage treatment plants coming on stream the water quality is set to improve dramatically over the next couple of years.  The Corbally baths forms part of a 5 mile walk along the river.  There are a further two miles which are unfortunately overgrown.  From the end of our road you can cycle or walk all the way to the University of Limerick on the Red Path as it is known.  There are always loads of large birds on the river and smaller birds on the edges so it is well worth a visit. 

I couldn't resist taking a short video of the two babies in action.

The Meadow is Developing

I've been watching our meadow very closely since I decided that it could have a chance to let all its flowers just do what they wanted.  Even though it's been raining loads since my last post on it it has provided lots of interest if even for when we are just rushing past it with the washing for a third time in a day.   

The first thing that I noticed was that once the daisies were allowed to keep their heads on they didn't really renew themselves after they died naturally.  I'm sure that the reason for this is that they had a chance to set seed and so their job was done.

The next thing that I noticed was that there were two cat poos in the meadow.  Long grass seems to be a good place to relieve oneself if you are a cat so if you wanted to have a meadow and also have kids then maybe a little fence could be installed around the meadow which would probably have a nice effect.

There are still plenty of buttercups and now there are some new additions to the flowers list.  Unfortunately I don't know what two of them are called yet but I will try to find out in the library tomorrow.

This beautiful purple flower has come up in a few small clumps and while it didn't look very promising at the start is now my favourite flower in the meadow.  I can look at it waving about in the wind as I pretend to be tidying up the kitchen.

This is clover.  I love the heavy perfume of clover and I have some memory that you can suck nectar out the bottom of it or something.  I may try that later.......maybe. 

This delicate and tiny white flower is spreading over a small area and is hard enough to spot.  I don't remember ever seeing this flower before.  It is only about 3mm across.  You can see the leaves that go with it to the left of the main bunch of little flowers. 

This is another yet to be identified flower.  It is just beginning to bloom at the moment and seems to be quite a tall member of the meadow family. 

There are a few members that have not flowered yet and I will be interested to see how many different flowers this small areas can support.  So far seven have bloomed and all of them are beautiful. 

Here is a little guy that was resting just at the edge of the meadow on the physalis, which is doing very well by the way. More on that soon. 

Mini Meadows

I've only rediscovered the concept of a meadow in the last 2 years.  As I've lived in the city since I was 7 and had no particular reason to be walking through fields I think I forgot that there really was such a thing.  On a visit to Runnymead in the county of Surrey in England a couple of years ago I nearly fainted when we came upon a huge meadow.  Of course I immediately had the urge to run merrily through it and then throw myself on the ground.  Surrounded by tall waving grass, hidden from view and shielded from the wind I lay there in the sun and fell in love there and then with meadows.

This meadow is maintained by the National Trust and according to them "a hay meadow is one of the richest habitats that nature can provide". The meadow is left to thrive until sometime in the summer when it is cut for hay.  As far as I know, if the meadow was not cut every year then trees would eventually take over the area.  This habitat would obviously support wildlife too but a meadow will support a lot more pollinating insects. 

Since this encounter in Runnymead I've been searching out other meadows that can be easily accessed.  There is one in the grounds of Birr castle but by the time we got there last year it had been mown so we will be taking a visit up there shortly in the hope of seeing it this year.  On the farm where Chris works there are several meadows all of which are chock full of flowers and grasses.

This is one about a month ago.  Since then everything has grown a lot taller.

Here we have clover and buttercups among the grasses. These meadows may be cut in the next few days as the weather is promised to be dry for long enough to cut the grass, dry it and bail it up.  Jim may also decide to take a chance and wait for another month or two before cutting it as he will get more in this case. 

Two days ago I was standing looking at the beautiful spread of daisies that are congregating in the bottom part of the garden. I had decided that I couldn't put off the grass cutting any longer but then I noticed that there were some buttercups coming up too and I could not bring myself to cut them down.  So I decided that I would make my own mini meadow. 

I left a semicircle of lawn untouched and so I still have most of the daisies left.  We rarely walk on this part of the garden anyway and I am always trying to find ways of using the lawn mower less.  Apparently petrol mowers spew out 40 times the amount of fumes per minute as a car does!! This, I only discovered last year and so I have been leaving longer times between mowing as well as trying to reduce the area of lawn. We have an extra vegetable patch this year which helps. 

One of my favourite things about meadows is the way the flowers and grasses sway gently in the wind.  There is something really beautiful about thousands, perhaps millions of flowers all bobbing about almost in unison.  It's as if you can suddenly see every breath of wind that passes through the area.  Even though our little meadow is still only short, there was plenty of swaying to keep me amused yesterday.

Some of the grasses already have seed heads and as I said the buttercups are coming up now and these are a lot taller than daisies.

I love daisies because they remind of making daisy chains as a child.

Buttercups remind me of running around the fields surrounding our house in Mayo when I was about 5 or 6.  We used to hold the buttercups up to our necks to see the yellow light shining on our skin.

These grasses are new to me so I'm curious to see what they do and who they attract to the meadow.

Here you can see the beginnings of 1 - dandelions, 2 - silver weed and 3 - clover.  There are some other flowers coming up that I don't recognise yet but as they appear I'll take photos and add them in here. 

Apart from the fact that I love meadows I can see that there is a strong reason to allow more of them to flourish in Ireland.  Watching our tiny little meadow I have seen quite a lot of flying insects come and go.  They take some pollen and continue on their way.  There are also plenty spiders and beetles living in here.  Unfortunately they are hard to photograph so I haven't got any of the little fellas to show you....yet.  Surely with a bit of patience I can bond with some of the insects enough to convince them to stay still for a photo shoot.....or maybe not.

Well anyway, as our meadow progresses I will add more photos on the different flowers and grasses that can be supported by even a small area.  If everyone left an area like this to flourish as a natural meadow there would be a hell of a lot more food around for the reducing populations of wildlife in this country. Having a mini meadow could even be educational for the kids as they study all the wild plants and insects that they may not get to encounter anywhere else. 

If anyone else has a mini meadow I'd love to hear your stories and observations.