Looking up at the wildflowers

So.... thats about all we need to do in the garden this week!
What I do enjoy are the wild corners of the garden and when you look around you will be surprised just how much creeps into the garden from the wild and left to its own can be just as pretty as regimented flower borders with bedding plants bought from the garden centres.

Neville James-Davies mentioned on his page just a couple of weeks ago that he is looking foreward to the wild flowers many of which I share with him. Here I have to give in to that frequently mantioned Oxalis otherwise known as Bermuda Buttercup. The fields are just covered in the bright yellow of their flowers and the odd one that I have allowed to grow into full flower is quite outstanding on the lawn where the actual lawn/grass is still dormant.

Most outstanding of all are the Jonquils that were originally growing wild on the grazing land around our newly built house. The few bulbs we transplanted have multiplied a hundred times and every year, about now the lawn is full of these delicate little multi headed flowers of the Narcissus family and even a few Daffodils have popped up amongst them, I can’t even imagine where from but there they are with their proud yellow trumpets making the garden look like spring already.

What I am really waiting to see, and what Neville has mentioned are the Wild Orchids. There are several different species around the Island and most are on the endangered list, so we are asked not to pick them, but how they arrived in my garden I will never know. There they are in one of those abandoned corners. Every year they appear with many more flower heads than the last year. I don’t dig that corner over now, I just leave it wild, I pull a few of the weeds I don’t want and am now waiting for the Orchids just to see if there are more than there were last spring.

I also have a cluster of genuine yellow Buttercups that here again came from no where and that one tight cluster of leaves gets bigger every year with more flower heads than ever. Woe betide any grandson who allows a football near some of these flowers!

Next to come up all on their own are the wild Gladoli, they are another flower that can be seen in every pasture land. Their tall spike like leaves are already well above ground, usually in the lawned areas of the garden so there they will stay until their distinctive tall pale mauve/pink flower heads begin to bloom.

Its just as well the lawn grass doesn’t start to grow until well into the month of May so there is no need to get the lawn mower out until the natural warmer sunny days of late spring and summer burn off all these delightful wild flowers.

As I have said before, they all just find their own way into a garden and are no effort at all to cultivate, they are just part of a Majorcan spring garden.

All of this of course doesn’t mean that winter is over. The months of February and March can find us with a few very wintery days with violent gusty winds even a sprinkling of snow on the high mountains and torrential rain storms with just about a little bit of everything, we are still able to enjoy the sunny days in between when we can’t imagine that we are in the winter months at all.

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Wild Orchids: There are several different species around the Island and most are on the endangered list, se we are asked not to pick them.

Its just as well the lawn grass doesn’t start to grow until well into the month of May so there is no need to get the lawn mower out until the natural warmer sunny days of late spring and summer burn off all these delightful wild flowers.