Tuesday 27 September 2011

On wild flowers

I've had a migraine today all day and boy does it hurt. However lying in the dark with an eye mask can only be endured for so long and thus as it is twilighting outside and the blinds and curtains are closed, the lights not switched on and my laptop screen darkened I feel I must write something or explode. The latter would be very messy and hard for the police to explain, devastating for Andrew and just too tempting for Maggie to eat (boke!), so here I am teeth gritted, plodding onwards.

Lying here today I was thinking about roundabouts and public space gardening to keep myself sane(ish) so here I shall share....
French roundabouts make me happy. That sounds very sad but it is true. The vast majority are simply beautiful, and what is so great about it is the fun and community spirit that goes into it.Many of them have art done my school kids in them or really huge fun sculptures from wood. I only have a couple of photos here - one of wild flowers which are everywhere along the sides of the roads and intersections (fabulous idea!) and one of beautiful grasses etc but there were so many more (it's just a little hard to take photos out the window of the car whilst going round the roundabout and trying to be a good navigator). Some of them even had bee hives in them - bee hives! Genius.

I adore wild flowers and did do some guerrilla gardening last year when we moved into this new house. I quickly had an accomplice on line who was doing the same thing in a different country :) I was Ms W, she Ms J and she knows who she is *wink wink*. She even helped me when I ran out of seeds! But sadly and this is really very sad indeed... the area I chose to scatter my hopes of happiness also turned out to be the area which the water and gas people dug up (more than once) and thus not one of my seeds came to anything. I have more though for this year coming! I just thought whilst laying here, that it would be such a joy to guerrilla garden roadsides and make them stunning little points of beauty for people's long travels ummmm, these photos have cemented that idea.

I have only seen 3 bees this past summer, a good few wasps and about 5 ladybirds (Andrew saw his first of the year yesterday!) and 2 varieties of butterfly, one of which was the cabbage white (ggrrr, no broccoli for us this year). I think local indigenous wild flowers - planted on that bit of ugly waste land you have near your house, could well be a good idea, not just for the beauty and pleasure but also for the insects. eh? Enough with the sculptures and loads of money spent on silly bedding plants by our councils - wild is the future! Just a though from an addled and pain filled brain....
x

7 comments:

  1. Hi I just discovered your blog via My Tiny Plot. Great idea, nothing makes me feel happier than wild flowers on a long journey and the added bonus of attracting insects can only be a good thing. I sowed a patch of cornflowers (apparently the were JFK's favourite flower) and poppies this year, they look stunning and are still going strong, hopefully this warm weather we are getting for the rest of this week (I'm a fellow Northern Irelander) will give them a new lease of life!

    Lovely post and hope your head is feeling better, Sarah x

    ReplyDelete
  2. I find that part about exploding very morbid but very funny, haha :)

    I love wild flowers!!! There's just something about them, how they're overgrown and how you just can't seem to recreate what nature does so well on her own...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have a tendency to scatter seeds willy-nilly whilst out dog walking :) Hope the head's better.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Some of our verges and roundabouts are designated roadside nature reserves. The M! has a ribbon of yellow down the edge when the dandelions are in flowers - I guess the seeds are blown along by traffic whooshing by. There are also lots of dog daisies.

    One on my route to work though that was a DRNR was full of bluebells and some idiot came along and mowed the lot down.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Carrie girl !
    I just got your e-mail and I am shocked how fast the envelope got there !! LOL .. I did it in a hurry so it was a short note enclosed but I wanted to share what Autumn will be like here eventually (we are in a mini heat wave still .. eeekk!)
    I can proudly say that Kingston, and Ontario in general are mad for planting wildflowers on the side of major and minor roads with many trees as well. We are very lucky to live in such a pretty area (even though I miss the ocean still) .. on with Halloween !LOL
    Joy : )

    ReplyDelete
  6. Carrie, you've done well to get this post written - as a fellow migraine sufferer I know the pain is intolerable. Seed bombing is a brilliant idea - create a Bee Highway! I've had literally hundreds of bees all summer - and hoverflies and ladybirds, very few lacewings though. Cerinthe is a good one for the bees (see my blog) and I'd be happy to send you some seeds when they're ready, just email me. Caro x

    ReplyDelete
  7. What makes me fizzle with rage - our council clears those messy wildflowers from the verges. They mow, they plough, they spray poison. But the brave flowers keep trying!

    ReplyDelete

Please leave a little nugget of happiness in the form of a comment - don't forget to put your name at the end if using 'anonymous' setting x