Cats ears and poppies.

The past week has brought mild and calm days. As with the earlier days of July we’ve had our fair share of rain, but generally the weather gods have timed it right, dry days with spells of overnight rain. The sun is still shy, mostly hiding his face behind a grey blanket of cloud but now and then we’ve had T-shirt spells of bright blue sky.

As is usual at this time of year it’s all change in the garden. It will soon be a time of late summer hot colours, courtesy of  hemerocallis and crocosmia and others. A kniphofia, fiery fred, has got in early, pushing up bright candles of hot orange. Opium poppies are popping up here and there, most come from seed collected from a friends garden but there’s one, the marmite poppy, that we inherited. It’s nicknamed the marmite poppy because we can’t quite work out whether we like it or not, a powder puff of red petals that the jury is still out on.

Of the other plants that have come into flower in recent days, salvia nemorosa caradonna and ligularia rocket are two favourites. Both throw out spires of colour, blueish purple for the salvia and yellow for rocket. The ligularia flowers are borne on tall dark stems, as height is always dodgy for here, they’re discreetly tied to the top stones of a dyke. The salvia is borderline for this neck of the woods, winter wet is always a danger, but so far so good.

In the meadow, dryer areas of ground are lit with the flowers of cats ear, a member of the hawkbit family. The flowers are heliotropes, slowly turning their heads from East to West as they track the motion of the sun across the sky. Three years ago, after we cleared the meadow of thatch and dead grass, these were the first to appear, dormant seeds springing to life and carpeting the ground with gold.

In the meadows damper spots, marsh thistles are proving to be bee magnets, they’re tall and slightly gangly biennials whose low starfish shaped first years growth, when accidentally knelt on, is just prickly enough to pierce your jeans. They’re a favourite food source for the rare and declining Great yellow bumblebee and because of that, despite being quite invasive, they’ll always get a free pass.

Two other damp lovers that are in flower at the moment, are wild angelica and marsh willowherb. They’re chalk and cheese. The angelica flower heads are large and showy, the size of a small cauliflower. In contrast the willowherb flowers are tiny and easily overlooked, soft pink blooms, no bigger than a hat pin head, are held aloft on delicate stems.

In the wider landscape, large flocks of juvenile Starlings are being seen. The birds have left the care of their parents and are counted by the hundred, foraging along the shoreline just below the meadow. Every now and then they’ll lift off en masse and settle on the hydro wires that string across the moor, packing themselves tightly together, like mussels on an old anchor rope.

The calmer days have brought gentle tides. Beach combing here is a given but at the moment there’s little chance of any new driftwood. Harder timber or softwoods not long in the sea, once dried for a year, are a handy source of fuel. Gnarled and silvered pieces, given a beauty by sea and salt air, sooner or later find a space in the garden. Despite the Summer dearth, on walks that take you alongside the sea or across the cliff tops, geos and shorelines are always checked, just in case.