The last days of May brought fine and settled weather. Days of blue skies and light winds. We spent long spells in the garden, Jacqui catching up with weeding and boxing up plants for customers on mainland while I got on with a new project, replacing a front garden bed with a cobble lined pond. We never get the heat that other parts of the UK sometimes have to endure but even with an ever present breeze off the sea, it was T-shirt weather, warm enough to cast a clout*.
In the garden it seems that new flowers are appearing almost hourly. At this time of year it’s truly hard to keep up. A plant that does really well here is valeriana pyrenaica, the Capons tail grass or Pyrenean valerian, one of those fuss free plants that is happy in sun or shade, either damp or dry. All it needs, because of its height and spread, is a couple of discreet stakes.
In a shady spot, beneath two sycamores, a valeriana grows alongside spires of blue Cammasia, a member of the asparagus family. Cammasia’s hail from North America and in the wild they’re a native of damp meadows. They need a moist but free draining soil and although they aren’t quite as forgiving of location as the valeriana, they’re still a perfect fit for this neck of the woods. Their flowers are short lived, lasting a week or two at the most and are always worth the wait.
For me, at this time of year blue is a favourite colour, along with the cammasia’s the blues in the garden come mostly from catmints and siberian iris, the latter is yet another damp lover, but there’s also an easily overlooked blue, the forget-me-not like flowers of Brunnera silver heart, a plant that is really grown for its foliage and whose tiny flowers are perhaps a little bit under appreciated.
Another blue, that has taken a few years to get established, is veronica gentianoides, the Gentian speedwell. A lover of damp free draining soil, it really should have raced away here but is only now starting thicken and spread. Its spires of pale flowers are the colour of bleached denim, they bow to the rain and are unforgiving of the wind, perhaps Orkney is too harsh for it but now it’s established, it’s definitely a keeper.
As would be hoped for at this time of year, the garden is abuzz with bees. Of the species we have in Orkney, one of the most seen is the aptly named Common carder, a ginger yellow fur-ball of a bumblebee that nests on the ground amongst thick vegetation. In the wild clovers and vetches are a favourite food source, in the garden, for this week at least, their top of the menu choice is Geranium phaeum.
As some plants are flowering other are already starting to fade. The flowers of honesty, at their best a few weeks ago, are already turning to seed. Like their flowers, the seed pods are best when backlit by a low sun, translucent and gold with each seed a tadpole silhouette. By autumn the pods will be silver-white and paper dry, the silver dollars that give the plant its common name.
Beyond the garden, out on the bay, small groups of Eider drakes are being seen, a sure sign that females are incubating hidden clutches of eggs. Their job over for the year, the boys leave the girls to it and pass the time motoring around on the water, a month or two ago they’d be driving each other away, fired up with the desire to find a mate, now they’re all bonhomie, past disputes forgotten, at least until next spring.
In June, on the shore of the bay, harbour seals will start to pup. Unlike their larger grey seal cousins their pups can swim at a day old, an advantage for colonies that pup on sandbanks, where twice a day the nursery is covered with water. At home they pup at the base of the low cliff that falls away from the meadow. At high tide, when the water laps at the base of the short, but vertical cliff, adults and pups alike will often stay put, bending like bananas, keeping heads and flippers out of the shallow water. They do this to regulate their body temperature – thermoregulation. Until I googled it one day I’d always assumed that they had just got comfy, and being quite laid back animals, really couldn’t be bothered to move, high tide or not.
* “Ne’er cast a clout ’till May be out”, slang from my home county of Yorkshire, “Don’t put away your coat before the month of May is over” 🙂
A garden in Orkney 