Wednesday 6 May 2009

More weeds and new neighbours

A couple more weeds from the garden. The first one is the bane of my life, it is everywhere, I dig it out as fast as I can but if you leave a trace of it in the ground it is back.

Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens)

I leave the the cow parsley to do it's own thing in some parts of the garden. It's umbels have such lace like delicacy and attract beneficial insects such as hoverflies to the garden. You do have to be careful as it is very invasive if you don't control it a bit.

Cow Parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris)


We have some new neighbours in the field at the bottom of the garden, the sheep have moved out and the cows have moved in. This little calf is only a couple of weeks (if that) old. One of the local farmers puts them on the field over the summer. It is great as it keeps the grass cropped short which in turn is good for the Barn owls (not good for voles).


We are off out tonight to a concert at Peterborough Cathedral in aid of the Great Fen Project www.greatfen.org which should be good, I will give a critical report on my next update.

6 comments:

  1. My lawn is full of buttercup. I used not to worry about it too much, but I am getting slightly more annoyed about it, because it's spreading into the beds and coming up in the middle of plants. How does it manage to take such a hold? It's as if it's been concreted into the ground. I am rather envious of your cow parsley though.

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  2. I'm always amused at posh garden plant sales when Anthriscus sylvestris is for sale! Have a good time tonight.

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  3. Photos are wonderful as always. Enjoy your day

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  4. I have experienced the invasiveness of buttercup. The flowers sure are pretty, though! I enjoyed your photos.

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  5. The Cow Parsley blooms look pretty. I guess it must be painful to pull them out when you do, but we have no other choice!
    'It's great to have cows,' they say. They're live grass mowers, offer milk for food, and also manure for your plants! What a wonderful creature created by lord!

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  6. I'm all in a muddle about the cow parsleys, sheep parsleys, Queen Anne's laces etc. I'd thought cow parsley has a densely packed umbel - cow-pat like only white; and I haven't seen any Queen Anne's lace that is as lacey as I think it should be recently. Very pretty flower in photo.

    Lucy

    P.S. In some ways this plant gives me the horrors . . . of when, as a new immigrant from London into rural Essex, I was put into a school competition for identifying wild flowers and floundered on precisely these niceties!

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Thank you for your comments.