On Tuesday, during our hedgerow car meanderings, I also collected a selection of wild flowers…
When I was about 10 years old there was a summer holiday project to collect, label and stick into a book a selection of wild flowers.
I looked forward to getting on with the project all Summer and then, rather typically, I suddenly realised that I only had about 4 days to get it done before going back to school!
I went round to a friend’s house and we collected flowers together…( she told me there were loads down a little path called ‘The Tinker Tank’…I don’t know why I’ve always remembered that ).
I loved it, and then felt rather foolish that I hadn’t worked on the project over the whole Summer, as I could have collected LOADS…and maybe even ones that no-one else had collected (…that’s always important to a 10 year old girl).
…but some of those flowers which I collected and named really stuck in my memory…wild campion, vetch, scarlet pimpernel…
I think I’ve always wanted to catch up on, or rather extend that school project, and now with various books of late grandparents and an iphone handy, I seem to be getting on with it…and I find photos of the plants a much more satisfying record, than pressed flowers ever were to me…
So here are some of my Summer wild flowers so far:
( this was really tricky to find on the web, although it seems to be a relation of Lapsana… )
I’m always cautious of this plant, as one year our whole family had to pull up an entire field of the stuff ( from the roots ) as it’s poisonous to horses and cattle…
( …and the photographer’s companion! )