Today, being the first day of Meteorological Summer, I bring you the covers of the 4 seasons books.
But which is your favourite?
My favourite season is Spring (but my favourite of these books is probably Autumn)
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe
Honeysuckle, another birth flower for those born in the month of June, is also called woodbine, hold-me-tight, and fairy trumpets. Its sweetly scented blooms and twining stems symbolise love and fidelity, and its fragrance is said to bring dreams of true love. #FairyTaleTuesday
When bees get tired after long periods of flying and gathering pollen, they sometimes rest or fall asleep inside flowers.
Flowers can provide warmth, shelter, and a safe place for bees to recover before continuing their search for nectar and pollen.
Britain has lost around half its hedgerows since the Second World War. The wildlife that depended on them has followed a similar trajectory. 🌿
The old field boundary — a strip of blackthorn, hawthorn, dog rose, and elder two to five metres wide between cultivated ground — was not wasted agricultural space. It was a functioning ecological system that maintained pollinators, pest predators, and farmland birds across centuries of working land.
Each hedgerow is a nesting corridor for grey partridge and skylark, a foraging habitat for brown hares and hedgehogs, a site for solitary bee colonies, and a windbreak for the crops alongside it.
The field cultivated to its very edge gives the maximum return this season. It removes the populations of beneficial insects, farmland birds, and small mammals on which stable long-term production depended.
The field with a hedgerow yields a few percent less per cultivated hectare — but remains productive across decades without compensatory chemical inputs. The documented declines in grey partridge, lapwing, and skylark across the British agricultural landscape since the 1970s are directly linked to field consolidation and hedgerow removal.
Practical equivalents for the garden or smallholding:
- A strip of wildflower meadow at least one metre wide at the plot boundary
- A clump of nettles in a shaded corner as a habitat base for red admiral, small tortoiseshell, and peacock butterflies
- A native mixed hedge of blackthorn and hawthorn in place of post-and-wire fencing
- A section of uncut grass between rows of fruit trees
#HedgerowHabitat #FarmlandWildlife #NativeHedge #GardenWildlife
In old German belief, lily of the valley were called Maiglöckchen, “little May bells”, and sacred to Ostara, goddess of dawn and spring. Their white flowers symbolised purity, their green leaves hope. They came to embody new beginnings and earth’s renewal after winter. #folklore
Lily-of-the-valley is the birth flower of May. A legend tells of a nightingale’s enduring love for this flower, returning each year to sing to his belovèd, & falling silent as her blooms fade away. For this reason the lily-of-the-valley came to symbolise the return of happiness.
There comes a Day,
One of those glorious deep blue days,
When larks are singing and bees are humming,
And Earth gives voice in a thousand ways -
Then I, my friends, I too shall sing,
And hum a foolish little thing,
And whistle like a blackbird in the Spring. ~A.A.Milne #EarthDay
Crown shyness is a phenomenon where trees' uppermost branches avoid touching, forming a delicate web of natural negative space. This is thought to be a growth response to prevent ongoing abrasion damage and potential pest invasion.
📽:Dimitar Karanikolov