Spring is coming!

Yet Spring will always come, Jingle

Anticipation.....

Very strange grammar being spoken there too.

That last post was from your own resident little ray of sunshine.

We have we got the worst of the winter in front of us.

The point of the saying, "kissing' s in fashion when the gorse is in flower" is that kissing is always in fashion since gorse always has some flowers on it. Mostly.

yes I did read The Owl Service. Wrote my own version of the story too. Think Bloddauwedd much maligned.

Lovely walk today but not a sign of spring. Dunes and dune slacks thoroughly wintering. Views of the sea-covered marsh, migratory waterfowl, rain over the Llyn and snowy mountain tops. Close up there were ponies and lichen to admire. Glad we took the opportunity to get out during a lull in the wild weather.

Ariadne my children loved this book [The Owl Service] when it was a serial on tv donkey's years ago [25 years ago?]

Quick digression - sorry! Jess have you ever read "The Owl Service" by Alan Garner? It was a popular book for older, maybe late KS3 students about 20 years ago, and uses stuff from the .Mabinogion. Quite a difficult one to teach, but I liked it. Used it in my MA exams..how time flies.

Just noticed that even the "dead" basil in my herb pots is trying to grow!

I doubt that my area would have much relevance either but I will do it as well.

I'm not sure which plant to use though. The Bermuda Butttercups (Oxalis, "an invasive noxious weed") have come out since Christmas and when it's not raining they look beautiful all over the fields.

A wild Freesia flowered on 8th of Feb. last year.

Also I sad to DH in early February that it must be spring as there were teenagers canoodling on the street corners.

Yes sea level although lots further north bags it will be earlier. Have to say I got enough of that easterly wind we had last march for week after week though. Westerly winds when you are near the sea somehow feel much more enjoyable.

I'd love to join in but I doubt my area has any relevancy to a British naturescalender graph.

Still, might add in my own observations as a comparison.

Tadpoles (still couldn't get it to do frogspawn) 2013: 199 recordings on Woodland Trust naturescalendar before mine.

I've just run some of naturescalendar graphs from spring 2012. I didn't do so much recording last year for various reasons. I couldn't get the frogspawn one to run but here are three results I did run:

Silver birch budburst: there were 236 recordings of this before mine
Ox-eye daisy first flowering: 516 recordings before mine
Snowdrop first flowering: 1069 recordings before mine.

It really isn't looking as if spring comes early where I am if these indications mean anything.

We should all note our first snowdrops (wild) and daffs (wild ones!) and forgspawn on here. Then we can compare. I'd love to know if my seeming early spring really is earlier than other people's.

Hawthorn, ash, silver birch budburst would be good too.

Anyone?

Do join in, folks. It'd be fun

Certain things do seem to be early here, though not specially so. If naturescalendar statistics are anything to go by – many things (most) are later than what happens further south. Autumn comes early too or, to put it another way, summer is much shorter here than in many parts further south. I actually got The Woodland Trust naturescalendar survey to change something because they kept asking if I was sure I was seeing what I was reporting (early yellowing of silver birch leaves, for instance; I was sure and I sent photos). I argued that they had a preconceived idea of when natural things "should" happen and so they had set time limits in the survey. They've removed those limits now as they agreed that a scientific survey such as they are doing is about observing and noting what actually happens without particular expectations.

Another interesting thing we've found here is that even 30 metres altitude above sea level can make as much as two weeks' difference to when certain species flower.

You may find spring is earlier where you are now, jess, than it was when you were in MK. We found nights in Oxfordshire could be as cold as in Edinburgh and spring frosts as late. The west of Britain is generally milder than the east because of the greater influence of the Atlantic currents. You might find it breezier too. I missed fresh wind when I lived in the Oxon bit of the Thames and Cherwell valleys.

Gorse smells of coconuts. Broom of peas if i recall correctly. Scratchy is a polite understatement ffin

Gorse smells quite different to broom - and it's scratchy.

It does in the south, though. I suppose in the frozen north both the gorse and the lips are too cold to function

Definitely different - but of the same family (pea family i suppose). I saw a translation of the Mabinogion in which the magicians made a woman out of flowers. Broom was mentioned - rubbish, if in Wales it will have been gorse.
I think the meaning is, Bags of "kissing's in season when the gorse is in bloom" (Welsh version) is that if you go for a walk with your sweetheart at any time of year you will always find some gorse in bloom, not that a single bush blooms all year.
Are you sitting right next to a blast of gulf stream bags? You always have such an early spring including frog spawn etc despite being so far north.

The gorse in my garden and along the banks of the lochs here is not always in flower. It does flower for a good long time though, and is followed by the wild broom. Perhaps some people think broom is gorse. They both have yellow flowers, though it's not the same yellow when you know them as intimately as I do

Gorse is always in flower, isn't it?

Yesterday I got around to replacing the lobelia in a couple of hanging baskets with pansies. There were loads of baby lobelia coming through and the geranium in the middle is still growing. I suppose it'll eventually freeze hard enough to see them off.

You know the old saying, Bags:

When the gorse isn't blooming then kissing's out of fashion.

Gorse beginning to flower in Argyll too. As usual.