Wild flower meadow

Unusually, all quiet on the trail cameras last night, just the very briefest glimpse of a badger's backside on one camera, and one single sheep on the other.  Where has all the wildlife gone!?  The few nuts I'd scattered on the ground were still there in the morning, untouched.  Badgers usually seek them out no matter where I put them.  The previous night I did hear a fox barking not far from my bedroom window.  It sounded so close I thought I might see it, so at 3am I looked out.  Despite some pale moonlight there was nothing to see and nothing on the trail cameras the following day.  Frustrating, but within the next day or two a second Browning camera should arrive so I will be able to spread the cameras over a wider area with more chance of catching whatever might be around.  

In theory at least!

In the meantime, here is a glimpse of my latest "project," if you can call it that.  We are leaving an area at the front of the house uncut to see what wildflowers grow.  There are the usual buttercups and lots of very pretty white flowers whose name I unfortunately don't know and haven't yet identified.  Plenty of thistles too, but I am trying to kill these off as they are huge and quite ugly if left to grow untamed, and we have plenty of these on the outside fields for the birds, bees and butterflies to enjoy.  I am gradually transplanting a few foxgloves, Welsh poppies and Fox and Cubs from other areas of the garden into the new "wildlife" patch to get a bit more variety.  So far everything I have moved has taken, despite some of it already coming out in flower.

Hopefully during the summer I will be making a wildlife pond to go in this area.  The ground here is naturally wet most of the time so it seems the obvious place to make a pond.  There is another natural pond close to the house, but it dries out completely in the summer months and is choked full of yellow iris, very hard to see any frogs, toads or newts that might be around in there and virtually no water in the summer.  Watch this space to see any progress with the pond - once I can find the time to get started!