Happy New Year – and St David’s Day

Signs of Spring – crocuses in Bute Park, Cardiff, at the end of February, 2015

I wasn’t planning on posting today, until the husband asked “Why is February so short?” Had I never asked that myself? Anyway, I had to find out in a hurry, as the days were running out and today was going to be March 1, marked as our St David’s Day here in Wales.

The history of calendars is ever so complicated, so I don’t think for a minute that what I am about to say is “correct”, but it’s my interpretation of what I found online, including Wikipedia and various question-and-answer forums.

The main point

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A bunch of street greens for Lucy

Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) at the base of a postbox

Lucy Corrander, over at the Loose and Leafy blog, has a section in which she features wild plants growing on town and city streets. So this post is for her!

I see these plants most days but only rarely take pictures of them. This is Llandaff Road in Cardiff, a traffic-busy street lined with houses and small front gardens, plus a few shops and former institutions. Here are the best plants I spotted in the space of about half a mile on a late-February morning. I suppose the traffic keeps the street quite warm. Any help with the identification gratefully received…

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Grey wagtail: Just a quick one

Grey wagtail (Motacilla cinerea) on the roof, February 8, 2015

I have written before about grey wagtails – see my post from November 2013 (can it really be that long ago?) – but they are such a rarity here that I like to mark their appearances.

I only ever see grey wagtails on the neighbour’s moss-covered roof and it is usually on a clear, cold day at the beginning or end of winter. I know they

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2015 tree following 1: Meet the empress…

Any guesses about the species yet?

After much wandering in Cardiff’s Bute Park Arboretum (see my last post), I’ve decided on my tree to follow for 2015 as part of Lucy Corrander’s Loose and Leafy project.

It’s one I hadn’t seen before. It’s not a native tree, and the crown is very high so I may need to do a lot of zooming in with my camera, but it is a champion among trees, or so it says on the label kindly put there by the arboretum people…

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Looking for a tree in the arboretum

A London plane (Platanus x hispanica) in Bute Park, Cardiff, in January

Last year I kept track of a hornbeam in Llandaff Fields in Cardiff, as part of Lucy Corrander’s wonderful tree following project, revisiting it every month and totally falling in love with the specimen that chose me. In January I have been searching for a new tree for 2015.

While Llandaff Fields are full of more-or-less native species, the Bute Park Arboretum in the centre of Cardiff, behind the castle, has many exotics alongside some champion native trees. I decided to explore, as I don’t know the park very well at all.

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Ducks on ice at the Llanelli Wetland Centre

A pair of mallards (Anas platyrhynchos platyrhynchos) picking up scattered corn from the icy surface of a pond at WWT Llanelli

We always try to make a midwinter journey to the Llanelli Wetland Centre and this time it was an icy day, which made the ducks and geese eager to take the corn we offered.

It’s a bit slippery for this European goldeneye (Bucephala clangula)…

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A frosty day at Aberglasney Gardens

Icicles hang over the stone arch in this view from the Cloister Garden to the pool at Aberglasney

We love visiting Aberglasney Gardens in Carmarthenshire and it’s a bonus when the weather conditions are a bit out of the ordinary. A week ago, on probably the coldest day of winter so far, there was frost at dawn and to our delight it lasted all day, with the gardens glinting with icy diamonds everywhere. Here are some of my pictures – where I caption them “Mystery #1″ etc, I invite you to help me to identify the plants!

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