Three firsts, one bad two good.

Three firsts today! I have not had sheep on the field this year for a number of reasons. I was unhappy about the farmer not keeping his sheep off when I needed the grass in the autumn. I was concerned that sheep eat young ragwort and you never get to see the flowers to know if you have any on the land. And I thought it would be better for the horses if the field was allowed to rough off, with lower sugars.

Since we finally had some sun again today, when I got home from work I walked the field with a back-hoe to dig out the thistles that have begun to grow. I found three firsts:

First number one - bad - ragwort. One small plant with yellow flowers right in the middle of the field. Much less than might have been expected, given how it has spread to the hills with global warming, via the verge grass cutters courtesy of the Council :-(

First number two - nesting larks! Three lots of parents trying to lure me away from their babies. I didn't try to find the nests, it was just lovely to see the adult birds, we've never had them here on our field before.

First number three - harebells and cowslips and various other wild flowers that I can't name. The sheep normally eat them or they fertilize the ground too much for them to grow. Wild hill flowers need poor soil to grow. I love harebells, they are such beautiful delicate little blue bells. (Quite different from bluebells, which are lovely, but more like hyacinth, whereas harebells are more like tiny drooping tulips, or very fragile snowdrops.)

In addition, it was noticeable that we don't have any daisies this year and we hardly have any buttercup. The sheep don't eat buttercup and it is very clearly not there this year. Buttercup comes from a family which have high plant steroid levels which are implicated in laminitis. I can't help wondering if Scooby and Jazz's grass sensitivity were related to the buttercup at all. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

C.