There’s a small patch of grass just outside the side door which I have always left for wild flowers.  It’s looking so pretty at present.  I do have some bulbs in there and the tulips are looking lovely among the buttercups and bluebells.  Later, there will be marguerites and then it’ll have to be cut back, once the grass has seeded, but it gives us pleasure every time we go outside for now.

The old meadow by the drive, known as the Ups and Downs, is also exceptionally pretty at this time of year.  Ten young bullocks graze it and the next field, and it’s covered with wildflowers, mostly buttercups and saxifrage.  I know there’s lady’s bedstraw and all sorts of other, less colourful wild plants there too, with mosses and lichens and liverworts on the bits where it’s almost too dry for any grass.  It’s down on the maps as Saxon and, apart from some small-scale gravel extraction, there’s no reason to think it’s ever been dug up, and this ancient grassland, worthless in monetary terms, is the most valuable part of this property, to me.  I just love it.