Meadow Flowers

Found , in the field , a little colony of betony:

Knapweed is a wondrous of food for the butterflies and bees in the meadow:

Bluebells throughout the woods :

Louise's photo of stream

Ramsons

The daffodils have at long last opened their trumpets adding a touch of colour in the barn field

           

The swing bridge over the Roeburn from the woods to the barn field.

Our first human visitors braved the journey to the barn this Spring arriving amidst a blizzard on March 22nd and this was the scene greeting them. The wind was so strong that snow fell horizontally and made mounds of snow drifts around the farmyard. They had to abandon their car at the Hornby junction but luckily Paul, our woodsman, just made it up the Roeburndale West road in his landrover and drove them here.

Gate looking into farmyard

Hawthorn our old horse-she is over 30- and her flock of sheep being fed in the snow in March

" If all the insects on the earth died out the human race would become extinct.....if humans died out life on the planet would flourish"......so I do all I can to protect the wildlife habitats on the farm. Here is a photo of a rotten log giving plenty to small animals and insects to be happy about. A tidy garden or any wild space will benefit from a bit of "benign neglect"....

The rain this year may have more than inconvenienced farmers, wildlife and everyone else--some of our neighbours never got their hay in--but at least some people enjoyed the River Roeburn that seemed to be in constant flood. This photo was taken from Roeburnscar Holiday Cottage on the other side of the farm to the Camping Barn. Quite a few times the Roeburn was high enough to flow over the swing bridge see below: the swing bridge before being flooded.