July 18 Meadow Picnic - save the date!

MABLEY MEADOW SUMMER PICNIC!
On Sunday 18 July, join us for The Big Lunch in the Mabley Green Community Meadow. Bring some food, a blanket and everyone you know to the meadow from 1pm for an afternoon of fun activities and good old-fashioned neighboury-ness among our spectacular wildflowers.

Go on a flower safari, help build a bird house, join the Mabley Green Users Group and get to know about all the different and amazing volunteer groups in our area.

OR just lie back in the long grass and eat cakes.

More details will be coming soon!

A gratuitous BEFORE and AFTER

Yes, we're still only part-way through the meadow's growing season. And yes, mother nature has played a pretty important part. But it seemed like a good time to take a moment and give ourselves a much deserved pat on the back FOR TURNING THIS:

INTO THIS:

Well done everyone. We're awesome.

Bloomin' marvelous

There's still plenty more on the way, but our wildflowers are opening up their buds and laying on a banquet for the bees. Poppies are starting to add vivid oranges, yellows and reds to the thick carpet of green. Pink and blue Cornflowers are peeping out here and there. And Fairy Toadflax is filling in some of the gaps with sprays of purple, pink and soft yellow. And this is only the beginning!

Here they come!

Hot off the heels from the last post, our meadow plants are bracing themselves to bloom. Any day now!

First flowers!

The annual plants have been growing thick and fast lately, but flowers and buds had been frustratingly absent. Until today that is! We have not one but TWO flowers on the meadow. Our first ones ever! And now that these ones have paved the way, there'll be loads more coming soon. So keep your eyes peeled.

Like a bee in clover

Banging on about why leaving grass to grow is so worthwhile has been a bit of a running theme on this blog lately. But there are a few more posts in the subject yet! The latest success story is our clover, which started flowering in the last week or so and attracted another welcome guest: bumblebees. The flowers have been buzzing with them. And that's just the hors d'oeuvre. With a bit more sun, the main course of meadow flowers should be served up to our flying friends in a couple of weeks!

Carder Bee

White Tailed Bumblebee

Another White Tailed Bumblebee

Good news. Swiftly followed by bad news.

So the good news is, our Comfrey is doing a great job at attracting insects to the meadow. It's covered in aphids and ladybirds. The bad news I'm pretty sure they're the Harlequin Ladybirds that caused such a stir in the media last year. It's a bit unclear what to do about this (if anything) - if you have some advice, get in touch!

Another growth spurt!

Despite how it may have seemed over the bank holiday weekend, it's actually been an incredibly dry spring. Honest! Which has meant the annual plants have been struggling a little to get started. But after a deluge like the one we had a few days ago, it's amazing to see how quickly our young plants take advantage, turning that water into bigger leaves and new shoots. They've been rocketing up in the last week. A couple more rain spells like that and we'll be in business. Well, we'll have budding flowers. Which isn't 'business', exactly. But you know what I mean.