Wild flowers

With the old garden having been thoroughly trashed over the last 9 months it's no suprise that it's quite literally gone to seed. When the garden temporarily turned into something resembling a quarry to allow the builders to construct the retaining walls, the topsoil was piled up safely on one side. Once they'd backfilled the clay etc the builders then spread the topsoil, mixed up with turf and a collection of the old weeds that used to pass as a 'lawn'.

While concentrating on the house, with the odd foray onto the veg patch, we've not been able to do much with the garden so the grass and much increased weeds are flourishing. We have a great collection of poppies yet didn't have any before, in true Flanders-style now the trenches are gone! Thistles, bindweed and a myriad of other weeds that have been dormant in the soil have now sprouted up and are making the most of the neglected garden.

Along with the poppies it's good to see a range of native flowers appearing to compensate for the mess, even the buttercups despite them technically being weeds. The best find so far, which was narrowly missed by the digger judging by the tracks a few inches away, is the clump of orchids. Okay so they're only Common Spotted, but they're still a protected species and are spectacular flowers. Finds like this help to offset the annoyance at the amount of weeds that have appeared.