Recently I asked Potato to construct me a list of walks where I might find some of the plants on the ‘Sixty Wildflowers to Find‘ list. He obligingly did so, naming Ferry Meadows as one of the best places to find many of them. This is all well and good, but it is within walking distance of my home and was the inspiration for the project in the first place, so I told him to take it off. Which, being an obliging little potato, he obviously did.
Anglesey Abbey having yielded none of the list at all, we did one of our standard ‘walk and talk’ business meetings, which is without doubt where I get all my best ideas for the gym; he’s a master at just letting me ramble on and asking the odd pointed question until my brain suddenly fits 16 pieces of rubble into something that will work. And the walks are important; we’ve been together over 30 years now and been through some testing times but if you don’t put into a marriage, nothing good happens. These are times when we make time to talk and listen and it’s a skill you have to practice. And the flower project is really just another part of that – a reason to get out of the house, learn something together and have really positive reasons to make time for one another. You can be young and laugh at the funny things older people do with their marriages but as I’m discovering only too quickly now, being older comes around much faster than you think and I’d like to spend it happy, with my best friend and filling it with memories. What you don’t realise when you are young is that while those slightly weird older couples are doing their quirky little missions at whatever it is they’ve decided to have fun with, they are laughing at themselves too. And that’s okay.
Anyway. Ferry Meadows obligingly said “took me off the list, did you? No problem; hold my lemon and ginger tea” – and served up an impressive 7 of the list straightaway, as well as a sizeable heap of things that aren’t on the list and are now taking up space on a whole new ‘apparently we are collecting these as well‘ page.
I’m deliberately making the art in this blog, which is AI drawn because I have zero artistic skills at all, whimsical and old-fashioned – I guess I’m wanting to make a kind of Peter and Jane book of my life now. I’m no photographer either but I’ll put the sources for each walk into a little frame of photos from now on I think and a drawn version of the walk’s finds as the main image.
Ferry Meadows was a joy actually – Cuckoo’s Pint, Yarrow, Dandelion, Cinquefoil, Teasel, Knapweed and Ragwort. Each of these is going to get their own post along the way but I’m going to do that as I add the next part to the project for each plant. In the meantime, thanks for the perfect start Ferry Meadows and the inevitable side quest that all the beautiful and abundant hedgerows is going to produce 😀
