Home again and the garden in early June

We're back! We had a brilliant time in Spain which I will tell you about in due course - bearing in mind I still have a final post from the previous trip to share - but in the meantime, an update on what’s happening here.

We’ve both been busy since coming home two weeks ago - me facing a mountain of laundry and Keith, amongst other things, mowing as our housesitter didn't get around to it. I must admit I secretly rather liked our wildflower meadow! We do mow around the orchids anyway, but the pink Pyramidal Orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis) looked lovely in amongst the grasses. There are more and more of them every year. The photos just don't do them justice. 

He’s been getting the pool ready too and it is nearly up to the temperature that I like (hot) so hopefully I will get my first dip this week. 

What I didn't get a photo of was a white crab spider of which I noticed three, each one on an orchid flower, waiting for insects to land, such as this Five-spot Burnet moth (Zygaena species) which was enjoying the nectar. I can't give an exact Latin name as it could be the Narrow-bordered Five-spot Burnet for all I know.

Out on the verge outside the garden this Long-lipped or Ploughshare Tongue Orchid (Serapias vomeracea) has turned from one flower to three with another one nearby!

The Nectar Bar looks good every year at this time, which is its peak time.

Valerian at the front, then Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant' followed by Salvia 'Hot Lips'.

From the other end, with a Sedum, then more Nepeta (Cat Mint), Verbena bonariensis and Perovskia, with the large Salvia "Hot Lips' and Valerian beyond. This bed is really buzzing with loads of bumble bees of all different sizes, bee flies, Hummingbird Hawkmoths and butterflies too. There are tiny Skippers about and at least one is a Lulworth Skipper, which pleases me no end!

Remember the front bed after it had all been cut back a few months ago? Of course weeds have germinated....

.... but not just weeds. This is the Bay tree, with a Holly front centre! Not only that, but lots of the plants are coming back to life - even the Yew has shoots coming up, there's a complete Hydrangea plant up and the Hibiscus are shooting. It's so sad as they will all be dug up in about a month's time. (This photo is about 10 days old and the Bay is about a foot taller now!).

A new insect for the garden - a Stick Insect! K found a drowned one in the pool some years back but we've never seen a live one in France before. We saw a huge one in Australia years ago but in your own garden it's rather more exciting! I'm not sure which species it is as I don't have close enough photos - yes there are several different species in southern France - who would have known? 😀

A cropped version - click on the photo to see it larger and sharper.

Before we went away the Black Redstarts built another nest in our covered terrace in the same place as before. They made it in three or four days - quite incredible! Whilst away, our housesiter told us there was activity around the nest and sure enough, when we returned mum and dad birds were back and forwards feeding babies. After a little while we could see beaks peeking over the edge and eventually, with a lot of encouraging noise going on by the parents, we could see two fluffy babes standing on the edge of the nest. We have to move out of the way when they wanted to feed the young although I found if I stood with my back to the nest then the parents would go there. 

The first young fledged (although we didn't see, obviously) and the next day the last two or three went. We could hear the parents making a lot of noise over the next couple of days, and one evening K said the father had flown into the shed and he hoped they were not checking it out to make their next nest there. Turned out, as daddy bird was making a lot of warning noises the next morning around the shed area, then coming to the pool fence and chirping at us, there was a fledgling which had spent the night in the shed! Daddy bird was telling us this (I did wonder, so asked K to open the shed). Babe promptly got fed well by both parents then later was gone, thankfully!

Finally I just wanted to show you the difference between the 'field' across the road when we came to view the house in summer 2019, and now. Back then it was pretty much just grassland.

But now the hillside is covered in predominantly Broom, with Hawthorns, Viburnum Tinus and some other shrubs all colonising the once grassland. I don't know how it was kept as just grass before unless it was grazed by animals or somehow the grass was cut. Now the grass that is there is so long because there is a thick thatch underneath meaning you sink in a long way - it's really hard to walk in there and there are lots of low growing brambles as well. Shame as I had envisaged myself in that meadow stalking butterflies - though thankfully I don't see many butterflies there which is good (for me!).

As I type this removals guys are packing up the basement as 'The Works' start next Monday! The drilling should take about four days, then the following week we have the tilers here for two weeks retiling the garage, workroom and spare bedroom. Finally the following week come the guys to do the concrete 'pavement' around three sides of the house so that the rain drains away from the foundations. The painting and decorating will take place in two year's time if nothing has moved/cracked during that time. Wish us luck! 😁

Hope you are all well and I will get to your blogs to see how you have been getting on soon! 


P.S. The birds are back checking out the nest again - less than a week after the little ones fledged!!!

Wildflowers and Orchids with Birding Languedoc May 2024 - Part 1 Moussoulens

We are going back to May now, as I didn't have time to write about this outing before going away. This was one of the wildflower day trips with Birding Languedoc, but was predominantly about orchids, lead by a guy who took us on an orchid day last year.

We were lucky on this day as both places we went to were within half an hour of home! The first was just outside of Moussoulens, across the plain from us on the edge of the Montagne Noir. This was a large area of heathland, mostly grass and flowers with some trees around the edges of the areas where we walked. We were searching for a specific species of orchid, which we eventually found, and of course, found many other interesting plants as well.

The morning started damp, gloomy and chilly, but eventually the sun started to come out and many flowers opened up and what looked like an unpromising site at first turned out to be very special after all.

There were absolutely tons of Long-lipped Tongue Orchids everywhere.

The following are all species we call 'Rockrose", but completely different, proving how important Latin names are! Clockwise from top left: Grey-leaved Cistus (Cistus albidus), Spotted Rockrose (Tuberaria guttata), White Rockrose (Helianthemum apenninum), Yellow Rockrose (Fumana procumbens)

The White Rockrose was growing through Common Thyme (Thymus vulgaris), which is the grey bushy type we see most often on the garrigues. However in this place, there were two species of thyme - see the following photo for the other species.

Clockwise from top: Quaking Grass (Briza media), I think this is one of the Star-of-Bethlehems (Ornithogalum orthophyllum) and lastly, Creeping Thyme (Thymus serpyllum), a thyme with many common names.

This Cream-spot Tiger moth (Arctia villica) was sleeping on a leaf, waiting for the weather to warm up. They have amazing colours underneath!

A path lined with Grey-leaved Cistus, one of my favourite spring flowering plants down here.

Keith, Niall, Pog and Ian - Niall and Ian were our leaders for the day.

There was a patch in the heath with lots of this really pretty little plant. It wasn't until at home and using PlantNet that I discovered that it is actually a broomrape, which are parasitic plants! As it has green leaves, it doesn't really look like one, but it is known as hemiparasitic as whilst it photosynthesises, it also takes nutrients from the roots of other plants. It is Mediterranean Lineseed (Bellardia trixago).

This is another plant that had us confused - only to find out it is actually Holm Oak (Quercus ilex) in flower! The young leaves of this oak are not holly-like like some of the older leaves are, so none of us looking at the tree noticed any of them.

A beetle on a Verbascum flower.

There was a large patch of these grasses which I think are Stipa, possibly pennata.

The following are some of the orchids we saw in Moussoulens.

Woodcock Orchid (Ophrys scolopax).

Long-lipped Tongue Orchid (Serapias vomeracea).

Yellow Bee Orchid (Ophrys lutea).

This was the orchid that we were mainly searching for as it is much rarer than the others that were around this area. This is Ophrys bertolonii subsp. magniflora, which doesn't have an English name as far as I know. Isn't it beautiful?

There were also Man, Lizard and Early Spider Orchids, but I didn't bother taking photos of them - how blasé am I, with these species growing in my lawn!

I'll continue the rest of the day in another post.

Wildflowers and orchids on a hillside in Laurac

We were lucky to learn from Facebook of a good orchid spot only about 15 minutes from home, so we shot off there on 2nd June to have a look. It really was a fantastic place and I clocked up another two orchids which I'd never seen before (that's not hard at the moment really!).

I was most hoping to find the Pink Butterfly Orchid (Anacamptis papilionacea) and we were given directions as to where they were in relation to the radio masts at the top of the hill. We only found a few of them, but there were literally hundreds of the Long-lipped Tongue Orchids (Serapias vomeracea) everywhere we looked which was just magnificent, interspersed with other orchids or wildflowers. Although another 15 mins inland from where we live there were still quite a lot of Mediterranean garrigue plants flowering here, or coming into bud. 

Keith at the top of the hill with dozens of Tongue Orchids in the foreground - the same as the ones in the photo above around the Pink Butterfly Orchid. The white flower is Lotus dorycnium from the pea family and I refer to it further down as the larval host plant of a particular moth.

There were also some beautiful Bee Orchids (Ophrys apifera); some were pink and some white. They are very similar to the Woodcock Orchid (Ophrys scolopax) but I have learned how to tell the difference between the two using this link.

This is an Ophrys magniflora, very beautiful but I only found this one which was starting to go over. It is endemic to this department, the Aude.

Looking from the hillside towards the Corbieres hills in the far distance.

Amongst the wildflowers was quite a lot of thyme, as well as other Mediterranean plants, including Lavender.

In this shot there is Curry Plant (Helichrysum Italicum) in the foreground, in bud, plus the white flowers are Lotus dorycnium which I talk about a bit further down. If you click on these photos you will see them much larger and see far more detail.

All over this hillside I was surprised to see this beautiful blue flower which is called Aphyllanthes monspeliensis, usually seen all over the rocky coastal garrigues. It's an unusual plant, with no leaves as such, just long stems rather like chives with flowers on the end of some of them.

There were a fair few butterflies about but absolutely loads of Burnet moths of the Zygaena genus - mostly Six-spot and this one below which is Zygaena lavandulae; though I have only just learnt the common name I have forgotten it already! It's not the Lavender Burnet, despite its name! I've only seen it before close to the coast (about 1hr 25 mins from here) so it was interesting to see it inland, though it is in its natural habitat in terms of larval foodplant and rocky flowery hillsides. In fact one of the larval foodplants is Lotus dorycnium, which grows all over the slope opposite my house, but so far I've only seen Six-spot Burnet at home. In this photo there are two of them, one showing its underside and one the topside.

One more pink Bee Orchid to finish off!

I won't have time to write about our recent trip up to the mountains before we leave on Sunday for Provence (it's all go here!). Let me just sum it all up in one word. INCREDIBLE! I will need to do about four posts so I'll get to it eventually. 😀

Mt Aigoual and Mt Lozere

After visiting the Cirque de Navacelles, we headed north towards Mt Aigoual, the highest point in the Gard department (on border with Lozere dept) at 1565m, up in the southern Massif Central. I took some photos with my phone as we were driving along.

Up on the top of Mt Aigoual it was noticeably cooler, not a bad thing after the day's heat! There is a meteorological observatory up here which was built in 1894. The museum wasn't open on this day, but we didn't have a lot of time to spare anyway, as it was already nearly 6pm when we got here.

I think this view is looking south towards the Med.

The hillside was covered in thyme - lovely to see it again as it is flowering from March on the garrigue by the coast! There were lots of Small Tortoiseshells and the occasional Painted Lady, as in this photo (two S. Tortoiseshells and a P. Lady in the middle).

View looking the other way - I think this was north, ish.

I often take photos of info boards to read later, and despite the museum being closed, there was plenty of info on the four boards. Here's a map showing where we are and also our destination the next day, Mt Lozere. It also shows where Millau is and the different Grands Causses where we were before, with info underneath in English. You'll have to click to view the map larger, of course!

It says that the Clouded Apollo is found here, though we didn't see one. How you would know though if a mostly white butterfly flew by, I don't know. I need to see the markings.

A final photo from the day on our way to our campsite at Florac.

The next day we headed to the Mt Lozere area, also in the Cevennes National Park. I think this is the high peak, but I wasn't going to walk all the way up there to see if there was an info board.... 😁

It was all change from the mostly chalklands we had been in before. Here the soil was acidic and covered in bilberries (native blueberries with purple flesh). I remember picking them with my brother when we were teenagers on a holiday in the Haute Loire department, and bringing pounds of them home with us. I stewed it all up and we made delicious ice lollies from the juice.

Below is a lovely little mountain spring with moss covered rocks. 

After Mt Lozere we were headed in the direction of the Ardeche, down on much flatter lands beside the Ardeche river. Again it was a very hot day, so the walk I had originally planned we ditched, preferring to head to the campsite and chill out.

Above and below are where we stopped for lunch.

A bit of luck to see a Heath Fritillary (Melitaea athalia) again! I think I have seen one in recent years, so it wasn't a lifer, but even so, there are not many fritillaries that I have seen more than once or twice!

This lovely moth landed on the windscreen as we were driving along and stayed there about five minutes. I was very lucky with the ID, as by chance I saw one posted somewhere else so I know it is a Speckled Yellow (Pseudopanthera macularia)!

I don't have any more photos, but when we arrived at the campsite beside the river, it was absolutely boiling hot and the campsite was so much fuller than the others we had stayed at. Apparently many Germans come here and return year after year. Our campsite was close to the town of Vallon Pont d'Arc, a very touristy area close to the Ardeche gorges and the famous rock bridge, the Pont d'Arc. That's all to come in the next post!