hogweed it’s June. the cow-parsley is over, and hogweed is rampant in the hedgerows. cow-parsley is delicate and lines the lanes with clouds of lacy white flowers. hogweed I love for its sculptural, dramatic stems, its exuberant, sharply cut and patterned leaves, the plate-size flowers of varying colour, shape and size – but I have a love-hate relationship with it. in my garden, even in the wild-flower section, I won’t tolerate it. although I cut some from the hedgerow and put the stems in water in my house this week (it doesn’t smell very nice, by the way), in the spring I can be seen crouching with a jar of glucophosphate industrial strength weed killer, and a paintbrush, dabbing the nasty concoction onto the leaves of those hogweed plants which infest my wild-flower plot. I am cheered in my pursuit of hogweedless-ness by the fact that it is a biennial plant, and the seeds only stay active in the ground for five years. so eventually I may be able to get rid of them, as long as I am vigilant, and pluck any flower stems from those plants which escape the glucophosphate. bees love them, no doubt attracted by the strong smell. I foolishly allowed them in, not recognising that the hundreds of seeds which scattered from the wonderful umbellifer seedheads would sprout the next year into a jungle of huge hairy leaves which crowded out all the more delicate flowers and grasses I was trying to grow. a wild flower garden is the best thing to have in a drought. although the ground is hard as iron, the plants are flowering and the grasses have graceful seed heads. there are ox-eye daisies, yellow rattle, ladies bedstraw, plantains, sorrels and several different grasses. this small heath butterfly is sunning itself on a daisy head, pausing before flying onto the purple knapweed flowers. there aren’t as many butterflies as I thought there would be by now, no influx of painted ladies – the spanish bad weather probably prevented them – and very few of the aristocrat butterflies – peacock, red admirals and so on .. today I have a biscuit firing, and good news about the firing of my spanish cono. Antonio sent me an email – the kiln god must like you, he wrote, your tinaja has come out perfectly – and sent this photo of the kiln. my pot is the one in the second row with the gap in front. Post navigation sunshine and rainsoundscape One Comment Nice. Yes some pretty flowers in the field are weeds in the garden! 🙂 Reply Leave a ReplyCancel reply This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.