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Tuesday 10 June 2014

Pembrokeshire in Bloom



 The roads through Ceredigion have hedges filled with flowering laburnums at this time of year but in coastal Pembrokeshire these are replaced by flower-filled banks.

















 By the road-sides, on cliff-tops and along pathways, everywhere we went seemed covered in flowers - mainly thrift and sea-campion but with bluebells, daisies, foxgloves, sheep's bit scabious and others I couldn't name scattered among them.





































It rather makes me wish our Derbyshire dry stone walls had such a wonderful display of wild flowers.













Tuesday 3 June 2014

Laburnum Hedges of Ceredigion


 This time of year, at home in Derbyshire, the hedges are covered in white hawthorn blossom but driving back from our Spring Bank holidays in Pembrokeshire I've discovered a different hedgerow blossom - laburnum flowers.











 Not just one or two in gardens, but almost everywhere along the roads from Aberystwyth down to Cardigan the hedgerows are filled with bright sunshiny yellow.


I wonder why there are so many here but none that I've seen elsewhere. Does anyone know?









Note - the comment below led me to do some hunting around on the web, and I found a different tale about the origins of laburnum in Welsh hedgerows. Woodworker Roni Roberts quotes a tale that the trees were fencing posts which 'struck' and grew.
However they arrived, they're the most beautiful hedges I've seen