Skip to main content

I've become a verge warrior

Actually, I have.  See here :

http://www.plantlife.org.uk/roadvergecampaign

This is what the road looks like at the end of the drive, at the moment.
Where there should be billowing clouds of cow parsley, beautiful and dreamy in the month of May, instead we have ZIPPO.  To say I am angry and upset would be the understatement of the decade.  I am raging.  I have emailed East Lothian Council, Highways, and sent them photos.  I haven't received a reply yet, but, like my mother before me back in the 1960s when Hampshire County Council repeatedly got it in the neck, I am on a mission.

The decision to cut the verges at this time of year is governed, I understand, by the fact that this is a bit of downtime for the farmers and their workers.  They are waiting for stuff to grow in the fields, so having been awarded the cutting contracts by the council, they get their big machines out and destroy the countryside.  They are supposed to cut to a depth of one metre and at an angle.  If you log on to the Plantlife website you can read how the cut should be done, and more importantly, when.  If you are fond of my blog, please do this for me and 'sign' their petition (well, not for me but for the precious plants which give food and cover for our bees, butterflies, birds, insects and wild animals, and bring beauty to our environment).  It can only do good.  To cut at this time of the year is madness.  They are cutting down flowers and grasses while they are in blooming, or about to flower, and so the plants cannot set their seed.  Chances are they won't be there next year.  We don't need a neat and tidy countryside.  (Incidentally I do, of course, acknowledge that the sight lines at junctions and on bends, etc., need to be cut, for road safety).

This is what we should be looking at in May.

I am sure I will have more to say on the subject in due course!  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

In a vase on Monday - colour

The intense colours in my vase this week come from nasturtiums, sweetpeas and a single glorious zinnia! Their beauty and love of life speak for themselves and need no further words from me! Enjoy!

Found items IAVOM

I am on holiday on the Inner Hebridean island of Colonsay. It is my happy place. Thoughts of Colonsay rattle around in my head each and every day I am not here! I haven't got a vase to share this week but some lovely things I have found over the past few days, which are just as beautiful as a vase of flowers! I hope you agree! Here are some leaves of giant rhododendrons, growing in the outer gardens of Colonsay House. Some skeleton leaves of magnolia. The dried stem of a kelp seaweed. A couple of conkers (can never resist those!), and a branch heavily populated by a number of lichens. The air on Colonsay is so clean that lichens flourish here!

Colonsay postcards - on arrival

The first thing I do, once we have unpacked our car, which has been groaning with all the stuff we need for a week's stay in the holiday cottage, is head for the outer gardens of Colonsay House. It is a place of wonder for me! I particularly love the leaves of the giant rhododendrons. There are many different varieties, all planted in the early 1930s. The outer gardens are generally overgrown, having had little tending over the decades. That makes them even more magical! The old woodmill falls apart a little more every year, but that's fine by me because I love corrugated iron and especially if it's rusted! And of course the bees. Colonsay's beekeeper, Andrew Abrahams, has one of his apiaries on the edge of the pine wood. So lovely - the hum of busy bees and the heady smell of the pines. We are here - finally! Delayed by four months by the wretched virus, but now I am on holiday! Hooray!