May 2026 followed on from a lengthy, sunny, dry spell at the end of April, and with a couple of warm days, many more plants quickly sprang into leaf and flower around the garden.

Even if the sunny days had left us, and we had a little much-needed rain. It developed into a benign and quite cool start to the month, with many dry days, but often very chilly nights and cool Northerly winds. The garden has looked stunning.

A consequence was that many of the Clematis montana and Rhododendron lasted in flower for much longer than normal – typically strong sunshine and high temperatures curtail their flowering.

This YouTube captures what the dawn chorus can be like at this time of the year:

One of our biggest issues has been massive acorn germination after last year’s enormous crop. It’s been a huge effort trying to hoik them out, and we fear multiple follow-on waves of seedlings in the weeks ahead.

The lower hay meadow has been a mass of Lousewort this year in early May, and the first orchids began to flower, albeit on short stems, around May 10th.

We had mixed weather for our May opening weekend on 16th/17th, but plenty of lovely visitors.

With the added drama of a swarm leaving one of our colonies mid-morning on the Sunday and settling out as they often do from this ‘hive’ onto a trunk of one of the spiral apple trees. Since we have no need for a new colony, we called Sandy, who arrived asap with Alan, and together they made a valiant attempt to capture most of the bees, through the rest of the day, returning at dusk to take the bees away.

I could also point out a pristine Grey Dagger moth, which I’d spotted on the wall of the cottage, and as is their want, stayed motionless throughout the day.

We’d talked about putting some text onto the concrete slab which has stayed propped up against the cowshed wall for years, becoming gradually framed by a self-sown plant.

After a couple of tweaks, we have something we’re both happy with.