The Countryside in June

The hawthorn (May) blossoms are now turning pink with age in all but the coolest situations , where they came out late, and clipped hawthorn hedges are producing masses of young red shoots which we used to eat as children under the name of 'Bread and Cheese'. The oak trees, latest to become fully clothed, look magnificent in their natural woodland, having almost translucent fresh green leaves, with those at the end of a branch having a pretty pink tinge to them. Young seeds and berries hang from most other trees; long green ash 'keys', double winged sycamore 'helicopters', 'fronds' of elm seeds, tiny prickly beech 'nuts', small green hawthorn berries and even tinier holly berries.

_{Young Sycamore Seeds}

If the weather has been very wet (which it has!!), you may be lucky enough to find early oyster fungi, and even luckier to find the yellow/orange 'Chicken of the Woods' bracket fungus. They should be blanched for a few minutes in boiling water, and then be used in any recipe which calls for chicken chunks!! Try coating in breadcrumbs and frying.

_Honeysuckle

Frothy creamy white blossoms of elder are replacing the May blossom, and in gardens and hillier areas, the mountain ash (rowan) is blooming too.

_{Immature Beech Nuts}

On ponds and lakes the young ducklings, goslings, cootlings (my word!) and cygnets all dabble happily after their mothers, and lambs, once thin and frolicky, have taken on the serious job of eating and become quite plump and staid, whilst their dams appear much thinner now that their wool had been removed.

_{Wild Rose}

Emerging potatoes have added green stripes to the brown fields, and blue is added to the palette of colour from the flowers of flax. The barley has grown 'awns' and given a silky sheen to the field, which the wind turns into rustling velvet, whilst the wheat remains a much darker green and spikey as the ears form upwards.

_Foxglove

Hedgerows are awash with the delicate white flowers of 'Queen Anne's Lace' (Cow parsley), and the taller, more robust flowers of the poisonous hemlock. Once you have seen these two side by side, there is no mistaking them, but remember that the hemlock has purple spots on the stems!! Pink campion flowers stand tall in the grass or in woodland clearings; yellow buttercups have replaced the dandelions in the meadows and pastures, and daisies are everywhere. There are foxgloves, yellow isrises, rhododendrons, and field poppies all adding colour to this month of flowers. Honeysuckle, brambles and the wild rose in many shades from white to deep pink, ramble and climb up trees and in hedges, adding a sweet scent to a walk in the countryside.

_{Ox-Eye Daisy}

Grass is growing quickly - some farmers are even making early hay, whilst evenings in suburbia resound with the clatter of lawnmowers and the smell of cut grass assails the nostrils.

_{Chicken of the Woods}

It is the month of lawn tennis and cricket on the Green; of strawberry teas; of swallows darting and skimming over water, and of bees working overtime to fill their larders for winter!!

_{Elder Bush in Flower}