This year has been very different in terms of approach to our meadow of flowers. I last wrote about the patch back in September when things hadn't gone to plan and I was left feeling downhearted. Since then we picked ourselves up, got busy and made some plans.
Once the seeds (good and bad!) had finished dropping we cleared the patch, sprayed the lot - which was predominantly more of the bad stuff coming though and left it a bit.
We sowed a mix of meadow grass, flowers for a meadow and yellow rattle. Ambitiously we somehow got a roller to the site, which we then had to drag around like sweaty oxen, then re-load back into the vehicle. However, I was relieved to have completed the arduous task and sit back to wait.
Excitingly, the grass started to germinate but a mole moved in. Thankfully, it has now re-located to a molehill in the sky so all has mellowed out a bit. These pictures were taken a couple of months ago.
The situation on the ground at present is there's a lot of growth, much identifiable as weeds - like groundsel. When the time is right we can mow (up to a certain point in spring), but in the mean time I intend to pop along and hand weed out the really bad patches as we don't want things going to seed again.
I hope that this new approach will be more fruitful and who knows, but by keeping a close eye on the patch we can control the unwanted growth before it gets the chance to spiral.

Take care,
Sophie