Flower Power

This is the time of year on La Palma when wild flowers are popping up everywhere in all colours.  April is when the action starts to get going (if you don't count the months building up to it) and nature is still on a roller-coaster of colour as we zoom into May.
Whilst each year is a little bit different with certain flowers being more prominent, a good old faithful is one that never ceases to amaze me although I guess it is not strictly wild. I see that I wrote about it last year as well - little wonder with its perfect little parasols of shocking purple!

 

Another plant that I really appreciate grows steadily throughout the year, slowly and silently spreading itself across the ground or down a wall, all along hoping you won't notice. It's a succelent plant which means that basically it doesn't care if it gets water or not.  This is my type of plant.   It then produces wonderful pale lemon flowers seemingly from nowhere and then of course it's too late to cut it back because you can't bear to cut the flowers off. 

Then there is a variation of the sweet pea.  My previous experience of growing them in the UK was that it took plenty of patience to first get them growing and then make sure they followed the appointed path up bamboo canes.  From there, with luck, they would make a colourful show.
Here on La Palma, they grow like plants posssessed!  Great tumbling and billowing clouds of them line the donkey path at the side of the finca but - to be honest - they don't do much harm there.  However, they are not content with that but want to envelop anything else they can find such as our lovely white wild rose which is in full bud at the end of the path. 

But my final salute is to the wild poppy.  It strikes me as being such a brave little flower with its 'hey, here I am' bright red colour.  And yet, when you come to inspect it more closely, it is in fact the most delicate of flowers with not a robust petal to its name.  For sheer simplicity, to me, it's a winner. And that's my reason for letting it grow (almost) wherever it likes on the finca here in Franceses.

British Summer time begins in La Palma

Goodbye winter, Hello summer.  And as if to order our very late snowfall is melting on the mountains.  Most winters there is snow up at Roque de Muchachos, the top of the island at 2426m above sea level, but this year it came as low as 1000m which was especially amazing as it was near the end of March.  We can actually see the ridge of the Caldera right from the finca and the photo below was taken from our car park area today, looking inland.

 This photo was taken from the same place a couple of days ago on zoom and you can still see the snow.  Brrr, a bit chilly up there I think!   

We have never been 'treated' to snow here as the finca is much lower down at 500m above sea level and so whilst it is still a little snowy at the top, we are basking in glorious sunshine and surrounded by spring flowers.

 I'm starting to think I like this British Summer time ...