A June Walk: sights, scents and sounds

A June Walk: sights, scents and sounds

 

I come out of the back door and I’m joyously surprised by the sight of two flowers on top of one of my cactuses. They will only flower for a day, but at night they have a wonderful scent. It’s early and windy. The island is living up to its name of ‘The Windy Isle’. I walk out of our gate and breathe in a different scent, it the honeysuckle that is on tope of the wall.

 Then up the road that takes me along the shore line. The sun is now up and over the hills and reaching the fields touching the ripening grasses which are now glowing and golden. I pass one of the early morning Lemnian walkers and we greet each other, ‘Kalli Mera’.

 

The early flowers have finished. There are some small malva and just the odd poppy, but now other flowers are blooming. Huge Verbascum are flowering along the road edges. This plant is also called Mullein.

There are so many types of grasses, now seeding. The wind runs through them bending them like waves at sea. Takis would not like to see this as he suffers from hay fever. And I too see some of my most hated bindweed flowering. But I overlook my dislike as these plants are not in my garden.

I’m also impressed by the Alcea pallida, also called the Turkish Wild Hollyhock, tall with large pink flowers. And I listen to the small birds chattering as they enjoy the harvest of seeding plants in the nearby field.

Oleanders are in bloom in gardens and where they have been planted along the side of one road. There are stands of dry sorrel heads and opening heads of cow parsley that I must pick and bring into the house. They make such a light airy with the addition of a few other wild flowers.

I hear a motorbike coming down the road. It is heading off to a small harbour where local fishermen keep their boats. Then coming down the road I stop and greet two hikers. They ask me if I’m a local and as we get talking I find out they are from the Isle of Wight. I’m delighted as this is the English island where my grandparents retired and I went for summer holidays as a child.

I can’t yet see any squirting cucumbers flowering or seeding. When the fruit forms if ripe and you touch it sticky seeds quirt out.  Down near my feet on the verge are small blue flowers and grasses, and a rabbit hops away to hide in the tall grass. And away ahead is the sea, and a holiday village where I can hear the thump of tennis racket and ball.

I gather a bunch of grasses, everlastings and cow parsley, and some of that tall blue flower I can’t name and return home.