Wet.

A showery grey day so instead I'm posting pretty pictures from yesterday.

This morning we drove to Mach for our Welsh practice session in the library. We worked hard on the revision exercises we began last week in class and which no doubt we will continue this week. Trying to get our heads around using either the past tense or the imperfect tense is still a struggle but between us we were able to work it out. Translating a 'learner level' story was much easier though at times we I got carried away with the dialogue between the police officers and a burglar which had us in fits of laughter.

Driving back along the valley many of the mature trees are now covered in new growth whilst dotted between them are trees covered in blossom. Blackthorn (above) has a pinkish tinge to the blossom which will later produce sloes while Hawthorn or May blosson looks a lot whiter. Looking across the valley the overall view looked very yellow after being used to the sharp green of new beech leaves so common in North Devon. Here the dominant trees are ash trees which have much yellower new growth. 

This afternoon I've been going through the list of wildflowers in some packets of Bee and Butterfly Wildflower Mix that had been donated to the zoo. I've already vetoed several packets as I could see they contained poppy seeds which are a definite no-no. One of today's packets had 30 varieites of wildflower which I carefully wrote down. Started checking them out and only got to numbers 3 and 4 (Bird's foot trefoil and Borage) both of which are toxic to dogs, cats, horses, cattle and sheep. I could have stopped there but just for fun went through the whole list and found another 10 toxic wildflowers. The other packet didn't have a list so I had to look on-line and seeing both poppies and foxgloves included was enough to reject that packet too. Not only is there the danger of any of the toxic plants seeding into the animal enclosures there is always the possibility of children picking leaves to feed to the animals to suppliment the cabbage and carrots in the 'feed pots'. Last week I had word with the owner suggesting that we just mow paths around the wilder areas which were already filled with bright dandelions. I'm going to bring in pink valerian seedlings from here as they grow well and are safe for all the animals.