
Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolaria)
Dear Readers, after a few weeks of having a break from the cemetery, it was such a pleasure to be back on a sunny spring day with not a cloud overhead. I was pleased to see the garlic mustard coming into flower, and was keeping a keen eye open for orange-tip butterflies, who lay their eggs on the plant. Well, I didn’t see any, but I did see several citrus-coloured brimstone butterflies, whose caterpillarsĀ feed on buckthorn. There is a view that the name ‘butterfly’ came from theseĀ bright yellow beauties.

Male brimstone butterfly in flight (Photo One)
I seemed to be scaring up butterflies at every step, like this peacock: red admirals, peacocks and the odd speckled wood were all warming themselves up on the paths. It wasn’t quite the swarms of lepidoptera that I remember from our walks in the Austrian Alps, but it wasn’t bad for East Finchley.
The Tibetan cherry tree is coming into flower, and very fine it is too.
This jay was a little less shy than usual…
But this green woodpecker was rather more reticent than of late…
And we saw the Official Cemetery Cat, who is very splendid…
And an unofficial cemetery visitor, who we’ve seen before, and who looks like a little panther.
But loveliest of all, against that clear blue sky, was the buzzard, peacefully riding the thermals and unharried by the crows for once. Maybe they’re all off on holiday.
Mustn’t it be lovely to fly like that! The closest thing that I can think of is swimming, which is something I haven’t done for way too long. Maybe I’ll find somewhere over the summer.
Oh, and the lesser celandine is still in flower….
….and there was this patch of pink sorrel close to the North Circular Road boundary. I hadn’t noticed it before, but no doubt it will soon be everywhere. All sorts of mysterious things grow in this rather ‘weedy’ area, including the mysterious salsify that I was so astonished by a few years ago. Although you can hardly hear yourself think for traffic noise, it is always full of surprises.