I was very much expecting to see a lot of new flowers today. But you don’t always get what you expect, so I had to settle with the wood anemone alone. Last weekend when I checked my favourite wood anemone spot, the plants were very small with just very tiny buds. But the warm weather has worked miracles on them and not only did I find them in full bloom, I had a sneaky suspicion that they might actually be a little bit past the peak. Either way, they’ve grown with leaps and bounds in only a week. So that got me thinking about the pale pasque flowers. Maybe they’re growing faster than expected, also? So I drove to the location and headed directly to the plant I had discovered earlier. No flower. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Just the same leaves, exactly like I had found them. I had a look around and found one more set of leaves, so that’s now a total two pale pasque flowers in this location. Either the past 15 years have been really hard on the flowers here (there were hundreds of plants back then), or the season is still very early for them. I hope for the latter!

Back at home, I had a look at what’s happening around the house. I found that the lily of the valley leaves are growing tall with a few buds also. But the best moment of the whole day came when I checked the spot where I found lesser butterfly orchids. I hoped to find some small leaves, and I did – and I also found some buds! They are of course very small at the moment, only about 5cm tall, but I was just so happy to see them. I counted 21 individuals in total, but it’s possible that there will be more because it’s not so easy to find all the small leaves and maybe some of them haven’t even started growing yet. Earlier today I was feeling a little bit jealous when I was thinking about all the flowers that are already in bloom in Ljusdal, we’re probably a week behind. I’m not jealous anymore, I’ll happily give away that week for all the orchids we (will) have here!