BSBI New Year Plant Hunt

We had a fine, mild day for the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt I'd organised in Bourne. A total of nine botanists spent three hours scouring the streets and open spaces of the town centre, in search of plants in flower. My expectations weren't that high, as we've had several periods of snow and frost, but by the end of the day we'd managed to amass an amazing total of 63 wild and naturalised plants in flower, one of the highest in the country so far. Our very last species was the Winter Heliotrope pictured above - a plant that's actually supposed to flower in mid-winter and has the most gorgeous strong vanilla-scented perfume.

It was a fun way to spend the day and I was occupied for most of New Year's Eve sorting and entering the data. This may sound extremely boring, but I found it a welcome distraction. For various reasons I've always found it a bit of a difficult night, but this year I was perfectly content. At midnight Pete and I and enjoyed watching everyone else's fireworks while  sipping a nightcap of Cointreau!

If you'd like to do a New Year Plant Hunt of your own you can read all about it here. It runs for the next couple of days so there's still time! And there are apps available to make the data easy to enter. Why not have a go? 

May 2018 bring you all peace, love, good health and lots of creative opportunities.