All the pretty flowers

The red ones are poppies, that much I do know.

Regular readers of this blog - that is most of you, isn't it? - will know that I do bang on about the beautiful flowers of Skopelos and how summer visitors to the island will miss a lot of that floral beauty.

Over the years I've taken pictures of flowers on Skopelos in an attempt to show some of what is on offer, the photo at the top is one such example. However, my efforts are neither very systematic nor informative.

The truth is I'm not very knowledgeable about wild plants. I just go around saying: "Look at them, they're pretty, aren't they." While strictly accurate, my enthusiastic assertions don't really take people very far along the road to enlightenment.

However, help is now at hand. In fact, it has been available for some little while. Ladies and gentlemen, please get ready to enjoy a website called Wildflowers of Skopelos. No prizes for guessing the subject matter.

The website is the work of Dr Susan Warren, who has a house here and who is, I understand, a retired medical doctor from the UK.

Her website offers a large, and still expanding, index of flowers that are found on Skopelos. It's well worth looking at and I would think most people would learn something from it. I know I have, namely that a plant that Mrs C and I keep anxiously looking at to see if it will flower soon is in danger of being an invasive pest throughout the Mediterranean. We promise to keep it under control.

Dr Warren says on her website that her interest in the flowers of the island has also led to her taking an interest in geology. There is a section on that, too, on the website.

On the website she says: "The site is not intended to be a work of botanical reference but to interest people like me, who love flowers and love Skopelos. I don't want it to be too serious." I think she achieves her aim.

So to see more of the Wildflowers of Skopelos website click here and make sure you bookmark the site. Before you go, though, here's Flowers in the Rain by The Move, a genuine piece of flower power.

Come on. spring, you can do it

Slowly, slowly σιγά σιγά the signs are there that spring is getting in to its stride. It certainly seems to have been a long, cold winter (for here) although I'm beginning to wonder if that perception is to do with increasing age.

Does the cold bite a little harder as you get older? Maybe, but whatever, as you look around you on the sunny days you soon notice the increasing profusion of flowers coming out and pointing their faces at the sun. I have said before that visitors to Greece miss one of the glories of this country - certainly this island - by only ever coming here in the height of summer.

From now until about early June there will be an increasing abundance of wild flowers on show. They delight the eye until the intense heat of summer forces them to give up. A few of them put in a return appearance as the cooler weather of autumn arrives, but that's some way off.

Anyway, enough words, time for pictures of flowers. I've not identified them because to be truthful I'm not positive about the names. Just enjoy the pictures. What I will say is that the last picture is of part of Mrs C's garden, all the others are wild flowers. I took these pictures on Wednesday, which as you can see, was a lovely day. Today is cloudy and wet. Ah well...

You nearly ended up with Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth singing We'll Gather Lilacs, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead I'm putting up a pretty little song called Flowers in Your Hair by an American group called The Lumineers. I hope you like it.