1st May, First Orchids, It's Summer!

Having been alerted to the arrival of the first orchids along the burn at Portuairk, we walked this morning in warm sunshine along the banks of the Allt Choiremhuillin, it being a south coast equivalent, really without much hope of finding any, but almost immediately....

....stumbled upon this beauty.

It seems incredibly early for the orchids to be out - these are probably early marsh orchids - as they're flowering before the bluebells and while the primroses are still in full spring flush.

Having found five along a few metres of the burn's bank, we then kept stumbling upon more, in all sorts of shades and both in the protected bottom of the glen and....

....along the edges of the fields above it.

As we walked, so the temperature soared - when we arrived home the thermometer in the front garden had passed 21C - so it didn't seem in the least surprising that we kept stumbling upon more and more summer flowers like....

....this vivid blue milkwort, a mass of flowers alone in the middle of a sheep-cropped field, and....

....the prettily-named lousewort.

But the proof that summer has already arrived in the Highlands was this - the first wild strawberry already in flower.

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