Alpine Walks in Valais

[Ragged Robin]

Luit, I'm so pleased you have the first signs of Spring in your garden it is a wonderful moment to suddenly 'smell' it in the air 

Just after I completed my last Alpine walk of the old season I went out into my alpine patch and saw the bulbs were coming up too    Incredibly exciting to see what transpires as I planted a lot of new bulbs of all sorts in different areas last year.

Is your Hamamellis a special one?  I just love them for their early scented flowers and magnificent Autumn leaf colouring

[cohan]

thanks for the new installment
the switches from misty mystery to blinding clarity are familiar this year!
great to see the wildlife-the ibex indeed looks very sure of himself--though with those horns, why not?

[Ragged Robin]

Cohan, thanks for popping by....I often think of you in your winter scene and the misty pictures you took recently looked even more disorientating than the cloudy mists here. I do hope you get some sun soon as a pick-me-up for you and your cacti 

[cohan]

thanks, robin--we have had even more frosty days, but quite a few of sun, too, and my plants are happily baking on their windowsills!

[Lvandelft]

Robin,
the Hamamelis I mentioned is H. x intermedia Pallida, which is in my opinion one of the best yellows.
With autumn leaf coloring we have most years some problems caused by the winds, as we are near the coast and there is not so much shelter around.
Bulb fields are rather open 

[Ragged Robin]

The Alpine mountain wakes from hibernation like and old bear weary from the winter months of snow.  The sun is warm now but the wind has a chill that checks buds on the trees, waiting for the Spring.

[Paddy Tobin]

Lovely shots, Robin, except for the last one which reminds me that the garden here is covered with ash seedlings, literally thousands, and also that the garden is presently littered with the spent flowers. There is a line of mature ash trees along one boundary of the garden.

Paddy

[Ragged Robin]

Hi Paddy, more to come but not ash seedlings - I guess there is fierce competition here in the Alps amongst trees competing for space whereas with you it's like a 5 star hotel with space galore and full service 

[Ragged Robin]

At the head of the mountain last fallen snow still caps the peaks but the Spring snowmelt has begun; a lifeblood of crystal clear pure water that pours down the body of the mountainside like arteries in full flow reviving the will to live

[Ragged Robin]

.......

[Ragged Robin]

Gorges du Dailley brimming with snowmelt water thunders down the mountain....

[Ragged Robin]

A network of watery veins forms a web beneath the ground and feeds into the meadows where wild primroses, cowslips and violets bring the first Spring colour .

[Ragged Robin]

Through the rocks it gushes past Oxalis acetosella, just in flower, and Caltha palustris lining up to enjoy the wet; wherever it drips and seeps mosses and ferns and ground cover plants in the subalpine forest soak up capillary threads of moisture like sponges and quench their thirst.

[Ragged Robin]

Through last years sloughed of litter new growth emerges like scattered jewels – Crocus vernus and Hepatica nobilis, Viola silvatica and, on a grassy bank, Dactylorhiza sambucina

[Ragged Robin]

From every damp spot or crevice alpine flowers colour the scene: Primula hirsuta, pink, Potentilla crantzii, yellow, Myosotis alpestris, blue......