Overjoyed one day; saddened, depressed, and angry the next! That seems to be a recurring pattern for me, and probably for many of you who are passionate about our natural world. This week, the reason for my joy and pain was a beautiful colony of Bee orchids growing on a road verge in Cardiff.

I’d been watching the area for months, not sure what the grey-green rosettes of leaves would produce. They’d already had their tops cut once but were persisting and, on Wednesday’s walk, I was overjoyed to see that in little more than a week of warm, dry weather they’d sprouted flower stems and many were already open – they were Bee orchids, at least 30, probably more. I was so excited to see them – posted a rubbish phone photo on Twitter, better images later. Other people loved them too.

The very next morning they were obliterated by a contractor working for the land owner (in this case, the verge is privately owned, not council property). That same contractor has previously left areas of planted Daffodils, even after they’d finished flowering, so he recognised those planted bulbs but failed to recognise the Bee orchids. Such ignorance is part of the reason our planet is in trouble, I think – people don’t see the beauty of the natural world, nor do they have the knowledge to make informed decisions. In an ideal world, he would’ve recognised the Bees, phoned his manager, arranged a stay of execution until the orchids had had time to flower and seed.

A modicum of hope: the person who sent me the sad news about the Bees is endeavouring to find out who owns the land so we can try to prevent this happening in future.

Yesterday I went for a meander to check how the orchids were doing this year on the Cardiff side of the River Ely. You might remember in early June last year I blogged about the Fiesta of Bee orchids happening along the verges of Ferry Road near Cardiff Bay. I hoped I hadn’t left it too late for this year’s display; the verges are a little more overgrown, the grasses taller, but the Bee orchids are flowering again in their hundreds and look just as amazing.