A rose and a thistle patch

Two forms of the den rose. It has mildew as usual but it doesn't seem to care.


Toad thinks letting some marsh thistles flower and seed is a good idea. I'm not so sure, though I do like them so long as they leave me alone! We have decided to try and limit them to about two square metres near his dinghy. My brain's going: "Limit marsh thistles?! Ha!"


The devil's-bit scabious is going to flower while I'm away and most of the wild angelica does not seem to be flowering this year. I want it to spread so I'm letting it do its thing around the flag iris patch. Toad is happy about that because it means he doesn't have to mow down there. He will be here while I'm at my mum's. Toadlet, meanwhile, is off to the US to have fun with a bunch of cousins.

I am liking this plantain head.

Jaapiella veronicae, hogweed & shrooms

I noticed some fluffy buds on Germander Speedwell today. Turns out they are caused by Jaapiella veronicae, a kind of orange-bodied long-legged gall midge. I don't know if the boggybrae species is the same as this one recently discovered in Sweden but what a find! Looking at the map on the first link, this might be the first record of such on our little peninsula though there are others in Argyll.

Photo by M Jaschhof
from the page linked to above

I never really want to 'encourage' hogweed but it is pretty in its frothy flowering stage.

Elsewhere on the front bank where I was scything Cat's-ear and snipping plum suckers, there was a collection of tiny orange mushrooms.

my forefinger for scale

And further along on the same bank, the appearance of the second fungal fruiting body that I think is Amanita fulva though I am a bit puzzled by the dark edges of the gills as that is not mentioned in any of my books.

Amanita fulva, I think

dark edged gills

Finally for today, Downy Birch leaves have begun to fall. Autumnal signs start early on the boggy brae.

This leading to that...

Yesterday I got the vacuum cleaner out to do the kitchen floor. First I hoovered up some spider silk and a dead fly from a windowsill at one end. Which led to my moving the jade plants from the windowsill at the other end so that I could hoover up some bits there.
Which led to the largest of the jade plants doing the flop fantastic because it had thrived in that corner by the window but also had used the corner as support instead of strengthening its trunk.
Which led to my needing some sticks and string to prop it up.

 Gosh! they make the loaf look small. Jade plant sandwich, anyone?

staked, so to speak, and tied

After which, it seemed I might as well clean the outside of the window too while I was at it.
Which led to my putting my wellies on and going up to the archery boss for the ladder that Toad had left there (he doesn't do putting ladders away).
Which (that is, the window cleaning) led to my needing a tool to poke more spider silk out of window frame grooves.

And then I put the plants back and decided to prune some of the top heavy one as well so there now is slightly less jade plant than the picture below shows.

jade plant window

There's another wee succulent on that sill. It has taken a long time to get going from a cutting via DerbyshireDaughter but it is taking off at last. As is my wont, when I pruned a pelargonium and didn't want to throw away the very healthy looking shoot, I stuck it in a pot to see if it will take. The little rose that I pulled up from somewhere looks as if it hasn't. Time will tell. Outside the rambling-gone-wild roses seed themselves all over the place as well as rooting where the stems touch ground. The one below is by the old rowan.

Bit of spring greens keeping fresh;
we ate it later.

So, what with all the which-leds-to, the floor vacuuming didn't happen until after lunch.

Viviparous Ribwort Plantain

During my bumbling botanising over the last couple of years I've come across the term "viviparous" a few times – in connection with mosses if I remember rightly. Although I looked up its meaning and tried to understand it from its context, I never felt I'd really understood it until today when I found this ribwort plantain. I brought it in to show Toad and asked him if it was an example of viviparousness. He said that in zoology viviparousness refers live births rather than an egg. That figures, I thought: here we have a plant where a seed or seed head would normally be. It's good when something finally clicks.

Actually, the definition of viviparity in Wikipedia is quite good. Clearly I didn't look there earlier! It does say that the term covers a range of things, "no definitive and exclusive terminology is universally accepted", so my lack of clear understanding was forgiveable, I reckon.

Rattling down and casting on

The largest hat box contained the completed back of a jumper and about a third of the front. The front has been static for several years because I made a mistake. I thought for a while I could just fudge it (my usual approach) but I couldn't bring myself to end up with an asymmetrical pattern even though probably no-one except me (and maybe DerbyshireDaughter) would notice it. I also couldn't bear to rip the knitting out! So it has sat in a box for a long time! The other day I started unravelling (don't worry, the back is still complete!) and ended up with a tight ball. I might skein it and wash out the wrinkles in due course.

Meanwhile the front is cast on again from a loose ball (produced on the nineteenth century spinning mule at New Lanark) and sections marked with electric toothbrush marker rings. As you do. New Lanark has a lovely walk up to the Falls of Clyde and claims to have started the world's first ever nursery school. Check out New Lanark and its reforming mill manager from 1800, Robert Owen.

Also found my long lost needle gauge and some tatting I must have done decades ago.

There is clearly something to be said for having a hat box tidy-up! Good thing to do on a rainy day.

A face in wool & some digestive biscuits.

While I was winding little balls of wool left over from petit point cushion covers, I found a clump of blues and violets all together. When I opened out the clump I found this. My guess is that DerbyshireDaughter made it when she'd finished the iris cushion. Can you see the face?

I made some oaty digestive biscuits. No prizes for guessing which is the one I'm going to sample first.

Triteleia, Whorled Caraway, and young blackbirds

3 of 5 that were bobbing about near the salmon azalea this morning

The hat boxes

The hat boxes have needed cleaned out for a while. As is the way with storage boxes they had become more and more stuffed with stuff! The stuff wasn't hats. I use these boxes for some of my sewing and temari-making things. There is a fourth, the smallest one, which is upstairs with boxes of fabric scraps. As it happens, only the middle two sized ones got a clear out today because during a break in the very heavy rain showers, I went out to do a spot of hedge hacking.

fuchsia & rhododendron ponticum 'trimmings'

The first box I tackled contained, among other things, bits of elastic and curtain tape, old, clean wool socks that provide temari filling, and the badge off Toadlet's first school sweatshirt. When DerbyshireDaughter and DivingDaughter were at that school there was no uniform. Nobody batted an eyelid when DerbyshireDaughter went to school one summer day wearing a teeshirt of mine as a dress. Toadlet only went to the nursery class there and the reception class and then we moved up to Scotland. She remembers the deep maroon uniform colour as brown and she hated it.

old socks

I've made enough room in that box for my jar of thread bits. When I'm making temari I drop all the thread ends into a jar and it makes a pleasing muddle of colourful strands. Every now and then I have a rummage through it for a particular colour that I've run out of and need a short length of.

I like the almost nest effect

The jar with a small temari and a couple more below. Check out temarikai.com for history and more info.

So! Back to the hat boxes! The next guddle stuffed into one of them was leftover embroidery wools (loosely called tapestry wools). I think I can find a use for these at Oasis. I can wind them into small balls for M3 who likes to change the colour she is knitting frequently.

Next, all the needles came out. I have quite a collection (there are more upstairs) because I inherited some from an aunt. The packet in the bottom left corner of this pic has the price 9d on it, so its vintage is pre-1971. I have not identified the use of some of her 'needles'. Does anyone recognise the two below and know what they are for?

They were in the packet shown but I don't think  that was their original packet. I've now slotted them onto the same card as some other varied purpose needles.

The other two hat boxes will have to be tackled another time.






Meanwhile the woodshed rose, Albertine, which I can now smell if I stick my nose right into a bloom, is thriving as usual.