Monster fuchsia work continues

The question was what to do with the remaining (still loads!)  of monster fuchsia stems now that space to stack them on the far side of the lane as dead hedging (fourth photo in this post; I live in hope that they will actually die!) is running out. I thought I could do a neat stacking between some of the stems I've left by the pond. Trouble is, if you lie cut fuchsia on the wet ground here (the ground is mostly wet) it will send down roots. Then I remembered two pieces of breeze block so I've placed them to hold the stems (trunks really) off the ground. This is what it looked like yesterday. I wonder how visible the stacked stems (there will be a lot more) will be when the still rooted, upright trunks are in full leaf?

This pile → that Toad cut out of the ridiculous rhododendron hedge back in December I stuffed into the back of the Rattletrap to take to the municipal dump, either just on a tarpaulin or, the smaller bits anyway, into an old coal sack that fell of the back of a lorry.

coal sack for garden waste

It really did fall off a lorry! And there were about half a dozen others stuffed into it. When we get our next delivery of coal I'll give them back to the coal merchant. The day they blew off was very windy and the lump in the road was making drivers nervous so I stopped, investigated and picked them up. They'd only have landed in the sea else. Might as well use them. I might hang them on a line to get rained on and cleaned up a bit. The others are all muckier than that one.

Working on the northwestern side of the pond (onto which I'd never got before because of the fuchsia-brambly undergrowth), making myself a path around it, hacking back fuchsia and yanking out trip wires of ivy, I came across the edge of what at first I thought was a stone. It turned out to be a lid of some kind about ten inches wide. It had clearly had a spongey lining so my guess was that it was the lid of a make-up box or something. The first word I found hard to make out but I think the whole thing is Amway La Collection Classique, Paris. According to that link, Amway made expensive perfumes and after shaves. So my guess wasn't far out.

What is baffling is how it got into the mud at the bottom of the Boggy Brae garden! Maybe it blew in; maybe someone threw it there in a hissy fit; maybe the lid was used by kids as a frisbee. 😀

So now, looking southeastwards from the boggy bottom north corner, this is what the pond triangle is looking like. Those fern stumps don't look much just now but they will explode into great cones over the spring and summer. You can see how raggy the Ridiculous Rhodo hedge is on this its lower side. I've managed to keep the upper side, that edges the drive, reasonably under control. My big project this year is to cut back some of this side. I'll need to hold back if I find nesting birds are using it, though this part isn't the thickest.
Further to the right, it's like a dark cave! If Rhododendron ponticum weren't such a savage invader, I'd leave the hedge messy, but at the very least I want to yank out the bridging, rooting shoots. There's also our oil supply pipe to get at, that Toad's going to scrub with a wire brush and paint sometime. Aye, right! 😉

cave of rhododendron, snowberry, unwanted ash seedlings, brambles, etc

Here's Scrawny (Scrawny has fans!), which is in the boggy bottom east corner, reflected yesterday in the pond: