Wednesday, 31 May 2017

Rhododendron Up Top

If you squinted and strained your neck the newly flowering rhododendron up at the top of the garden was just visible between some sallow branches trunks which were only not lying on the ground under their own top-heaviness because a couple of birch trees were propping them up.

sallow leaning on birch
This morning I decided to cut them down so that I'd have a clear view to UpTop Rhodo from the back door. They were even heavier than I expected. I felled all four but there are still three to cut up into more manageably sized pieces. That's for another day.

Elsewhere in the garden white flowers apart from pignut are showing up brightly. Clockwise from top left: a white foxglove, white clover, a white bell-flower than came from I know not where but which is very welcome, and Libertia grandiflora, another welcome self-introduced plant. Three years ago it had three flowering shoots, last year six, and this year sixteen. I hope it spreads.


Another pic of UpTop's flowers and the view east from it:



Saturday, 27 May 2017

Bee house under the step

Looking south from back door yesterday afternoon

There are very few days when it's warm enough to sit outside to eat one's muesli. Yesterday was one such. I put one of my sit-upon-ery mats on the middle stone step at the front and enjoyed the morning. Looking down to the bottom step–a rough slab of conglomerate added after some house settling, I think–I saw a small bumblebee disappear 'into' the step. I had noticed it had an arch in previous years but hadn't seen anything going into the hole.

the rough conglomerate step



The first pic shows where the bee went in. A bee came out of the other end of the step (second pic) several times. Whether it was one bee or several I don't know. I didn't get any pics of the actual bee.
I wondered, sitting there munching muesli, whether I should mow the back terrace yet but decided to wait a bit. The primroses that have seeded themselves from elsewhere in the garden onto the terrace haven't fnished flowering and making seed yet.




The photo below is of a small bit of the back terrace where bugle and ferns grow on and near the retaining wall.







Tuesday, 23 May 2017

Earthy grounding

The morning after the terrorist attack at Manchester Arena two lines from Tennyson's poem Tears, Idle Tears kept repeating themselves in my head:

Tears from the depth of some Divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes.

The poet says he knows not what the "idle tears" mean but I knew what mine meant: deep anguish and sympathy for what the families of the killed and injured must be suffering today and for many days to come. People driven to acts of such violence by mad ideologies are deluded.

People are saying that we need to do something in addition to just carrying on as normal, but certainly normal, or as normal as you can, is grounding. The gap I cut through the azaleas on the front bank was ready to be widened so I went at it with the hedge-cutter. Along the way I found myself talking to three tiny oak seedlings just erupting from their acorns: "You can't grow here, little tree. Not right under the big birch tree and so close to the house."
NW end of front bank with birch tree
and a gateway I've cut through the rhododendron hedge
It always feels sad to have to pull out little trees (well, not ash and sycamore! They are just weeds round here) but there are at least three more young oaks near the top of the garden where there is room for them to grow. Two of them are now taller than me and one actually produced two or three acorns last year.

I needed a nap after my gap-widening efforts but went out again afterwards to dig up some dock plants at the bottom of the same front bank. With the dock roots up came some of the creeping rhizomes of Sharp-flowered Rush that also grows down there. My hands got damply earthy but as they dried and even with soil on them, they felt clean in a smooth and quite different way from newly washed hands. This was the 'grounding' I needed after today's sad news. Perhaps it is something to do with being reminded that we are with the earth and of it, dust to dust, stardust even as Carl Sagan said.

Between the dock and rush patch and the drive hedge I found what I think is a Northern Marsh Orchid in pretty much the same place as there was one last year. Previously our single Southern Marsh Orchid, which grows at the top of the bank, has reappeared in the same spot for several years but the Northern Marsh Orchids, of which there are usually a few dotted about, always seem to come up in different places each year. It would be nice to think this one now has an established root. I marked where it is with a stick and a bit of ribbon so that it doesn't get any more trampled than it already is!

Orchid marker near the hedge

At the lower end of that hedge is my young hawthorn tree. It has flowered for the first time this year. Its parent is beyond on the far side of the lane. Massed ivy growth has weighed down its trunk to almost horizontal but it is thriving still. The light you can see beyond the trees is the loch. There are some houses down there before it but the drop from the hawthorn down to them is very steep so we look over their roofs.


I have two small hawthorns in pots to give to a friend. They were recently moved to the porch because, guess what!, the deer nibbled their tops. They are doing fine.

Monday, 15 May 2017

Three grans walk no.3


On Saturday we walked from the World Heritage site of New Lanark mills up alongside the river, through woods rich in wild flowers, to the Falls of Clyde at Corra Linn, and onward to the weir at Bonnington Linn. The river banks are steep in this part of the Clyde's journey to the sea and the ground is often boggy so a boardwalk has been built to saunter along. We did a fair bit of sauntering, along with crouching to get pictures of wild flowers. Rain showers, making getting my camera out of my rucksack and out of its dry bag too much of a trachle, meant I took most of them with my phone camera. I haven't quite sussed how to improve exposure so some of them are overexposed. Still, they were sufficient as record shots for the 8pm Sunday #wildflowerhour on Twitter run by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland.

Given how dry the weather has been of late, we were pleasantly surprised at just how much water was coming over the falls. The Clyde catchment area is quite large so I guess we shouldn't have been surprised.
<< Two of us

the route
I'll post the flower pics in roughly alphabetical order of their common names because that's easiest and I can't fully remember the order we spotted them in. Not that it matters.

Alternate-leaved Golden-saxifrage
Bilberry
Bitter Vetch
Broom
Cowslip
Great Stitchwort
Great Wood-rush
Large Bittercress
Leopard's-bane
Pink Purslane so pale it's white
Out of focus Red Campion
with bluebells and Gt.Stitchwort
Thyme-leaved Speedwell
Wood Speedwell






Violets
Wild strawberry just below a badger sett
























As we did the upper part of the walk's loop we came across this dodecadal structure made of hand hewn sticks and some ingenious stick joiners–sort of a grown up version of some kids' construction toys, I suppose. It looked as if it is meant for pow-wows or, perhaps, lessons and singalongs. We wondered if it ever has a cover. Maybe that is still to come.


Then we walked back to the mill shop, where I bought a new wallet part of whose construction is of New Lanark wool (I lost my lovely, old, Florentine leather one in Edinburgh last year), and we refreshed ourselves with tea and, for two of us, caramel pie, and for the other, fruity/oaty flapjack.

This jumper, that I'm still knitting (one and a half sleeves to go!), is also New Lanark wool.


Archery in the garden

The ages of the archers who came for a garden shoot yesterday range from eleven to seventy-something. We had a couple of heavy rain showers. We used them as opportunities to socialise in the kitchen with coffee and cake, and Anna's sausage rolls.

Putting up the back net. Ladder to the right is to help attach the net rope to a tree.

Setting up bows

Some shelter for bows from the rain

Chat

Placing the rope that marked the shooting line

Target bosses up top

The oldest archer

Shooting line

My bow with hyper-recurved limbs–more pyoing! for a low draw weight

Close-up of my riser, made by Border Bows