Tractor Talk

Red tractor tells green tractor to go and pick up the last few bales

Off he goes up the hill...

...pronging bales

Then he zooms along the boggy lane past our entrance,
back home for a cool beer I hope.

Out scything early

I didn't scythe all this. The farmer turned the hay yesterday evening. I expect he'll be along to bale it today.

First light on the field.
Saw a big fox lolloping down it and into gardens below.

Two colours of rose on one plant, with yarrow leaves

Morning grass

Morning buttercups

Time to get back out there and carry on mowing.

Devil's-bit Scabious Day

24 July is Devil's-bit Scabious Day (DBS day) at the Boggy Brae

The first flower opening

The triangle of DBS marked out

Today's scythed and Flymo-ed patch

Same patch with more perspective.There are more DBS plants  near the base of that Downy Birch tree.They were the originals that have spread to the marked triangle.

Mown and unmown

A deer path that I use too

Boggy Brae boggy lane to the field,
our garden boundary to the right.

The dry bit of the lane (and the way out!),
our garden boundary to the left.

Now that I know what I'm looking for, I'm finding more patches of
Opposite-leaved Saxifrage. Here are some young-looking plants
at the north-east-facing base of our boundary wall.

Here is my Unknown Tiny Fern with its accompanying
Hart's-tongue Thyme-moss, also at the base of the garden wall.

And here again with a small young Hart's-tongue Fern for scale.

This Scaly Male Fern is over five feet tall by the same wall.
Our ferns go from titchy to huge within few yards.

Today's roses

Irrepressible Rose 29mm diameter

Woodshed rose 1

Woodshed rose 2 

Den rose by the den; looking uphill

A Rose, a Blue Leaf-hopper, and some toadstools

Drank my early morning tea sitting in the sun on the front doorstep today. The spider silk between buds of the Irrepressible Rose caught my attention.

The first opening bud of the Irrepressible Rose.
It's a tiny rose.

First opened bloom 22 July measures 29mm across

The leaves of the old plum tree were catching the sunshine too and made a nice backdrop for the everlasting sweet peas. The south-east end of the front terrace is obviously the deep pink end!

Beside the rose the typical untidy look of unfurling Lady Fern was very clear.

Whether this clumpiness is common elsewhere, I don't know, but it's very common here.

Later, in a break from more scything on the slope below,  I spotted what at first I thought was a tiny blue moth. On closer inspection, I think it might be a Blue Leaf-Hopper.

It looks as if the Boggy Brae toadstool season has begun.

Hygrocybe coccinea, I think

Scything a Swathe and enjoying a rose

First the VibramFiveFingers go on; best things for grip on wet and sloping grassy ground.

They like to pick flowers.

My foot with a tween toes yellow pimpernel

The scythe is sharp. It has to be; grass is tough stuff.

A swathe (actually two swathes). Masses more to do but I only do a bit at a time.

The yellow pimpernels have been flowering since May

We also have its sister plant, Creeping Jenny

Later, tramping uphill again to put away tools, I enjoyed the den rose. This was smothered under brambles and ferns when we first came here. I don't know its name. I think it is quite old.

Frilly

Splashy

Opening bud with bird's-foot trefoil

Ferns still grow with the rose, and gorse, but I try to keep them in some sort of order. Brambles get short shrift; there are plenty of other places on the Boggy Brae for them to grow.

The den rose with gorse and a reflected rowan

The den rose with ferns

Both Male Fern (Dryopteris filix-mas) and Scaly Male Fern (Dryopteris affinis) grow there.

I've been learning how to tell them apart.

Male Fern (top) & Scaley Male Fern fronds – backs

Male Fern (top) & Scaley Male Fern fronds – fronts

Two revisions

I have learned this morning that what I have been calling Bog Pimpernel (Anagallis tenella) at the Boggy Brae is actually New Zealand Willowherb (Epilobium brunnescens). I'd seen some pics of Bog Pimpernel via Twitter and begun to wonder. My flower was the wrong colour for a start and on one of the Twitter pics, there were two flowers on one stem. Hmm. I should have realised before now that the seed pods of the Boggy Brae plant were a huge clue to its willowherbiness!

I asked some questions, sent a couple of people a link to my incorrect blog post about Bog Pimpernel, and did another careful search in my flower books. W Keble Martin mentions a plant called Alpine Willowherb (Epilobium anagallidifolium) whose leaves are similar but the stem's not right. Then I turned to The Wildflowers of Britain and Northern Europe by Fitter, Fitter and Blamey (1974). FF&B have a picture and description of New Zealand Willowherb and it is exactly the BB plant. Yay!

And all that before breakfast! Gotta be good.

Here's a link to the pics on Wiki of Epilobium brunnescens and here's one to my now corrected blog post from last year



Now to That Pink Stuff. I was thinking yesterday evening that the anonymous commenter (Thank you, Nonny Mous) on my first post about the pinkish-red gloop was probably right, or nearly so. He or she thought it might be puke. Yes, it could easily be that. Alternatively, bird shit.

The blobby bits in this pic could easily be raspberry seeds,

the seta-like things I referred to could easily be from wild raspberries,

and the colour is right for raspberries that went through, or half way down and out again, some creature's alimentary canal damn quick!

Here is someone else's photo of raspberry seeds via Flickr

I'm used to seeing the berry shit of blackbirds when the summer berries ripen but I'd never seen anything this colour before. What a wonderful example, though, of how seeds get spread around with their own little packets of manure!

What a wonderful explanation of how wild raspberries grow in all sorts of places at the Boggy Brae and, finally, what a wonderful example of what a chump I am at times how I learn stuff! I reckon I've just earned myself a bacon butty.

Wild Angelica Wars

Went out to pull up some Downy Birch seedlings and some small brambles. Both of these take root in excessive numbers at the Boggy Brae and, without some sort of culling, would smother everything else. I lost count very quickly and reached for the strimmer. The parent tree is in its full summer glory now, though a few leaves have changed colour to yellow already, and a couple of younger trees higher up the garden have begun to drop leaves. This is normal for July here. Summer is short on a north-east-facing slope north of 56ºN.

Downy Birch bottom half

Downy Birch top half

A few of its babies

When I took the first load of scythings and strimmings to the compost heap (one of the compost heaps, I should say), I noticed that wild angelica was in flower.

On it were various beasties. Especially obvious were some orange Soldier Beetles (I think that's what they are!)

But hot on that beetle's tail came this guy. Soldier beetle held his ground for a bit but then scuttled off.

Black and yellow guy then shooed off another soldier beetle

and held his flower head

Soldier beetle found free bunch of flowers elsewhere

Meanwhile, on hogweed, there was this handsome chap