Early July at the Boggy Brae

It used always to be dark under the canopy of this old, multi-trunked cypress tree. When we had chickens, they liked to keep dry under there on rainy days.

Now the trunks at the left in the picture above are keeling over and letting in lots of light and space. It used to be quite a squeeze to get between the two left-hand trunks and the two on the right.

This fungus and, presumably, old age would seem to be the culprits.

Every time I look the tween-trunks angle seems greater.

A roe deer sized resting hollow

The roe deer still make resting nests there though.

Another roe deer hollow

The trunk of this downy birch tree was not visible before, which suggests that the whole cypress tree, which is slightly downhill from the birch, is keeling over and exposing the birch tree to view. Nice to be able to look up into its branches. I hope that when the cypress falls, it will not uproot the birch too. If it does, it won't be disastrous though as there are several young birches up there to replace it.

There's also a couple of young oaks, which the deer keep nibbling. They've even bitten off, and presumably eaten, the oak galls that were on one of the small trees.

Elsewhere in Argyll meadowsweet is in full bloom now and looking glorious in the roadside verges and in fields. Boggy Brae meadowsweet is still taking its time to open its flowers. Eventually.....

Meanwhile the wild cherries are dropping their leaves already. I love the colours.

You can see the prevalence of heath bedstraw in our lawn here

My letting it run to seed means there are lots more patches of Lesser Stitchwort this year

and here are three more of our wild things. If you go to the top left corner of the photo above, starting at the top and working down the left side, there is springy turf moss, a haircap moss and a tamarisk moss all growing together as well as the occasional blade of grass!