Chocolate puddings and ferns

After some chores I sat down on a pallet with a pot of chocolate Gü and a mug of tea.

I'm testing chocolate puddings for when my grandsons visit. Their other grandparents down in England supply Mini Magnums so I decided to be the supplier of chocolate puds. I make a fabulous mocha upsidedown sponge pud but sometimes one needs something that comes in a little pot which is best eaten with a baby's little horn spoon.

I'm giving the Gü thing five out of ten so I won't be buying it again. I had to read what it said on the box after eating it to know what it was supposed to taste of––other than chocolate of course. Not impressed with what they call "our richest ganache yet" and I'm a bit of a ganache expert.

Anyway, moving on...

I looked at the next task while I had my snackeroo: this wall of ferns

I wanted to clear the larger ferns back to the wall before they shot their spores everywhere. We have plenty of ferns and though I like them I feel I do have to limit them a bit or they'd smother everything else. I also wanted to check out what else is growing on this damp holding wall. Some people actually plant vertical walls with stuff. Nature just does it herself at the Boggy Brae.

Here is a small section with

Athyrium filix-femina (Lady Fern)

Phyllitis scolopendrium (Hart's-tongue Fern)

Asplenium trichomanes (Maidenhair Spleenwort).

The tiny white flowers are Enchanter's Nightshade. I think it is Alpine Enchanter's Nightshade because the leaf bases are heart-shaped rather than truncate.

And then there are mosses and liverworts growing on the actual stones

plus a few other things

The main liverwort is Crescent-cup Liverwort (Lunularia cruciata) on this section of wall.

You can see one of the crescent cups with 'gemmae' in it near the bottom centre of this pic.

 Same liverwort with female 'receptacles' (those pointy dot things)

and a red-stemmed moss that I'm not sure about yet.

I found a tiny purple grub during my pokings and peerings;

took this shot under the microscope and then put it back where it was.

It was about 15mm long.

 That bit of wall looks like this now.

I stopped at this bunch of ferns because there is a wasps' nest in the wall behind them. The wasps haven't been a bother so we have left them alone.