A walking fire

This morning my spiraea bashing got as far as the bed in the hedge. It has been useful for hitting spiraea roots against, those ones I've managed to dig, pull and saw enough to get out of the ground. This is yesterday's pile of roots, which more than doubled today. They can't go in the dead hedge because they might just start growing again.

What's in the wheelbarrow (and a couple of other barrowsful) is what has gone into the dead hedge. The mosses can grow to their hearts' content. I will lightly step over the deep philosophical question of whether a moss has a heart and continue the story.

The piles of still green branches began to grow alarmingly but then my small fire decided to take off and really get burning thanks to some gusts of wind from the right direction at the right time, so I managed to get both green stalks and roots burned today. The fire walked. You can see in the picture to the left that it finished in a different place from where it began. I did try to discourage its walking but after a while I just let it. There was space for it and the ground is soggy underneath so it didn't really matter. The thing is, it kept going and dealt with all those troublesome shoots and roots.

 While I was feeding the fire I found the edge of another bed frame, a random slab of concrete

                    and the base of a stand for a bird feeding station. >>

If I can't think of a way to incorporate rusty beds into dead hedges, I might pay a visit to the municipal dump when I've nothing better to do, or when I'm going round the loch for some other reason.


So, here is my partly cleared space up in the top west corner of the Boggy Brae garden. The spiraea and the grey sallow covered it all and would have continued to encroach if left. The tree trunk at the right hand side of the pic is a goat willow.

Still a bit to go southwards but I'm quite pleased with my progress so far and especially pleased about the successful walking fire today. The space between the pruned grey sallow and the spiraea hedge was filling up with prunings and uprootings. I brought in a sample from this (below) to look at more closely but right now my shoulders are aching so I'm going to have a nap.

Update 13 Nov
The large moss in the pic above is Waved Silk Moss (Plagiothecium undulatum) and here are a couple of closer pics of it: