Yellow Flags of the Boggy Brae

I put three wild yellow flag plants (Iris pseudacorus) into one of the boggiest parts of the Boggy Brae in 2007. This was them flowering, having taken good hold in their new situation, in May 2008. The pic below shows what the little patch of dead leaves looked like in winter.

Winter leaves of Iris pseudacorus
with pampas grass behind

Since then the flags have flourished on their boggy brae (and the patch gets ever larger) among the Meadow Buttercups. The photo to the right was taken in June 2015. At one point I counted over 50 yellow flag flowers plus many buds.

This morning I took this shot of the winter patch.

The pamapas grass beyond has also been flourishing but I take steps to keep it in check!




Just for fun, have a little more boggy summer meadow!

The Lophocolea Stump

I've posted before (here, here, and here, the last one just now on 27Feb16) about the old spruce stump whose top is covered in the liverwort Lophocolea heterophylla (Variable-leaved Crestwort). Recently I noticed signs new activity on the stump.

The mat of Crestwort is quite thick now–it has been growing for a few years–but some dark patches appeared, and a small, darker green spot.

When I went to investigate, it appeared that something (a bird, looking for food, perhaps?) had pulled up some of the liverwort and dropped the pieces. There were also some bits of rotten wood. These break of at the edges very easily now.

The darker green spot is a different bryophyte, a moss I haven't identified yet, but which, on closer inspection revealed reflexed hair points at their tips.






There are other mosses, lichens, and sometimes slime moulds on the stump as new life grows on and around it and recycles its resources. Years ago, when it was just a bare stump, I wrapped a piece of hose around it. That's still there and part of the scenery. I've been reluctant to pull it off, not least because I'll have to find somewhere else to put it, but maybe I should before the spring growth of the grasses, heath bedstraw, ferns and rushes!

a frosted Polytrichum

Been trying a new way of loading photos. Hmm...

A headache, snow, and scratched car kind of morning

Went to bed soon after eight last night with a humdinger of a headache that nothing would shift. Woke up with it three hours ago too. This morning's dosing of decongestant and antihistamine seems to be taking effect, thank goodness. So, this morning:

I've dealt with a dead mouse (flung it in the field for a scavenger), noticed it was snowing and that the temperature was below freezing, decided to take the car down the hill in case of further freezing, scratched it on a wall trying to dodge some ice, repeated my favourite slang word of annoyance all the way down the hill, parked at the bottom, walked back up, snarling at myself, had more coffee.

The day's got to get better. Right? Hey ho.

It's actually quite pretty out there:

The Irrepressible Rose
by the front porch

The dead flower head of a Reflexed Stonecrop at the end of the drystone wall. The wall runs across the front terrace at the edge of the steep bank that the house is built on.

New shoots of Reflexed Stonecrop among the mosses

Still a lot of (light) snow cloud out there. I hope it clears to the sunny morning the Met Office forecast. 

Here is a feather from yesterday. And breathe...

Mouse invasion

I have spent a good chunk of the morning spring cleaning a kitchen cupboard because when I went to get out flour and sugar to make muffins (apple and milk chocolate chips), I noticed a mess! Several bags of flour had been ripped open at their bottom corners and flour spilled. Not a lot but enough to arouse my suspicions.

I commented to Toad, who is at home this week, that there were no droppings. He said: "Constipated mice, then". Then I noticed that they hadn't gone for the icing sugar. His comment? "They've been watching the telly and know sugar's bad for them."

Since he was planning to go round the loch for primer and base coat paints for various walls, I gave him a grocery shopping list. Because of the damage to the flour bags, he asked if he should buy flour too. "Nah", says I, "it's all going in a hot oven. I think we'll survive if we eat it". Toad left, looking slightly alarmed. It'll be interesting to see if he can resist the muffins ;)

The flour is in mouse-proof containers now or cupboards inaccessible to mice and mouse traps (instantly effective and therefore humane ones) will be primed with peanut butter tonight. Next door's cats are not earning their keep. Sorry, mice. You are very welcome in the garden but not in the house.

A February visit to the Derbyshire family

Toadlet's Argyll school half-term holiday week coincided this time with that of my elder grandson's Derbyshire school. The same week contained my younger grandson's third birthday so Toadlet and I went south a-visiting. The following day was cold but bright so we headed out for a welly walk in Swallows Wood nature reserve.

                         

                          Found a bench, took a mug shot.

one poser ;)

two posers

Spotted some Water Figwort in the mud

A view looking back

We tramped up a hill well-trodden by cattle and horses. Just as well it was such a cold day and the ground a little frozen or we'd probably have lost a welly or two.

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The next day was 'Piglet's' birthday. Toadlet was on cake decoration duty. Piglet had asked for a blue chocolate cake with a reindeer, at least that was DerbyshireDaughter's interpretation of his specifications! It tasted good.

There was more cake baking the following day as some of us felt in need of a grown-ups' cake. DD made this blueberry cake from Kymmy's Kitchen on Facebook. She used a mixture of berries and I think she used a different cream cheese icing recipe. 'Moo' (elder grandson, age six) took me on a walk in the drizzle through ginnels and back ways to the nearest icing-sugar shop as DD had run out of it. He instructed me in my first use of a self-checkout and then, on the way home, tested me on whether I'd been listening to him on the way! At one point Toadlet answered a question. He said: "Don't tell her!" My 'creative' sense of direction is a family joke. I keep pointing out that I get unlost as often as I get lost.

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On the last day of our visit the weather was fine again so we went for a day out to Tatton Park. That is a brave pose by Moo on the wooden pig as he'd already tried and fallen off with quite a bump! His dad was making sure of no further falls when I took this photo.

A noticeable fungus on an old tree

With DD and Toadlet both giving directions, the latter from the satnav on her iPhone, and the former saying "Follow the road signs!" (Daddy and the boys went in a separate car as neither vehicle would hold us all) I made no wrong turns, the car didn't choose any extra-circuitous scenic routes on the way back. Just around the corner from where DD lives, we stopped to take in the last of the day's light.

Yesterday Toadlet and I came home. Rain and strong winds from the South Lakes to the Boggy Brae in Argyll and it's still pouring. It has been a wet winter even by wet western Britain standards.

Oasis blankets

I am back home after the best part of a week with DerbyshireDaughter and family. That's her between the two behatted toerags, my grandsons. Toadlet is behind. I'm not allowed to go visit her nephews without her.

DerbyshireDaughter taught me how to do "mattress stitch" to join sections of garter-stitch knitting. We put together two blankets from sections knitted by the Garelochhead Oasis knitters.

Click on the photos to 'embiggen'* them.
[*made up word]

The sorting.

Blanket 1 completed

I edged it with a double row of crochet and
DerbyshireDaughter ingeniously reinforced a couple of weak spots with crochet flowers. We did the same for blanket 2. I made the 'rusty' flower–my first attempt!

Blanket 2

DD edged this one with blue and green

We think the crochet edgings 'bring theblankets together'. I really like these blankets and hope the knitters do too when I show them on Monday. I'd use either of these in a child's cot or on a pushchair.

Old steps and triangulations of yellowness

A couple of days ago when it was sunny I began to make the old steps in the south-east bank visible again from under several years' growth of grasses and mosses. Though cold and frosty the weather this morning looked promising again so I decided to carry on. With the sun on my back I soon felt warm.

My first pleasant discovery was a fine piece of Plagiothecium undulatum (Hart's-tongue Thyme-moss). See below.

Plagiothecium undulatum

There's masses of this on the Boggy Brae in various places
but I hadn't found it here before.

I've found the bulbous roots of Arrhenatherum elatius ssp. bulbosum (False Oat-grass) in other places too.

Pulling away dead grass revealed two yellow crocuses

which, as the sun shone more directly on them,
became ever expanding triangulations of yellowness:

I also found a couple of new primrose plants to add

to the 1200 or so that I counted one year,

and now I can see the steps.

It was a three pairs of gloves job: silk liners,

knitted ones, and waterproof ones on top.

Next task is to actually mow the south-east bank. I left it last year to see how well the large quantities of Greater Bird's-foot Trefoil would do. It did not flower much there, though it does elsewhere in the garden so that bank will get a thorough mowing or two this year, hopefully quite soon before the Red Fescue has its big growth spurt. I love its golden stems.