Undefeated dandelion and a rose in an old wall

A few days ago I thought this dandelion had a defeated look (see below) but it has flowered again. Perhaps the bit of snow and rain we've had lately helped release some more nutrients from the crumbling old bricks and the mortar that it's rooted in.

26 april

Despite its tatty looks, I like this old wall. It has such a strong life spirit, or perhaps I should say plant seeds that land on and in it seem to find it a good growing environment. I trained an old rambling rose over it a few years ago which thrived so that I've had to prune it quite drastically. It seems to have put roots down at the bottom of the inside of the wall and doesn't need to be connected to its parent plant any more.

This is what it looks like in full bloom:

parent plant by the den

the white roses have pink 'highlights' and sometimes
an entirely pink bloom appears

one of the best blooms from July 2013

I hope it does as well this year. There are Hart's-tongue ferns inside the wall as well and various mosses.

Some of the bricks seem to have a dark 'cindery' matter in their middles. I think I need to do some brick research!

British Deer Survey

I recently came across this link to the British Deer Survey for 2016. As well as sending them some Boggy Brae sightings I thought I would collate a few of my old pictures of roe deer encounters.

The first summer we were here, while the garden was still very overgrown, I took this pic of a roe deer buck under what I call the umbrella tree. The branches would reach the ground in weeping willow fashion if roe deer didn't keep them cropped to just above their nibbling height.

The umbrella tree hasn't change much over the years apart from being a little bigger, but the pieris to the right of it nad hardly visible in this photo now look like this:

A couple of years later, during the time when we had geese, a white roe buck appeared one morning. He seemed unconcerned by my cautious approach with the camera.

Bertie, the gander, first hissed at the deer and then looked snootily away. The deer was unimpressed.

One of the best encounters was when I saw a doe and fawn from bedroom windows. The doe was chewing cud and the fawn was exploring. It came round to the north-west side of the house (and I shifted rooms),

The fawn looked right at me in the
upstairs window

then it looked back at mum, began to return to her, and looked back at me before going behind the bank again. Clikc on the pics to enlarge them.

In September 2014 these two heard the camera shutter click and spotted me at the landing window. More pics from that encounter here.

And I have watched roe deer sunbathing in the copse beside the garden.

Streusel sussed

I made a red fruit streusel cake today and feel I have sussed the method. I used this recipe (without the video; someone just sent me a simple version) but tweaked it a bit because I found the cake layer of the first apple streusel cake I made a bit dry. My tweak was to use two eggs instead of one egg and some milk. So this version has no milk in it and the cake was indeed less dry.

Having read through the instructions twice, I also simplified them for inclusion in my little recipes notebook, so a paragraph on how to make the streusel topping became: Rub butter into flour, then add the rest (which could be shortened even further to rubbing in method).

Similarly, the paragraph about making the cake layer became: creaming method.

<< the moment of truth before putting the fruit layer on top of the cake batter.

The fruit is some slightly sweetened and lightly stewed raspberries and blackberries that I had in the freezer. Before adding them to the cake I stirred in a heaped tablespoon (roughly) of dry semolina to help soak up the juices.

Seems to have worked. Tasted good warm with cream.

So, yeah, I've sussed streusels: essentially a fruit crumble with cake underneath.

Toad claims not to like hazelnuts or walnuts but when walnuts are ground and put into banana muffins, and when hazelnuts are chopped and toasted and put into streusels, he doesn't have a problem with them! Eating raw nuts on their own is indeed a quite different experience from eating them mixed in with other ingredients in cooked food.

As I told someone via Twitter, I had to hide the last piece of the apple streusel or Toad would've scoffed it and I wanted it for breakfast. #cakewars ;)

Another tweak I might try is to go back to the one egg plus milk idea but to make the apple layer thicker, and to use cooking apples rather than eaters for a bit more apple zing.

And yes, those are staples in my cake tin liner. Doesn't everyone have a tiny stapler in their baking kit?

Cowslip! an exciting find on the Boggy Brae

As I walked round the top of the front bank to get some tool or other, I squeaked with surprise and delight to find a cowslip growing near to where I planted everlasting sweet pea (which I think has given up the ghost). Woohoo!

I brought some cowslip seed up from Oxfordshire when we moved up here but it did not take, so it's lovely to see this one plant. I've put a chicken wire cage around it so that the roe deer don't scoff it. They scoffed all the very healthy-looking astilbe shoots the other day. Sigh.

The plant is quite small, just 3-4cm tall at the moment.

I can't remember what it was I was going to get so I shall retrace my steps to where I was working and see if I get any inspiration.

Meanwhile, the single pale Lesser Celandine has put in its appearance again, and my favourite primula (apart from the wild P.veris and P.vulgaris of course!).

Vinegar ice-cream

pic from Wikimedia Commons

Long ago, in pre-Toadlet times, Toad and I took two Bangladeshi kids I was tutoring to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Afterwards we went along to "G & D's" (George & Davis' Ice-cream Cafe) on Little Clarendon Street.

I remembered this event today when I began to tuck into my second wedge of apple streusel cake, this time with some added homemade chocolate sauce (melted chocolate and double cream, essentially – the low fat mantra never caught on with me) and vanilla ice-cream.

Because...

...when I was reading out the available ice-cream varieties for Tanni and Robbie, Tanni must have misheard vanilla as vinegar. She asked for vinegar ice-cream and I, mishearing her in turn, accepted that with a perfectly straight face. It was only afterwards that Toad told me she had said vinegar and obviously wondered why it was called that! Brave girl to have chosen it in that case!

Anyway, ever since then vanilla ice-cream has been vinegar ice-cream in my mind. And so, this afternoon I had a slice of apple cake with 'vinegar' ice-cream and chocolate sauce. Very nice it was too.

Baking before breakfast

Although I loved spending yesterday afternoon in Inveraray with my pal (we even managed, without prior consultation between our respective Argyll peninsulas–or 'pelinsunnas' as Toadlet used to say–to be colour coordinated), this morning I felt in need of an energy boost so I set to on an apple streusel cake that I've been meaning to make for a few days.

My pal and me

The recipe said to use two large apples. I found one and a half Granny Smiths was plenty. If this cake is as good as I'm expecting it to be, I might try using just one Bramley next time. Yes, I have my own peculiar way of coring apples ;)



The cake rose well–good sign. The plan is to fuel some scything of rushes as the day progresses. The sun is peeping through clouds every now and then so I'm off out to do the first stint.

Later: Yep, that worked!

Up top in the west corner

Went 'up top' to the west corner of the garden today cutting docks, pulling out baby brambles and pruning next door's rhododendrons that hang over the wall as I went. As I neared the top I was also pulling out Himalayan Balsam seedlings, some of which are now showing their second leaves.

Up among the crunchy underfoot leaves of the goat willow I found three baby rowan trees. This was the largest. I've left them all but a couple may get pulled out in due course. There are several more elsewhere in the garden. We are not short of young rowan trees. Nor old ones, come to that, though I think the oldest may keel over this year. The hollows at the base of its trunk are becoming clearer.

This pic from June 2013 shows the only live part back then. It lives on valiantly even though the old pieces of wood from an old treehouse that was built in the tree long before our time have almost rotted away.

old rowan in February 2007

Up top where I cleared some Spiraea during 2014, self-seeded foxgloves are doing well. I love the silvery furriness of young foxglove leaves.

young foxglove

There is dead spiraea up there where I set bonfires so I had another wee bonfire today, burning dead stalks and old rose wood. And I gazed at the treescape up the hill.

Something tells me this little oak will not survive the depradations of roe deer. Fortunately there are a couple of others that have got large enough to survive.

Near there is a favourite mossy mound:

about 50cm deep, I reckon

I don't often feel annoyed with deer chewings; it's something one just has to live with here, but just biting small branches off a young rhododendron (not ponticum!) that hasn't flowered yet, and spitting them out struck me as vandalism. Humph.

This wacky dandelion near the back door cheered me up.

today's favourite dandelion

That cotoneaster and those breeze blocks

With a little help from Toadlet, I got this far with That Cotoneaster. Whenever I say or think that word I think of my dad, who died in April 1993: he always, deliberately, said Cotton Easter.

Some roots got left in the ground as simply too difficult to get out. If they resprout, I'll mow them down. Out of the old and partly dying rhododendron next to the Cotton Easter bank, I got quite a pile of firewood, mostly just snapped off with a little help from my boot.

So then I had a neat slope and clarty boots.

As I rolled the breeze blocks to the Rattletrap to take to the dump, one of the whole ones broke into pieces. This made it much easier to lift.

off to the dump we go