The Honeysuckle Stump

When we first came here, there were two large stumps of spruce trees on the south-east slope. They had been Christmas trees that a long ago Boggy Brae family had not wanted to part with. Clearly they had been left to grow rather large and must have prevented a lot of light from getting to the house and garden. The photo to the left shows the upper stump which became the honeysuckle stump as honeysuckle began, of its own accord, to grow over it. At first I encouraged this. Some string I tied around the stump to hold up the honeysuckle shoots is visible in the snowy photo below from March 2008.

Gradually the amount of honeysuckle growing over the stump increased until the stump was hidden. A birch tree seeded next to the stump and ferns, including bracken. By last year there was a lot of plant but not a lot of flowering. This year I thought I'd let the birch tree grow so that the honeysuckle could grow up it but it still didn't flower much...

June 2015

...and this month I decided it needed a haircut. It was all getting a bit messy and just large–we'd be having reduced light problems again at this rate.

December 2016

So I backed the rattletrap, which already had fence wire from the fuchsia hacking down at the front (not finished yet), closer in to where I was working.

fence wire for the dump

Underneath all the honeysuckle stems I found two fungi growing on the stump–a lot of the pale yellow lumpy fungus and a hoof-type bracket fungus.

I shoved all the stems, the birch tree and various other gunk into Rattletrap, went inside to eat two rock buns and drink some tea, and then set off to the dump. A condenser (I think) that the boiler service man took out of the boiler went too.

Something tells me I'll be tidying up around this stump for a while yet.

The dark stuff among the honeysuckle stems is ivy.

Something also tells me that mudguard on the rattletrap needs a new piece of gaffer tape! 

The lower spruce stump is a whole nother story for another time. (I know 'nother' isn't officially a word; I think it needs to be; a whole other doesn't feel right!).

lower, or Lophocolea, spruce stump

After I'd returned from the dump and was eating lunch, I saw a wren troglodyting about in the debris left by the stump's haircut. That was nice.