Gardening Boggy Brae style when I'm not hacking overgrown hedges

Today I have been putting more plants in cages. This Roseroot among the mosses and grasses on the retaining wall at the back of the house was quite small ten years ago. It has gradually spread and there is another clump of it along from this. When I caged the Orpine last year, the roe deer just ate this instead (can you hear the gnashing of teeth (mine)?). They also nibbled the Reflexed Stonecrop that grows on the dry stone wall at the top of the front bank (cue more gnashing of teeth and growling) but that did flower in a few places and is now spreading, I notice, to the bank below the wall, among the Tamarisk moss and Hairy Wood-rushes.

I've also beeen pushing sticks into the ground (see right >>). On a trip to Oban in August three years ago, I passed a field of Wild Angelica and Purple Loosestrife. My plan to obtain a similar effect on the Boggy Brae is taking shape, at least as far as the angelica is concerned. The initial leaves are beginnng to show and I'm marking where they are so that I don't tread on them or mow them by mistake. There are about ten, so far, in the Boggy Bottom (aka front garden), including some at the edges of the yellow flag patch, and another ten or a dozen in the pond triangle.

wild angelica and purple loosestrife near Oban

My other task has been what seems to be an annual one of removing a queen wasp's nest from the shed. Some years I've done it more than once. The thing is to notice them when there is only the queen involved. I was in the shed today looking for something and thinking that this was about the time of year when a wasp nest would appear. Then I turned around and there one was! I use a jam jar to cover the nest and the edge of a postcard to scrape it off the roof. Then it's a case of put it down, flip the postcard off the top and run. The queens always seem a bit cross! As I would be, no doubt, if some giant scraped my house up!

The queens are welcome to build their nests elsewhere, just not in the shed. One year we had one in the back terrace retaining wall that's only three metres from the back door; it wasn't a problem.