Sticks and elderflower cake

Last June friends helped us with some tree lopping including of this prunus species on the front bank. This was at the end of a busy afternoon so I turned down their offer of help to clear up the branches. Four days later I fell and broke my arm. I did shift some of the more scattered logs and twiggy bits but not this pile. I probably added to it actually!

And so it has stayed there over the winter as more urgent garden jobs came up. As spring approached I thought of tackling it again but then noticed what was growing into it: primroses.




I decided to leave the sticks be for now rather than risk ripping up the flowers. Lower down the bank a lot more primroses have seeded, making a cheering sight through this year's cold spring.

Up the bank from that pile of sticks and the tree they came from is a single self-seeded cowslip. I've put a cage round it to prevent it being cropped by roe deer. The other day I found a tiny mushroom beside it.

I'm never short of other branches to tackle. Yesterday Toad helped me remove these and a couple more from the ridiculous dragon hedge down the drive then informed me he'd invited some archers to come and shoot here today! "They'll want cake!" I said. Toad said not and I'm sure they'd be perfectly charming about there being no cake at a Boggy Brae archery shoot but it's a tradition now! More notice of such events in future has been requested from Toad.

Found a recipe for elderflower cake so I'd better get cracking assembling ingredients.

The Lesser Celandines by the pond were looking particularly luminous yesterday.