Moss mowing and a dying bee

Yesterday, as it hadn't rained for several days (newsworthy in Argyll!), I mowed the front and side green terrace. Apparently it's gravel underneath but it has been green all the time we've lived here; we're now into the thirteenth year. Actually, thinking about it, most of the garden is stony under thin soil and thick moss. When the farmer did a small amount of ploughing in the field alongside us last autumn to slow down the water drainage to the gardens below, his huge ploughshare turned over a rock more than half the size of a wheelie bin. Mosses—mostly Common Tamarisk-moss (Thuidium tamariscum) and Springy Turf-moss (Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus)—make up most of the green but there are some grasses plus Common Cat's-ear galore and, increasingly, primroses. Most of the primroses are over the drystone wall and down the front bank but enough of their seeds are blowing or being carried over (or through, perhaps, by bank voles). So I scan for any sign of primrose leaves, like these tiny ones below, and mow round them.

While I was crawling around checking out primrose leaves I found an apparently struggling bumble bee. I made some sugar water but it didn't seem able to drink. I left it and the water somewhere safe. It is still where I left it, now looking dead.

Below is a tub of mossy mowings

These little woodrushes are popping up among the mosses too.

When they open they are a spring brightness.

Japanese Knotweed at Garelochhead and a one man clean-up

A few weekends ago there was an impressive beach clean at the head of Gare Loch. People lifted immense quantities of litter off the beaches on the eastern side and along the head up to the outlet of the McAuley Burn. I noticed that at about the same time brambles and other shrubs were cleared from the area between the footpath and the beach. I presumed that was the council's doing. Then pyramidal stacks began to appear along the salt marsh part west of McAuley Burn. I presumed that was council work too until just the other day when I saw one man, whom I stopped to chat to, systematically clearing wood, litter, and last year's dried knotweed stalks and piling them up into, so far, seven bonfire heaps. You might be able to make them out in the photo below.

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Here is one of the heaps and the sadness of litter around it. As the man said, the swathes of knotweed act as litter traps. To clear it one would need some kind of heavy duty scraper or digger, but then what would you do with it all? I guess it would have to be burned or the knot weed would be spread wherever it was dumped.

I suppose one advantage of the litter trapping by the knotweed is that it doesn't float out to sea again. And talking of 'advantages' of Japanese Knotweed, I've noticed that further up the burn, at the edge of its flood plain, there are parts of the bank where the lumpish knotweed root 'stacks' seem to have made what look like 'natural' levees. It occured to me that these monster plants are holding the bank fast. Perhaps.

Where the new shoots are growing many are already thicker than my forefinger. You can see in the photo below how thick they get when fully grown by the broken off last year stems. If you can enlarge the photo you'll see that the nascent leaf on the largest of the shoots looks like a red arrow.

All is not gloom on the Garelochhead littoral though. I spotted this driftwood piece of tree root art recently. I've increased the colour saturation to make the details clearer.

I'm thinking well done that one guy putting in all that effort. I hope he gets to burn his bonfires. The area he has cleared certainly looks a great deal better than it usually does at this time of year.

Digging out docks

That's dock plants, Rumex obtusifolius, not docks for boats. It was a mild day so my 'gansey' was soon not required.

Gate hanger.                                                             Gansey hanger

The "pond primula" is flowering. It seemed to carry on flowering for months last year.

Although Lesser Celandines have been flowering down by the loch for almost three weeks now, today was the first time they have made a proper showing in the garden.

Field Woodrush also:

The bright green blades are of grass; you might be able to make out the knob at the point of the murkier green leaf of the woodrush.

The hand tools basket

On my way through the outhouse—which is the entrance we usually use to the house—I knocked over my garden hand tools basket that was balanced on top of a bucket (because Toad is, at least in theory, painting the walls so everything is at six and seven). Turned out this was probably a good thing as it made me sort stuff out.

Gunk in the bottom included one of Toadlet's socks (another sock hiding place!) as well as the broken bits of basket and dried grasses that one might expect.

My favourite tool in this pile is probably the little wooden "man tool", so called apparently because in periodically using it to scrape mud off your spade while you are digging you are saving yourself a man's-worth of energy—by not constantly lifting the extra weight, I suppose. It's certainly a consideration when you have claggy soil.

Netting more plants

Toad held the torch while I scrabbled about in the loft, shifting planks to kneel on over the rafters and hoiking out of crannies old curtain poles that had been left up there before our time. They would be ideal, I'd decided, as posts on which to fasten some netting to protect plants whose growth has been stunted in previous years by roe deer chompings: Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) and Chilean Lantern Tree (Crinodendron hookerianum). The C.hookerianum had even flowered but then the deer chewed its bark off. I had given them some protection last year but they needed serious stuff sorted this year. Toad was enlisted to hammer curtain poles into the ground. He reckoned the deer were up the hill in the woods complaining about how mean we were keeping these delicious plants all to ourselves!

 

The fern behind the lantern tree is Lemon-scented Fern (Oreopteris limbosperma). It usually looks lovely later in the year.

Now I have a basketful of large wooden curtain pole rings. I suppose I can always chuck them on a bonfire if I haven't thought of a better use for them before we get some bonfire weather.

Orchid markers

Went out with my scythe and a rake this afternoon and cut back another patch of what I had let grow wild last year, in aid of the spread of wild angelica and northern marsh orchids (as well as the usual meadow buttercups and lesser spearworts). Being at the boggy bottom of the Boggy Brae, there was a good deal of rush and moss. Having cut and raked I poked around in search of signs of orchids. It's none of your big rosettes such as people are finding further south of early purple orchids, just the tiniest of pointed shoots down in the deep moss. I did not mark the ones I found down there but I did give ones on the back terrace some protection from careless feet. In the third picture, the orchid shoot is a wee blob in the top left corner.

 

I use bricks here because under all that moss and daisy rosette world is gravel and concrete so sticks can't go in very far. Below is a pic of the boggy bottom garden in June last year showing how I mowed around stuff.

The main northern marsh orchid patch is below the stand of Iris pseudacorus. The flowers in the bottom right of the b&w photo, which I like because it shows the slope of that part of the brae so well (it's steeper up to the right where the shadows are), are devil's bit scabious.

Plum wine and alder catkins

Brought some junk up from the cellar this morning and the last four bottles of homemade wine from Oxfordshire days. This one is plum. Toad put it in the fridge but I'm afraid it might turn the milk sour so I've moved it to a corner of the outhouse. The concrete floor should keep it chilled. Toad thinks it would go well with lemon drizzle cake. Hmm. I'm actually planning to make almondy marmalade shortbread this weekend.

I did a run to the dump with the junk plus some dug out fuchsia roots. If you lie those down on wet ground here (and it's very rarely not wet at least in part; at the moment it's sodden) they shoot out more roots and bed themselves down. Next thing you know you've got another unwanted giant fuchsia trying to take over the world. Anyway, on the way back I stopped off to check the lochside alder trees: the catkins are opening.