Snowdrops 2021

 The first snowdrops of 2021 have appeared on the Boggy Brae. They are under an azalea on the steep, northeast-facing front bank and it is this group that appear first every year.

The Tamarisk moss through which this one is growing is looking good too

On the southeast-facing part of the bank, there is a primrose plant that has not stopped flowering since last spring. Near it some others are looking promising.

Bike ride to Faslane Cemetery

We can’t keep up with the Joneses 😉 but we had an enjoyable ride yesterday morning in pleasantly cool and breezy conditions. Faslane Cemetery contains memorials to the crew and builders of submarine K13 that sank in the Gare Loch in 1917.

We wandered around the rest of the cemetery reading names and stories. Perhaps I should say imagining stories. It’s not hard to imagine some tragic storyline when you read of several deaths of infants affecting one family.

I wondered what relation Gertrude and Marie Louise bore to each other on the gravestone pictured below, as well as loving Marie Louise's full name.

Riding back it struck me how much of the signs of spring I had missed in Garelochhead by travelling to work all through lockdown by car. I’ve sometimes considered cycling but decided against it on the grounds that I wouldn’t have energy for that as well as for the extreme gardening I need to do at home!

The pic below shows expanses of scentless mayweed that are visible this year on the tidal marshes at Garelochhead. This is one of the results of someone’s epic cutting last year of the Japanese knotweed that usually pretty much smothers everthing else. I hope it is kept under control in future years. 

The final pic is looking down the loch. You might be able to pick out a green field above the small, rightmost boat. Home is next to that field.

Note: I’ve often wondered why Gare Loch is so often referred to as the Gare Loch (the Gareloch). I think it’s perhaps an easy way to distinguish it from the town of Gairloch in the North West Highlands.

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.

Birds on Bute

Yesterday Toad and I met up with other members of the Argyll Bird Club to go to Bute and do some bird spotting. We had views of Arran most of the day and no rain except for a wee spot or two early on at Colintraive ferry.

Arran from Bute

There is a (probably incomplete) list below of birds seen. I did not see every one of those, just most. The Water Rail and Coot were heard and recognised by others. At the Quien Bird Hide I seem to remember a moorhen in the reeds, but maybe that was the coot! Other people compiled the lists.

I did not attempt to take photos of birds, just of scenery, and some of these are below to give a feel for the sort of places we were looking for birds.

Scalpsie Beach

I enjoyed the different kinds of sand that the island has:

Shame about plastic everywhere but it was somewhat encouraging to see lichen and moss colonising the plastic rope handrails of the board walk over the mud to the hide at Quien Loch.

A mooch about Lochgilphead

Toad and I had been going to take part in a field trip to Kerrera with the Argyll Bird Club but because of a forecast of heavy rain and strong winds it was cancelled. This meant that LSB and I could go for a mooch around Lochgilphead instead. LSB drove there and we had refreshments at the Smiddy Bistro. Then we explored homeware and arty shops working our way up Argyll Street. When We spotted a sign saying "Free coffee", LSB pressed her nose to the window (well, almost) to see what was what. Next thing we knew three people were leaning out into the rainy street urging us to come in. I wish I'd had a camera ready to get a shot of that!

We went in and found it was a drop-in meeting place, in someone's house, for SNP (Scottish National Party) supporters. We were given hot drinks and biscuits and had some friendly chat. We live in the same constituency as the group of people in this house. We didn't talk politics.

The house has a big applique hanging in the entrance hall. I took a picture of part of it.

Continuing up Argyll Street we went into another homeware shop where I splashed out on a silicon pastry brush—my natural bristle one is starting to moult, presumably like the animal it came from—and a ball of soft Indian cotton twine. Boggy Brae gardening tasks always seem to need more string.

On our way back down we stopped for tea and cake—the best chocolate and carrot cakes ever!—at Cafe 35, where I and two other friends had called in a few years ago after our trip to Knapdale to see beavers (we saw no beavers but we did have a lovely day). LSB is the carrot cake tester. I test chocolate ones. Each of these types of cake can be disappointing; those at Cafe 35 were not. The tea was good too. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area.

On the drive there and back we noted with delight the many hazel catkins dancing in the wind in the road verges and, on other tree species, the clothing of lichens that makes them look never-bare even when they're leafless in winter.

Visiting family

During my recent visit to DerbyshireDaughter and family we enjoyed a seasonal lantern parade round a few streets in Hadfield. This is the bee lantern made by DD and the boys, M & H. When I told Toad about the lantern he expressed scepticism about the appropriateness of a bee lantern in December. I said: "ivy bee". He didn't know about ivy bees, it seems (neither did I until recently). It might not be a good ivy bee portrait but with some artistic licence and the requirements of such lanterns, it was just fine! The parade was fun and there were lots of impressive lanterns.

DD and family are very fond of board games and have some excellent ones old and new. This board is one of the new ones, Photosynthesis.

While in Derbyshire I started a temari. I haven't made one for a while so was relearning a few of the nifty ideas I'd acquired when I made them more often, such as how great circles work in thread. This design, called Phoenix by Diana Vandervoort in her book, Temari Traditions: more techniques for Japanese thread balls, does not work too well on the size of ball I was using. Well, I say 'doesn't work' but the whole ball will work when I've finished my adaptations.

Temari 2018

I thoroughly enjoyed the boys' school rendering of the Nativity play. M's part was that of a cool dude angel with tinsil-edged wings and M was a happy shepherd.

My train journey to the house where I grew up, where my mum and my youngest brother (her carer now she is old and frail) still live, was straightforward. As always the mosses and liverworts on the back garden paths were amazing. The picture shows a small part near the back door.

When I left to come back to Scotland the rising sun was glorious.

sunrise in N Lancs 13 December 2018

Bryophytes and sunlight to punctuate a two day stay during which a highlight was a visit from my eldest brother and his wife. We are a spread out family so it's good to meet up when we can. When middle brother saw the photo below he sent some of recent chill in upstate New York where he lives. See below.

mum, eldest bro, me, youngest bro, sister-in-law

Finally, on my train journey back up north (even norther, I should say) I found myself within uncomfortable hearing distance of an unconscious sniffer 😣. One learns from experience: I now travel with earplugs! In they went. They weren't needed for long as he got off at the first stop. Phew.

Hedge hacking continues

I didn't quite fill the bucket with dead rhododendron sticks during this morning's hedge hacking stint. Only two or three metres still to go to get the main stretch down to knee height so that I can trim it with the hedge cutter more easily. Shoulder height is too much of a strain with the weight of the hedge cutter.

Filling the old, leaky mop bucket with small sticks good for kindling and adding bigger branches and fresh cut pieces to the woodpile for future firewood is how it goes. I'm also making piles that are still in leaf do deal with later. So far I've filled a whole coal bag (they seem to drop off the local coal lorries regularly! If I find them I pick them up and bring them home) and started another.

That woodpile pic was taken about a week ago. It's more extensive now.

I also collected, as you see, that tube thingy that Toad had apparently 'planted' (chucked off the roof that he was repairing) below the den 😉. It could be a good plant marker for one of next year's orchids.








Before being driven inside again by rain I topped up my wildflower count for the week. There's a challenge on Twitter to find #thewinter10 for #wildflowerhour (8–9pm Sundays). I've found well over ten during the last three weeks. It will be interesting to see how the count progresses through the winter. Here's a compilation of a few phone pics from this week and my list of seventeen.

Walking home

Yesterday was cold but sunny, perfect for walking, so I did, from the head of the loch to home. It took me two and a half hours, not because it's a long way but because I was clambering up and down the lochside depending on the walkability of the beach. In some places there is very little beach and the banks up to the road are steep and rocky. In some places, such massive trees have fallen down into the loch that it's difficult to get past them. There was one enormous ash tree, its trunk covered in thick old ivy stems, which I couldn't go under or round so over it had to be.

Eight months ago I did the same walk though more on the road that time. One of my finds was the old boat Caol Ila. Yesterday I saw it from the other side. It's definitely a dead boat.

Anchor and rudder below

At one point I needed to climb back up to the road. Luckily there was a rope tied to the trees to help haul myself up. I'd have got rather muddy otherwise!

Took some pics of wild flowers still in flower for #thewinter10 on #wildflowerhour run by some botanists on Twitter...
.

 ...and enjoyed a leafy bit of beach as I neared home.


By this time I had much aching of arthritic knees and feet to contend with. Happily painkillers, a large piece of carrot cake, and a nap dealt with the worst of that. The weather is back to cloudy and showery today.