Lopping a tree or two

old cypress up top

Our friends from two fields away came with chain saws and anti-midge spray yesterday and chopped into logs most of the collapsed part of the old cypress up at the top of the garden, the one that was smothering everything in its vicinity. In the first photo above, beyond the wood pile, you can see the main trunk of the birch tree. Before the collapse of the cypress that was completely hidden, even on its further away side. The collapse of half the cypress pulled its still standing trunks more upright and away from the birch. We left some of the cut trunks as a counterweight. Whether it'll be sufficient, time will tell. Meanwhile, the root rot at the base of the cypress blooms on. (Can one talk of blooming fungi?)

We used the broken old step-ladder that was leaning against the old rowan (scorched trunk at left of first photo) when we moved here, plus another random metal pole that we found, to prop up the wood pile. One day I'll do a post about Boggy Brae garden metal finds!

Old rowan, with its new bit, decorated with a beard
of cypress roots. Like rhododendron ponticum, this
cypress sent roots down from ground-touching branches.

The lopping opened up the view a bit

While the chain saw was out, BJ-of-2-fields-away (definitely not BoJo!) lopped some of the overgrown sallow that's up top as well and some of the top heavy and leaning towards the house prunus tree on the front bank. I've a bit of tidying up to do and a few roaring bonfires of green, terpene-rich smaller cypress branches to enjoy.

Sallow, left, to be added to the as yet not very dead dead-hedge that can be seen top left of the photo and, below, some branches of the overgrown front bank prunus tree to be tidied up.

There is a lovely fresh piney smell up here!

The original deal was that our friends would take half the wood but since we made that deal they've found another source of free wood (free but for the work, I mean) nearer to them so they didn't need it this year. When they do need some more wood they can come and hack away at the fallen wild cherry. The upper of the two cherry trunks shown below is still alive but the lower one is, as one might say in yoof speak, well dead. And there is a lot of dead wood above it too, still propped up for the best drying effect by the old cherry tree's offspring.

dead cherry wood

A sweet basket and some pelargoniums

It was my birthday yesterday and a friend sent me the sweetest little basket in the world. Check out the maker, Lois Walpole's, website.

beauty out of detritus

Since it was a dryish day and the pond level was low, I spent some time pulling gunk out of it. I liked the tree reflections.

pond reflecting

Then I spent some time on one of my favourite activities, pulling dead wood out of hedges. All but a few twigs of this are fuchsia wood. Nice to know it's not immortal. I must try and discover how to kill some more. Boggy Brae fuchsia is invasive and monstrous. We're not dealing with sweet little hanging basket plants here!

sticks for kindling

I bought some pelargoniums earlier in the year. The Lord Bute turned his toes up and fell into a mortal decline. P. Ardens has a fungal infection but since I stopped speaking to her she seems to be making an effort. She's the one on the right. I've just discovered that she is "flat-growing" so I guess a hanging basket would suit her well. The other two, moving leftwards, are 'Pauline Harris' and 'Ruth Lesley' and seem to be coming along allright.

Meanwhile, I've taken cuttings from a plant a friend gave me and shoved them into plant pots containing other plants. In good Boggy Brae style, the cuttings are now being vigorous.

Unbridging Rhododendron ponticum

Bit by bit I am raising the canopy–or, as I put it inside my head, unponting the ponticum where ponting means bridging from Latin pons meaning bridge–of the large rhododendron on the south-east side of the boggy brae garden. The area of ground it covered was getting larger and larger and the get-at-ability of some parts of the garden near it was getting harder and harder. Also some of its bridges were putting down roots. In due course this would have speeded up its conquering of more and more garden space. Enough was enough and I wanted to be able to walk underneath it without it trying to scalp me. One of the most effective and fun ways to deal with its rooting offspring is, I discovered, to light a fire at the bottom of one of them and burn various bits of garden prunings including the leafy branches. In due course the bridged and rooted extension keels over, one saws or twists off the trunk part, burns the small stuff and leaves (they burn very well), and stacks the thicker logs on the bridge stack for cutting into wood stove lengths in due course.

a keeled over R.ponticum offspring

the 'bridges' wood stack

only this and a few of the 'hangers' in the first photo to go

That cotoneaster and those breeze blocks

With a little help from Toadlet, I got this far with That Cotoneaster. Whenever I say or think that word I think of my dad, who died in April 1993: he always, deliberately, said Cotton Easter.

Some roots got left in the ground as simply too difficult to get out. If they resprout, I'll mow them down. Out of the old and partly dying rhododendron next to the Cotton Easter bank, I got quite a pile of firewood, mostly just snapped off with a little help from my boot.

So then I had a neat slope and clarty boots.

As I rolled the breeze blocks to the Rattletrap to take to the dump, one of the whole ones broke into pieces. This made it much easier to lift.

off to the dump we go

A spot of pruning

In spite of heavy showers at night and now again, it was dry this afternoon, so I decided to prune a cotoneaster and to shove the dry branches into the Rattletrap to be taken to the dump as and when.





I kept the thick, trunky branches to use as firewood in due course. Plonked them on top of a stump to season.

The place where the cotoneaster was, along with a couple of small holly trees that I also don't want, looks a bit bare now. The plan is to get rid of the breeze blocks and the roots of the trees so I can mow over the edge and get at the rhododendron hedge with a hedge cutter more easily.
There were several cotoneaster seedlings. In a way it's a pity to cut it down as bees like the flowers, but there is more: see the golden cotoneaster at the corner of the terrace behind the stump in the last picture. There's plenty of that.

better view down to the loch too!

Spring flowers and spring 'noticings' on the Boggy Brae

I went out with thick leather gloves and a hefty pair of loppers this morning meaning to yank out or cut down to the ground some of the large brambles encroaching on the Boggy Brae garden from outside its perimeter. Without a mechanical digger I'll never get rid of them all, nor do I want to, but they need to be kept in check or they'd take over. The lovely colours of the few plants already flowering distracted me from my task for a while.



The pink Oxalis leaves in the bottom right corner above are on a plant in my bedroom. I split and repotted a large plant last autumn and for months there was no sign of life in the pot housing this one. Next time I'll be prepared for the winter dormancy.

Having dealt with the brambles round the field boundary–great, several metre long snaggy shoots–I climbed over my dead hedge into the area under a big rhododendron and noticed this knotted Wild Cherry branch hanging down where it hadn't been before.



It seems something had fallen on it and broken it near the trunk. I've left it hanging there for now: more firewood in due course. I'd like to cut cleanly through the bit 'knot' to see the wood patterns inside it. The moss on the ground is mainly Atrichum undulatum (the darker green) and Plagiomnium undulatum. The amount of both has increased a lot since I raised the canopy of the rhododendron in 2014. It is Rhododendron ponticum and was bridging and expanding its empire too much!

Big rhodie a few years ago; allright when in flower but a dark encroaching monster the rest of the time!

Under the left end of the pic above I hope to have a lot of foxgloves this summer:

this little patch photographed last June
is now as below

String tin and selvedge signs

This is my string tin. Much of the string is the cut off selvedges of patchwork fabrics.











It gets used for tying bundles of twigs and dried flower stems together for use in the stove. They hang up below the mantelpiece to finish drying before they are used.

The bits of sea glass are from the beach and stuck on with Blutak.

The selvedge string also gets used to mark things in the garden, here (from last July) a few Whorled Caraway plants, so that they don't get mown down by mistake. I wanted them to set seed so that they'd regrow this year.

This marks a new patch of bluebells
where there were none before

This, fully translated for lawnmower-wielding Toad, means "Do Not Mow Here". He gets it :)