On orange

There was a deep orange stripe in the sky to the east as I walked down the hill at 7 o'clock this morning. Sitting on the bus a little later I noticed the perfectly and naturally arranged orange hair of a young man in front of me around his perfectly placed crown. I have a double crown so my hair is confused!

Later, while hedge hacking, I enjoyed the orange foliage of a large and large-leaved cotoneaster. It is springing up quite a lot here in the last few years, presumably spread by birds who eat the berries. Although I think the shrubs are invasive non-natives, they are also rather handsome at this time of year. The first one is on the lane below the cottage next door and the second is in next-door's garden. There is also one on the field side of our south fence. They cheer up dull days.

The twenty-plumed moth, or one of its relations, is still around. If it is the same one, which apparently it could be, it has now been in the house for over a month. I'm a little bit puzzled by the description in that link. It says the wings are each made up of six 'feathers', but if you actually count the quills there are ten for each wing which, given its name, Twenty-plumed moth, is what you'd expect. Hexadactyla refers to its six insect legs. I guess the fact that the scientific binomial and the English name do not actually 'match' has caused some confusion. Here it is on an orange bit of wall.

Apparently honeysuckle is this moth's foodplant. The BoggyBrae has masses of honeysuckle growing around and up various trees and over stumps. Now I need to find out what the caterpillars look like.

The Honeysuckle Stump

When we first came here, there were two large stumps of spruce trees on the south-east slope. They had been Christmas trees that a long ago Boggy Brae family had not wanted to part with. Clearly they had been left to grow rather large and must have prevented a lot of light from getting to the house and garden. The photo to the left shows the upper stump which became the honeysuckle stump as honeysuckle began, of its own accord, to grow over it. At first I encouraged this. Some string I tied around the stump to hold up the honeysuckle shoots is visible in the snowy photo below from March 2008.

Gradually the amount of honeysuckle growing over the stump increased until the stump was hidden. A birch tree seeded next to the stump and ferns, including bracken. By last year there was a lot of plant but not a lot of flowering. This year I thought I'd let the birch tree grow so that the honeysuckle could grow up it but it still didn't flower much...

June 2015

...and this month I decided it needed a haircut. It was all getting a bit messy and just large–we'd be having reduced light problems again at this rate.

December 2016

So I backed the rattletrap, which already had fence wire from the fuchsia hacking down at the front (not finished yet), closer in to where I was working.

fence wire for the dump

Underneath all the honeysuckle stems I found two fungi growing on the stump–a lot of the pale yellow lumpy fungus and a hoof-type bracket fungus.

I shoved all the stems, the birch tree and various other gunk into Rattletrap, went inside to eat two rock buns and drink some tea, and then set off to the dump. A condenser (I think) that the boiler service man took out of the boiler went too.

Something tells me I'll be tidying up around this stump for a while yet.

The dark stuff among the honeysuckle stems is ivy.

Something also tells me that mudguard on the rattletrap needs a new piece of gaffer tape! 

The lower spruce stump is a whole nother story for another time. (I know 'nother' isn't officially a word; I think it needs to be; a whole other doesn't feel right!).

lower, or Lophocolea, spruce stump

After I'd returned from the dump and was eating lunch, I saw a wren troglodyting about in the debris left by the stump's haircut. That was nice.

Bonfire Moss

Doing a spot of weeding this morning, and wheeling the barrow up to the compost heap, I was struck by the paleness of the patch of Bonfire Moss (Funaria hygrometrica) that is growing on the 2014 bonfire site on the upper lawn. It turned out the whiteness was water droplets on the capsules reflecting the pale overcast sky.

The bonfire site has a diameter of about two metres and, as you can see to the left, most of that is now covered with Bonfire Moss. The dark patch in he middle is where something has been doing some digging.

little hole in the charcoal

Plenty of young Bonfire Moss

Further up, near the top of the garden, honeysuckle is opening its leaves among the Grey Sallow branches it uses for support.

This has made me decide, for the moment, to let the young birch tree grow beside the honeysuckle stump so that it also has something to grow up.

<< photo taken in June last year.

Honeysuckle 2015

When we moved here nine years ago, the honeysuckle stump (someone's old Christmas tree that had been allowed to grow enormous!) looked like this. That is daughter number three aged just six.

There were self-seeded strands of young honeysuckle growing near it the following spring which I tied over the top of it thinking to make it look a little more attractive. That worked. This looks better than a bare stump.

Other plants came to live by the stump too, Scaly Male Fern (Dryopteris affinis), brambles (which I pull out), holly, rushes, bracken, and a downy birch tree. I left the birch, which you can see growing to the right of the stump in the photo below, last year and am thinking of letting it grow there as a support for the honeysuckle which now needs something to climb up. Time will tell whether this is a good idea.

Beyond the honeysuckle stump, just over the field fence, near those two dead stalks of dock, I think there is a Chiffchaff nest in among the bracken and some cypress branches we left there. I saw a bird flitting to and fro collecting food or nesting material the other day. There is a Chiffchaff chiffing right outside the window as I write and it or its friends have been quite vocal over the last few days. I'm wishing it breeding success.

There are Willow Warblers about too but they are not being so loud at the moment.

In a break from mowing...

...an April garden wander

Rhododendron blossoms on the grass

Blossom and shadows

Green alkanet in flower

Tangle of daffs, gorse and rambling rose

Cowberry and honeysuckle hanging on in there around the base of the fallen wild cherry tree

Bramble leaves and grass seed

Honeysuckle and Deer part 2

A pair of roe deer were near the honeysuckle stump that featured in this blog post in May. I had to run upstairs for my camera – must remember to leave it on the kitchen table overnight when deer may be spottable! – and missed getting a shot of the buck actually eating honeysuckle flowers, but I got some shots through a window (must wash that window more often!) of the pair of them.

The doe appears from behind the azalea

And she comes right round

 I thought those two pink bits in the photo might be Himalayan balsam flowers so I went to check. They are two last blossoms of the azalea whose flowering period, as you can see, is really over.

The pair of them hear the camera click and look straight at me.
They wouldn't have been able to see me because of reflections in the window glass.

And she blinks

You need to enjoy the soft mauve of the flowering Yorkshire Fog grass in the field beyond too.

The buck carries on towards the blueberry bush.
Very few berries ripening as he (or another deer) ate the flowers earlier in the year.

And he hears the camera again

A couple of days ago I wandered round the garden taking honeysuckle shots of where it grows elsewhere. So here follow "honeysuckle and x" shots where the value of x is variable. The deer have plenty to go at where they can reach it.

Beginning to open

Open and catching the light

The honeysuckle stump in summer

Growing up to the top of goat willow and holly trees

Honeysuckle holly and rhododendron

Honeysuckle hedge

Honeysuckle cherry and yew

As usual, the photos are clickable if you want to look at larger versions.