28 February 2021 in the garden

Holey crocus

Lichen on a rotting spruce stump

Forgsoawn at last!

Hazel catkins

Toad thinks the nibblers might be beetles

Polytrichum/Haircap moss sp on rotting spruce

 

A line of golden setae

The sun was sinking as the smoke from my small bonfire drifted up the garden and its rays shone through the  bright setae of the moss growing on the trunk of the fallen wild cherry tree.

It was high winds one night in December 2013 that brought the old wild cherry tree down. We knew it was affected by the parasitic fungus, Laetiporus sulphureu (Chicken of the woods), so its collapse was not totally surprising. One of its offspring is still holding part of it up. The same storm also brought down a tall eucalyptus which added some interest to the climbing frame.

Some of the eucalyptus wood is still in the woodshed. It burns well in the stove. Some day I might shuffle up the old cherry trunk and start sawing branches....

Small garden things

I've been pulling New Zealand Willowherb (Epilobium brunnescens) off the holding wall at the back of the back terrace. I like its tininess and its flowers but it is rather invasive and I wanted to check the hornwort that was also growing there was still around. This meant pulling off quite a lot of ferns as well. (It also meant I got black fingernails which needed well scrubbed!) The ferns are well rooted so they'll grow back. Ferns need no encouragement on Boggy Brae. They are some of the boss plants!

Having taken the camera out to photograph the hornwort (I think it is Field Hornwort/Antheros agrestis), I wandered about looking at other small things, including the very ferny-looking moss, Hart's-tongue Thyme-moss (Plagiomnium undulatum).

Field Hornwort in its mossy and liverworty

environment

Hart's-tongue Thyme-moss

Broad-leaved Willowherb
growing through ferns

Enchanter's Nightshade.
I think we actually have the hybrid,
Upland Enchanter's Nightshade

From a patch, one of many, that I have left to grow wild, I pulled up seven or eight downy birch seedlings. On the underside of a leaf of one of them was this intriguing blueish ball. Then a spider came charging up the tiny tree and went into guard the ball mode so I'm guessing this is a spider egg sac. I put the wee tree and the titchy, probably very annoyed spider in among the ferny undergrowth to recover from the assault. 😬

Pics of early spring on the Boggy Brae

honeysuckle stem growth

Springy Turf-moss (Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus)

Pignut leaves with the springy turf-moss

Fire hydrant in the lane

Lesser Celandine beginning to flower

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage

Insects on the pond

Gorse revival

 A shop I sometimes go to is right next to a railway track and the railway track is right next to the sea. After my shop I usually sit and drink my coffee in the car park staring at the sea and the clouds, watching gulls and crows. In February last year I photographed this scraggy looking gorse plant (see below) and wondered if it would flower. Well it did (see left), a year later.

same gorse plant a year ago

In the rough, gravelly ground on the nearer side of the rail track fence is what I think is a subspecies of wild radish, << Raphanum raphanistrum subsp. maritimus. I'll have to keep an eye on its flowering to be certain. Also in the rough ground were these other leaf rosettes:



The daisy and clover are easily recognised but I don't know what the other two are. The thistly rosette doesn't seem prickly enough to be a thistle and the other makes me think of chamomile... Let's just hope nobody does any weeding before they flower.

And then there was this moss. I might snaffle a sample next time I shop there.

Boggy Brae bogtastic

Pignut begins.
<<

Primroses thrive among the grasses, rushes and mosses

Near the bottom of the garden, in the Boat Bog, clumps of fresh green Toad Rush (Juncus bufonius), interspersed with tiny Wavy Bittercress (Cardamine flexuosa)–well, in tininess terms, it's actually quite big compared to its cousin, Cardamine hirsuta. I think Toad Rush is my favourite small rush.

young moss and old grass

puddle in the lane

Up top in the west corner

Went 'up top' to the west corner of the garden today cutting docks, pulling out baby brambles and pruning next door's rhododendrons that hang over the wall as I went. As I neared the top I was also pulling out Himalayan Balsam seedlings, some of which are now showing their second leaves.

Up among the crunchy underfoot leaves of the goat willow I found three baby rowan trees. This was the largest. I've left them all but a couple may get pulled out in due course. There are several more elsewhere in the garden. We are not short of young rowan trees. Nor old ones, come to that, though I think the oldest may keel over this year. The hollows at the base of its trunk are becoming clearer.

This pic from June 2013 shows the only live part back then. It lives on valiantly even though the old pieces of wood from an old treehouse that was built in the tree long before our time have almost rotted away.

old rowan in February 2007

Up top where I cleared some Spiraea during 2014, self-seeded foxgloves are doing well. I love the silvery furriness of young foxglove leaves.

young foxglove

There is dead spiraea up there where I set bonfires so I had another wee bonfire today, burning dead stalks and old rose wood. And I gazed at the treescape up the hill.

Something tells me this little oak will not survive the depradations of roe deer. Fortunately there are a couple of others that have got large enough to survive.

Near there is a favourite mossy mound:

about 50cm deep, I reckon

I don't often feel annoyed with deer chewings; it's something one just has to live with here, but just biting small branches off a young rhododendron (not ponticum!) that hasn't flowered yet, and spitting them out struck me as vandalism. Humph.

This wacky dandelion near the back door cheered me up.

today's favourite dandelion