Deep Pink is still alive

The deep pink flowering rhododendron in the back garden is flowering. I had my doubts whether it would stay alive at all this cold, wet spring as many of the buds grew mould. Deep Pink's sister tree died a few years ago and only the trunks are left.

mould on buds

It's good to see the shrub has survived another winter.

The back terrace is staying un-mown for now

Having slain one of the ponticum dragons that was blocking my view to the pond (I say slain but it'll grow again; I'm going to try and keep it small), I was very excited to find three Northern Marsh Orchids growing on the back terrace! I'm so glad I only thought about mowing there this week!

There are now five of these dotted about, all self-sown. I did try to grow some from seed but failed so I'm pleased these have turned up voluntarily.

The single Southern Marsh Orchid is coming along too but it takes longer to colour its flower.

Southern Marsh Orchid

I just learned from Fuchsias in the City (@Fuchsiarius) that my pale fuchsia is probably Fuchsia magellanica 'Alba'. Nice to know its name at last. I had thought it was 'Hawkshead' but Fuchsiarius says that variety should have a pure white corolla. You can see some pink in this one.

So, dragonly, orchidly, and fuchsialy a satisfying day, not to mention a kind friend digging out some orange tights for me to wear with a dress I was thinking of wearing to my mum's 88th birthday lunch in a few weeks' time.

perfect match!

Rhododendron Up Top

If you squinted and strained your neck the newly flowering rhododendron up at the top of the garden was just visible between some sallow branches trunks which were only not lying on the ground under their own top-heaviness because a couple of birch trees were propping them up.

sallow leaning on birch

This morning I decided to cut them down so that I'd have a clear view to UpTop Rhodo from the back door. They were even heavier than I expected. I felled all four but there are still three to cut up into more manageably sized pieces. That's for another day.

Elsewhere in the garden white flowers apart from pignut are showing up brightly. Clockwise from top left: a white foxglove, white clover, a white bell-flower than came from I know not where but which is very welcome, and Libertia grandiflora, another welcome self-introduced plant. Three years ago it had three flowering shoots, last year six, and this year sixteen. I hope it spreads.


Another pic of UpTop's flowers and the view east from it:

Pond or giant cow pat?

We are into our eleventh year living on the Boggy Brae and although there have been dry spells, especially in spring, we think the current one is the longest we have experienced.  A couple of days ago, before the water in the pond had evaporated completely, Toad and I went down there with plastic buckets and scooped out a lot of the accumulated mud. It did indeed look like cow manure but wasn't as pongy. It has now formed a dry crust where we flung it around the edges.

crusty pond sludge

The low water made it easy for me to set in some pond plants that a neighbour gave me. They are in the left of the first photo. You might be able to make out some upright sticks in the foreground: they are marking wild angelica plants. The combined number around the pond and around the flag patch comes to about 50 now.

Near the king cups that the same neighbour also gave me (the ones that got eaten by the deer), I found some primula leaves. I put a cage round them as well. Turns out they are a pink-flowering variety.

Meanwhile my fight with the rhododendrons and snowberry growing around the oil pipe continues. The dry spell has been very useful for getting on with this as I've been able to burn the small stuff and stack the big stuff to let it dry our before we can use it in the stove.

monstrous rhododendrons and a pipe

I've often wished while hacking away at this stuff that I could just set it on fire but if oil vapour inside the pipe were to get hot enough to expand... let's not go there! I'm up to the last rhodie but it's extensive. After that I've only got about 16 metres of spiraea and snowberry to go at.

Meadow Buttercups and hawthorn have begun flowering today in other parts of the garden.

meadow buttercup

The Deep Pink rhododendron

There had been rain overnight making it too muddy to continue with my cave-making down by the pond, so between showers today I went on a welly wander turning first left out of the back door and then right to go up the back garden. The rhododendron that I call The Deep Pink is dropping its flowers now. I like their carpeting effect.

In amongst the fallen flowers are a few bluebell plants, nowhere near flowering yet on the Boggy Brae. Something to look forward to.

What's left when the flowers fall

Steps to the pond

Toad decided to dig a pond in the summer of 2008. Toadlet (7) helped by leaning artistically on whichever tool he wasn't using. The chickens investigated.

Then the pond triangle, at the lowest part of the garden, was left to go wild. Toad is not really a gardener so upkeep didn't cross his mind before he dug the pond. I was too busy struggling to get the rest of the garden, which measures about 90x30 metres, and which had been neglected for about twenty-five years, under some sort of control. Then my energy ran out and I've had to pace myself. And Toad still isn't a gardener 😁. If I leave him a polite note, giving him plenty of notice to get used to the idea in advance, he will mow a section of lawn on a sunny day like today. Given the bogginess and the slope of the land that's a hard job so it helps a lot, leaving me time and energy to hack my way into the pond triangle in what I hope will be a sustainable way.

I made the mistake at first of cutting the many old and monstrous rhododendrons down. I now realise that it's probably better to cut them up, that is to raise their canopies and prevent any side branches from bridging and rooting, which is what Rhododendron ponticum likes to do.

So now I am cutting between the rhododendrons that were planted long ago for a hedge and am going to let them increase in height but not in width.  Another of the pluses of this approach is that I can see the pond from the inside the house.

Making a footpath and sight path to the pond

Today, at the steepest part above the pond, I made a step. I'm dead chuffed with it; never made a step before. I found a suitable piece of wood next to the washing machine (as you do if you're me and have a cluttered old wash-house full of things that might be useful one day, and things that are already useful, I hasten to add!) and walloped some very dead branches of rhododendron wood into the ground to hold a stone and the wood in place. I think I'll make another step down from that too because in wet weather it can be very slippery down there and there's no point increasing the rate of erosion if one can avoid it. There's another similar piece of wood in the shed. As I hack back the overgrown bushes I'm making woodpiles. There will be bonfires in due course.



All these piles are now bigger than they were when I took these photos and there are two more green ones.

Below are two pond watchers a year or so after it was dug.

 Meanwhile, on another garden step, one of those going up to the shed, this year's first Boggy Brae violet is flowering. Wild cherry trees are beginning to flower too.

Wild cherry blossom

DPR = Deep Pink Rhododendron

DPRs flowering April 2007

The first spring we were here, there were two deep pink rhododendron shrubs. I don't know their official name so I call them the DPRs. We acquired a hammock that matched the flowers. Toadlet and her friend sat and swung in it quite a lot.

DPR is a profuse flowerer

I like the effect of its dropped flowers too.

DPR lawn

Upper DPR in flower; 3 squiggley trunks of the lower one. April 2016

A few years ago the lower of the two shrubs died. I had thought that its triple trunk was strangling a holly tree that was growing from the same spot, but it seems that it was the holly tree that was strangling the rhododendron.

March 2017

I cut away the dead branches but left the trunks to dry out. I think they are a nice natural garden sculpture. At some point I daresay we'll chop them up and use them as firewood, like the old collapsed wild cherry tree behind them. That blew down during what was officially called Hurricane Friedhelm (and unofficially, by Scots, Hurricane Bawbag) in December 2011.