The hedge in the top west corner

The spiraea hedge in the top west corner of the garden is not going to be an elongated rectangle. It's going to be less than a metre deep from front to back in the west corner (on the right of the photo), about three metres deep from front to back at the end nearest to us in the photo, and somewhere in between those measurments along its roughly ten metre length, with a couple of large 'scoops' taken out of it along the way. I still have some roots lower down the slope to dig out. A robin came and watched as I was doing that this morning. Toad thinks that robins think we humans are just like wild pigs the way we turn over soil and ground debris releasing lovely edible grubs for them to eat. Nice to feel useful that way. I also still have to tidy up the hedge with the hedge cutter, then I need to tackle another grey sallow that needs pruning.

During my diggings up of spiraea roots, I found quite a few bluebell bulbs, which I replanted. They have not flowered in previous years in this part of the garden but perhaps giving them a bit of 'breathing space' might encourage them. I hope so.

Just to the left of the hedge pic is today's

favourite bryophytically enhanced fence post.

And further along from that was a rotting log of grey sallow on which is growing today's fungus. I think it might be a tooth fungus but don't quote me on that.

Scrambling among the grey sallows' several trunks is lots of honeysuckle. I noticed it had new green shoots already, even before this all year's leaves have fallen off. The large beech tree up the hill in the wood is bare but the hazels still have some leaves. What can the Woodland Trust have meant about hazel having had an exceptionally early leaf drop this year? That certainly hasn't been the case here, nor in the other parts of Argyll I've been in lately. Last Friday I drove to Inveraray and there were hazels with leaves all the way there and back along Loch Long and Loch Fyne, lots of them.

Honeysuckle–old leaves and young shoots

I went in search of hazel leaves

The Woodland Trust was asking on Twitter if there were leaves still on hazel trees. There are some on the Boggy Brae hazel but I went "up the back" by the burn where there are older hazel plants to see what state they were in.

 Loads on young trees (left) and still plenty on older plants (below)

Poking around by the burn, which is splashy after all the rain we've had (which, for comparison, is a mere drip compared with what they've had up in the Highlands over the last couple of days),

and enjoying the rich Assam tea look it has in less tumbly parts of its wee ravine,

I came upon a robin. Actually, I think the robin came upon me. It certainly seemed to checking me out to see if I was turning up something tasty for it. So here's a game of

Spot the Robin

(click on the pics to enlarge)

Are you sure you didn't bring some mealworms?

Making my way back by this path–the burn and the wooded hillside to my right and the Boggy Brae garden to my left–I enjoyed the colours and crinkliness of what I know as Dog Lichen. I believe the dog part of the name means common, so common lichen, otherwise called Peltigera horizontalis/Flat-Fruited Dog Lichen, both by the burn and on rocks and trees back in the garden:

This sample is on one of the old railway sleepers
that the half-collapsed bridge is made of

The sample above and the one to the right are Boggy Brae samples.

Last of all, before coming in for a bowl of spicy lentil soup, I enjoyed the last of this year's Den Rose blossoms, a small flower, and very wet like everything else, but bonny for all that.