Netting more plants

Toad held the torch while I scrabbled about in the loft, shifting planks to kneel on over the rafters and hoiking out of crannies old curtain poles that had been left up there before our time. They would be ideal, I'd decided, as posts on which to fasten some netting to protect plants whose growth has been stunted in previous years by roe deer chompings: Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) and Chilean Lantern Tree (Crinodendron hookerianum). The C.hookerianum had even flowered but then the deer chewed its bark off. I had given them some protection last year but they needed serious stuff sorted this year. Toad was enlisted to hammer curtain poles into the ground. He reckoned the deer were up the hill in the woods complaining about how mean we were keeping these delicious plants all to ourselves!

 

The fern behind the lantern tree is Lemon-scented Fern (Oreopteris limbosperma). It usually looks lovely later in the year.

Now I have a basketful of large wooden curtain pole rings. I suppose I can always chuck them on a bonfire if I haven't thought of a better use for them before we get some bonfire weather.

Pink ribbons and old boats

On days when there is some time before my bus is due I start walking home along the loch's shore road. Some months ago, when overhanging shrubs and trees were being cut back at the sides of the road, pink plastic ribbons appeared tied to branches and fence posts. It took me a while to figure out that while the general slashing of roadside vegetation was happening, the pink markers were for things that needed more work than a mere machine slash. Like this tree (sallow? there's a lot of that):

too much for a mere slash

Toad and I used to worry about shrub slashing. What's left when the machine has done its work makes the method seem brutal but such is the rate of growth in what amounts to our temperate rainforest climate that the shrubs soon recover. Hazel and sallow are not subdued for long and the road does need to be kept open.

Yesterday the bus passed me at the head of the loch going the other way so I knew it had a sixteen mile round trip to do plus the couple of miles I'd have walked by the time it reached me again so I set off in search of pink ribbons. I untied ten or so and pocketed them. They'll be used as plant markers in the garden.

And so I came upon a dead boat on a steep bank down to the sea where the roadside slashing had partly opened up the undergrowth. Its name is Caol Ila. There is a whisky distillery of this name on the western isle of Islay. The name apparently means 'Sound of Islay' where sound means a narrow strip of water. The Gaelic word Caol is Kyle in English which occurs in other place names such as Kyle of Lochalsh. Apparently the pronunciation is "cull-eela".

The boat Caol Ila
with its old pulley yanker for getting it out of the water

Today I walked the same route before the bus caught up with me and took pics of another dead boat, one that I already knew about as it's readily visible on the shore, and another boat yanker-outer. Also a massive thing that looks like a metal float.

Earthy grounding

The morning after the terrorist attack at Manchester Arena two lines from Tennyson's poem Tears, Idle Tears kept repeating themselves in my head:

Tears from the depth of some Divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes.

The poet says he knows not what the "idle tears" mean but I knew what mine meant: deep anguish and sympathy for what the families of the killed and injured must be suffering today and for many days to come. People driven to acts of such violence by mad ideologies are deluded.

People are saying that we need to do something in addition to just carrying on as normal, but certainly normal, or as normal as you can, is grounding. The gap I cut through the azaleas on the front bank was ready to be widened so I went at it with the hedge-cutter. Along the way I found myself talking to three tiny oak seedlings just erupting from their acorns: "You can't grow here, little tree. Not right under the big birch tree and so close to the house."

NW end of front bank with birch tree
and a gateway I've cut through the rhododendron hedge

It always feels sad to have to pull out little trees (well, not ash and sycamore! They are just weeds round here) but there are at least three more young oaks near the top of the garden where there is room for them to grow. Two of them are now taller than me and one actually produced two or three acorns last year.

I needed a nap after my gap-widening efforts but went out again afterwards to dig up some dock plants at the bottom of the same front bank. With the dock roots up came some of the creeping rhizomes of Sharp-flowered Rush that also grows down there. My hands got damply earthy but as they dried and even with soil on them, they felt clean in a smooth and quite different way from newly washed hands. This was the 'grounding' I needed after today's sad news. Perhaps it is something to do with being reminded that we are with the earth and of it, dust to dust, stardust even as Carl Sagan said.

Between the dock and rush patch and the drive hedge I found what I think is a Northern Marsh Orchid in pretty much the same place as there was one last year. Previously our single Southern Marsh Orchid, which grows at the top of the bank, has reappeared in the same spot for several years but the Northern Marsh Orchids, of which there are usually a few dotted about, always seem to come up in different places each year. It would be nice to think this one now has an established root. I marked where it is with a stick and a bit of ribbon so that it doesn't get any more trampled than it already is!

Orchid marker near the hedge

At the lower end of that hedge is my young hawthorn tree. It has flowered for the first time this year. Its parent is beyond on the far side of the lane. Massed ivy growth has weighed down its trunk to almost horizontal but it is thriving still. The light you can see beyond the trees is the loch. There are some houses down there before it but the drop from the hawthorn down to them is very steep so we look over their roofs.

I have two small hawthorns in pots to give to a friend. They were recently moved to the porch because, guess what!, the deer nibbled their tops. They are doing fine.

Yellow azaleas

One of three yellow azaleas that grow on the front bank, from my bedroom window early on 3 May. This is the left-most one looked at from the house. To its right is one that is the same and to that one's right is one that's different. I'm going to call this and its partner Azalea1 and the third, different one, Azalea2.

Azalea1 flowers before Azalea2 by a week or so but they are all in flower together for some time. The cut through the shrub you can see in the photo is where I've cut a passage through them so that I can walk along the bank on the level. Otherwise it's a bit of a scramble and there's a danger of stepping on daffodils and snowdrops, which would never do!

Azalea1 has brownish buds and Azalea2 has geen buds. Today I had a closer look at their flowers and noted differences there too.



Azalea1 on the left, 2 on the right.



And again, Az1 left, Az2 right. Az1 might be said to be 'yellower' (I get confused about chroma and hue; I think most people will understand what I mean by 'yellower'!). Az2 is paler and its upper petal has an interesting pattern of darker yellow.
The anthers of Az2 are darker than those of Az1.

There. Sorted.

If anyone feels inclined to instruct me on the difference between chroma and hue, please feel free. Toad has tried!

Path through azaleas

I re-cut a path through the Rhododendron luteum (azalea) bushes on the front bank this morning; it saves a lot of scrambling up or down and around the bushes. Now I can walk right across the front bank at the same height. I cut back a bit of that old plum tree at the end of the path too, to give more light to the Everlasting Sweetpeas that grow under it.

The easiest way round to the front bank is via the "north-west passage" to the birch tree and turn right. I have to watch my step to avoid the Tormentil and Devil's-bit Scabious plants that grown under the birch, then step up to the azalea level by the birch root steps.

I am surprisingly un-midged!