Good old Rattletrap

Every year at MOT time the mechanic sucks air in through his teeth, full of doubt and misgivings, and then Rattletrap sails through the tests.

The photo, taken last Saturday evening, is deceptive. In the low light you don't see the oldness and shabbiness so well.

Good old Rattletrap.

And below a morning sky, also from Saturday.

Autumn begins

Autumn begins and, right on cue, the first autumn crocus flowers appeared on the first of September, plus a Birch Brittlegill mushroom (Russula betularum).

This morning I looked at patches of blue sky and wondered if we'd get through the day without the rain of which the forecast said there was a 10% chance. Here this usually means it's going to rain. It did, solidly from mid-morning into the afternoon.

Pan lid toad

There is an old pan lid on the ground outside the Boggy Brae kitchen window. I put it there to cover the kitchen drain vent to prevent the drain from getting clogged with weeds and grass. I think it is the vent for an additional drain that was added to the house when the kitchen was... what is the expression?... re-modelled some twenty or more years ago. Before that all drainage from the house went a different way and still does.

Yesterday I lifted the lid to check the drain, which I do from time to time, and found a toad.

It was there all day. I took the photograph in the failing evening light. This morning toad has moved on.

Elsewhere in the garden I was enjoying some pinks.

the 'fairy' fuchsia

And here is this morning's north-east sky:

The lane looking dry

In the herbage between the tyre tracks of the lane that leads only to 'oor hoos' and a field a Northern Marsh Orchid has sprung up. Fortunately the vehicle traffic on the lane is usually just driven by Toad, me and the postman so it might survive long enough to produce seed.

You might be able to pick it out just to the left of the middle in this pic above.

It is really very unusual to see the lane looking dry so I'm recording it! Took this pic yesterday. It rained during the night so normality has resumed. The ferns on the right are in front of our neighbours' garden wall. When you get to the fuchsias that's us.

The middle part of the back lawn is looking fabulous–better than I've ever seen it–with heath bedstraw. There is some pignut in the foreground and one orange hawkweed; masses of both elsewhere in the garden.

last night's sky to the north at 9pm

Pale Liverwort sporophytes and other things on a windy day

The sky was fierce this morning and so was the wind. The firebrand sky paled into a variety of pale greys quite quickly but the wind has been thrashing everything all day. Its buffeting, and probably a hangover from yesterday's spiraea root pulling made my chest hurt, so I decided that, apart from a couple of short expeditions to collect moss samples, I'd stay indoors today. Most of it has been spent peering into the microscope determining a moss species and being fascinated by the sporophytes of Pale Liverwort, which I found among the Mammillate Plait Moss on the trunk of a holly tree. I'd actually gone to the holly tree to check out some small fungi.

The silvery thread in the pic on the right made me look more closely where I saw more of those.

And while I was looking closely through the microscope lens, one of the sporophyte capsules released its spores onto the petri dish. Click pics to enlarge if you like. It was fascinating.

Before these exciting events I had been up the garden for a fresh sample of the moss growing low on the old spiraea stems, and I determined that it is Waved Silk Moss (Plagiothecium undulatum).

The undulated leaves, which stay wavy when dry, are evident here.

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Waved Silk Moss/Plagiothecium undulatum

Under an old plum tree

The largest plum it has ever produced in the time we've known it, an inch long!

I say plum but its fruits are so small I have wondered at times whether it's really a damson. I know the tree is old because someone who grew up here and who is now in her sixties said it was there when she was a child and used to eat too many at once! One easy lesson in how to get a belly-ache. Funny how kids just have to learn the hard way sometimes. Here is a picture, taken in April, of its blossom – what the bullfinches didn't scoff while still in bud.

I was under the plum tree a good deal this morning, scything the top part of the bank. During breathers I had time to look about me and appreciate, yet again, the beauty of my surroundings and how lucky I am to be in a place I love. It was a blue sky, sparkly loch summer day with a good, cooling breeze blowing from the south-east.

Snow and Sunrise

A little bit of snow

And sun rising in a blaze of glory

The morning wakes up well

The day has woken up splendidly so it's time to go and do some outdoor work. Muck boots, check; two pairs of gloves, check; Hebridean bonnet, check. I'm out the door.

Did some sawing and shredding of the fallen eucalyptus tree then, when I needed a break from that, I wandered around with my camera looking for snowdrop leaf shoots and more daff shoots if any.

Found some snowdrop shoots on the north side of the front terrace wall and under some decaying ferns. Maybe the daffs didn't beat them after all.

I've identified this as Neat Feather-moss (Pseudoscleropodium purum). The entire northern corner of the  front bank under the silver birch tree is 'lawned' with it with small amounts of springy turf moss interspersed, and a wee bit of grass.

The red-stemmed moss is Springy Turf Moss

 Here's a small part of the mossy bank

 On the terrace wall, wedged between rocks, the reflexed stonecrop is looking winter healthy.

I thought these dried Self-heal heads looked nice

 Dried self-heal heads with Tamarisk Moss and Springy Turf Moss

Yellow among the green Escallonia leaves

Then I came in for some root soup. Recipe on the next post.