Digging out docks

That's dock plants, Rumex obtusifolius, not docks for boats. It was a mild day so my 'gansey' was soon not required.

Gate hanger.                                                             Gansey hanger

The "pond primula" is flowering. It seemed to carry on flowering for months last year.

Although Lesser Celandines have been flowering down by the loch for almost three weeks now, today was the first time they have made a proper showing in the garden.

Field Woodrush also:

The bright green blades are of grass; you might be able to make out the knob at the point of the murkier green leaf of the woodrush.

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.

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.

Moving bamboo

About eight years ago, when Toadlet was still at primary school, she wanted me to buy some plants at a school sale. One was a kind of spurge and one was a small pot of bamboo. I decided to make a kind of half basket for the steep bank up from the back terrace. The soil is thin there and is full of bits of old paint from before our time. I lined the basket with some leftover pond fleece and filled it with home-made compost. I planted the bamboo and the spurge in there. In this picture, taken in May 2014, you can see that the spurge did quite well. It has a lovely brightness about it, seeds profusely and spreads. There's some red campion behind it and also the bamboo, still small. It's actually quite hard to see in the photo but it is there. This is my one and only basket weaving effort and it stood the test of time. Until today.

I got Toad to help me dig the bamboo out. It had got somewhat taller and more robust-looking over the years and blocked a bit of the view up the garden. There were side shoots too. It needs more space to spread.

Here is where we dug. Yes, those are bricks at the back. Apparently there used to be a shed or garage of some sort on  what had been made into a flat concrete ledge. There isn't very much flat ground on the Boggy Brae. We used to park the Rattletrap on what we presume had been the floor of the garage. We found what Toad said was an old spark plug, some bits of broken glass, and another hard rusted and crusted bit of metal that was unidentifiable.

old spark plug and some broken glass

After that I wheelbarrowed the bamboo down to the Boggy Bottom of the garden, on the Scrawny the Tree side, and dug a hole. I dug out a couple of bricks here too. I think we'd start to worry if we didn't find bricks or bits of bricks every time we dug anywhere! Anyway, that hole is deeper than it looks and the bamboo went in just fine. I carefully avoided treading on the iris that has planted itself there.

Bamboo in its new place

From the Boggy Bottom it was nice to look up to wild cherry trees that are flowering away just now.

Toad is going to sell that Topaz dinghy. This is why I've changed from Boat Bog to Boggy Bottom. When that boat is sold, we'll be boatless.

Mid-April garden progress

The old, accidentally burnt out rowan near the top of the garden is still standing. It can be wobbled a little but the lignin in what's left of the old trunk is not giving way. Not yet.

As you can at the bottom of the picture, there is still a live shoot, a young a tree in its own right really, is growing. I wondered last year if it would survive to leaf and flower another year. It seems it will:

Even more amazingly, several small shoots are growing alongside this main one at the base of the old trunk and apparently right out of the fungus, Root Rot/Heterobasidion annosum, that was killing off the older parts. Talk about the will to live! 

Bluebells are not flowering here yet but their leaves are popping up in various parts of the garden, including just downhill of the old rowan.

Leaves of Hyacinthoides non-scripta

They are also springing up under Deep Pink whose flowers are falling.

Orpine (Sedum telephium) was doing well behind its chicken wire protection last year. It was fleshing out nicely this year too and then the vandal deer found a way in behind through the cotoneaster that it grows under. Grrr! 😠 So I've chicken wired behind it as well now.

The King Cups that a neighbour gave me on Wednesday, which were flowering well when I planted then had all their flowers and most of their leaves scoffed within forty-eight hours. Such depredations, even just of flowers that one isn't going to eat, can be a bit soul-destroying so I sympathise with people who have to cope with their growing food supply being eaten by other animals. I've made a chicken wire cage for the King Cups now too. Hey ho.

It is deer, both red and roe, that slow down forest regeneration in other parts of Scotland. There are none of their natural predators (wolves and lynx, for instance) left that would keep their numbers down a bit. There is talk of reintroducing such animals.

Violets have begun to flower, a month later than those of a friend in London, and they are a bit spindlyfor all their will to survive.

Catkins of sallow are still opening bit by bit.

While it has been too skiddy down by the pond in showery weather, I've been hacking some more of the sallow up top and stacking it along with some of the cypress wood wigwam that was collapsing.

sallow & cypress wood to dry out

I restacked some of what I'm calling the curly cypress wood that I cut last year. Some of it had slipped down over bluebells and we can't have that!

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.

In which I decide to protect Sedum telephium with chicken wire...

...from being eaten by deer, and end up rescuing a fuchsia from under my neighbour's overhanging rhododendron and having a bonfire.

It was perfect spring bonfire weather today. After four hot-for-here days of strong sunshine and shade temperatures reaching the low 20sºC, today was overcast but dry and a pleasant cool maximum of 12º.

The sedum had already had parts bitten off by roe deer so it is now behind chicken wire. Hopefully it will flower more profusely than last year, and perhaps the flowers will even last more than a day!

Just down from the sedum is where the pale flowered fuchsia grows close to our neighbour's garden wall, so close that in some places it has even put roots into the wall. Other stems were lying almost flat to the ground because of overhanging rhododendron ponticum. I cut that back and decided to have a bonfire.

Gathering dead wood from around the garden, I gave one of the dead branches of the old rowan a bit of a tug and it came away in my hand. The hole at the bottom of the trunk is getting bigger too.

boot for scale
the bracket fungus is Root Fomes

There is still one live branch growing from low down on the trunk, which you can just see in the bottom left corner of the photo to the left. This has leaves on it. The tree is not giving up easily.

dead eucalyptus roots

Some other dead wood was provided by the now well dried roots of the eucalyptus tree that fell over in a gale in December 2013. There is sufficient overhang to keep a good deal of rain off. The bare soil is proving very attractive to fern spores. There are lots of tiny new ferns growing there.

In the area where the roots were when the tree was upright a clump of beech seedlings have grown. This–well, one of them–could be a keeper. Time will tell.



So the bonfire went well on a new patch of ground behind the apple tree. Meanwhile creeping buttercup is recolonising the bonfire site of autumn 2014, and the bonfire moss is looking tawny.

bonfire moss and creeping buttercup

Also colonising the old bonfire site is thyme-leaved speedwell, ribwort plantain, and mouse-ear.

ribwort plantain

thyme-leaved speedwell

mouse-ear, not yet flowering

And finally, I discovered yesterday that the May-flowering narcissus that I have been calling "My Sister's Narcissus" because it is always in flower on her birthday, 12 May, is officially called Pheasant's-eye daffodil. Here is a juxtaposition photo of the largest clump near where Toad stores his dinghy.