Mellow yellow sallow

Looking up from my holly lopping the other day I was struck by the beauty of yellowing sallow leaves. Sallow can be a bit of a nuisance in a garden and it's not very good for firewood so I try to keep it in some kind of check. If the spreading branches of this plant come any lower (see pic below) I'll probably lop them. I've removed some already, those that I bumped my head against once too often.

Left to itself I think a good deal of Boggy Brae, especially the lowest, boggiest parts, would probably become sallow carr. Where my childhood family first lived on the Fylde was willow carr, called Oldfield Carr. I didn't appreciate the name's meaning at the time but thinking back I do remember some huge willows that we climbed and, where big branches looped low and up again, they were our rocking horses.

For those who are new to the Boggy Brae garden, the thing with the white rubble sack over it is an archery target boss. The bit of shed to the left is the old goose house, now being used as a small woodshed. Up near the top right corner those familiar with the Sentinel Tree that lives up the hill may be able to make out its photobombing antics.

The holly lopping mentioned above was to give a young oak more space and light. It has survived, with a little help from chicken wire judiciously applied, having its young bark nibbled by roe deer so now I reckon it's raring to go. There are several other self-planted tiny oak trees in the garden too—two years ago was a rich oak mast year. I'm willing them on where there's space for them but have had to pull out a couple of dozen that sowed themselves too near the house.

A line of golden setae

The sun was sinking as the smoke from my small bonfire drifted up the garden and its rays shone through the  bright setae of the moss growing on the trunk of the fallen wild cherry tree.

It was high winds one night in December 2013 that brought the old wild cherry tree down. We knew it was affected by the parasitic fungus, Laetiporus sulphureu (Chicken of the woods), so its collapse was not totally surprising. One of its offspring is still holding part of it up. The same storm also brought down a tall eucalyptus which added some interest to the climbing frame.

Some of the eucalyptus wood is still in the woodshed. It burns well in the stove. Some day I might shuffle up the old cherry trunk and start sawing branches....

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.

Plum wine and alder catkins

Brought some junk up from the cellar this morning and the last four bottles of homemade wine from Oxfordshire days. This one is plum. Toad put it in the fridge but I'm afraid it might turn the milk sour so I've moved it to a corner of the outhouse. The concrete floor should keep it chilled. Toad thinks it would go well with lemon drizzle cake. Hmm. I'm actually planning to make almondy marmalade shortbread this weekend.

I did a run to the dump with the junk plus some dug out fuchsia roots. If you lie those down on wet ground here (and it's very rarely not wet at least in part; at the moment it's sodden) they shoot out more roots and bed themselves down. Next thing you know you've got another unwanted giant fuchsia trying to take over the world. Anyway, on the way back I stopped off to check the lochside alder trees: the catkins are opening.

A mooch about Lochgilphead

Toad and I had been going to take part in a field trip to Kerrera with the Argyll Bird Club but because of a forecast of heavy rain and strong winds it was cancelled. This meant that LSB and I could go for a mooch around Lochgilphead instead. LSB drove there and we had refreshments at the Smiddy Bistro. Then we explored homeware and arty shops working our way up Argyll Street. When We spotted a sign saying "Free coffee", LSB pressed her nose to the window (well, almost) to see what was what. Next thing we knew three people were leaning out into the rainy street urging us to come in. I wish I'd had a camera ready to get a shot of that!

We went in and found it was a drop-in meeting place, in someone's house, for SNP (Scottish National Party) supporters. We were given hot drinks and biscuits and had some friendly chat. We live in the same constituency as the group of people in this house. We didn't talk politics.

The house has a big applique hanging in the entrance hall. I took a picture of part of it.

Continuing up Argyll Street we went into another homeware shop where I splashed out on a silicon pastry brush—my natural bristle one is starting to moult, presumably like the animal it came from—and a ball of soft Indian cotton twine. Boggy Brae gardening tasks always seem to need more string.

On our way back down we stopped for tea and cake—the best chocolate and carrot cakes ever!—at Cafe 35, where I and two other friends had called in a few years ago after our trip to Knapdale to see beavers (we saw no beavers but we did have a lovely day). LSB is the carrot cake tester. I test chocolate ones. Each of these types of cake can be disappointing; those at Cafe 35 were not. The tea was good too. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area.

On the drive there and back we noted with delight the many hazel catkins dancing in the wind in the road verges and, on other tree species, the clothing of lichens that makes them look never-bare even when they're leafless in winter.

Walking home

Yesterday was cold but sunny, perfect for walking, so I did, from the head of the loch to home. It took me two and a half hours, not because it's a long way but because I was clambering up and down the lochside depending on the walkability of the beach. In some places there is very little beach and the banks up to the road are steep and rocky. In some places, such massive trees have fallen down into the loch that it's difficult to get past them. There was one enormous ash tree, its trunk covered in thick old ivy stems, which I couldn't go under or round so over it had to be.

Eight months ago I did the same walk though more on the road that time. One of my finds was the old boat Caol Ila. Yesterday I saw it from the other side. It's definitely a dead boat.

Anchor and rudder below

At one point I needed to climb back up to the road. Luckily there was a rope tied to the trees to help haul myself up. I'd have got rather muddy otherwise!

Took some pics of wild flowers still in flower for #thewinter10 on #wildflowerhour run by some botanists on Twitter...
.

 ...and enjoyed a leafy bit of beach as I neared home.


By this time I had much aching of arthritic knees and feet to contend with. Happily painkillers, a large piece of carrot cake, and a nap dealt with the worst of that. The weather is back to cloudy and showery today.

On my walk to catch the bus home

Kicked my way through leaves across the park and through the woods.

wood path

 Raised my gaze skyward for light through leaves.

 Followed the burn down to the loch and marvelled at green cockles...

...and more light through leaves

Ash dieback

Today Toad and I cut down two young ash trees and burned their foliage. They were diseased with the ash dieback fungus, Hymenoscyphus fraxineus. They were not badly affected yet but the first signs were there and since they were growing in a wrong place anyway (under the tall cypress we I call "Scrawny"; Toad does not give trees names) and would have to come down sooner or later, the finding of the disease symptoms was a good time to do it.

We have not burned the trunks. They can be cut into lengths and burned in the stove over the winter. Ash doesn't need to season to burn well, as we found even with the small branches and green leaves,

though I did help the fire along with some of the rhododendron and snowberry twigs that I cut in spring last year. It went well even with the finest of fine mizzle in the air.

The yellow beyond the fire, in what was an area full of meadow buttercups, is now that of greater bird's-foot trefoil. As the buttercups lost their petals and began to make seed the trefoil flowers began to open so we have had weeks and weeks of yellow meadowy lawn down in this bottom part of the garden.

Lopping a tree or two

old cypress up top

Our friends from two fields away came with chain saws and anti-midge spray yesterday and chopped into logs most of the collapsed part of the old cypress up at the top of the garden, the one that was smothering everything in its vicinity. In the first photo above, beyond the wood pile, you can see the main trunk of the birch tree. Before the collapse of the cypress that was completely hidden, even on its further away side. The collapse of half the cypress pulled its still standing trunks more upright and away from the birch. We left some of the cut trunks as a counterweight. Whether it'll be sufficient, time will tell. Meanwhile, the root rot at the base of the cypress blooms on. (Can one talk of blooming fungi?)

We used the broken old step-ladder that was leaning against the old rowan (scorched trunk at left of first photo) when we moved here, plus another random metal pole that we found, to prop up the wood pile. One day I'll do a post about Boggy Brae garden metal finds!

Old rowan, with its new bit, decorated with a beard
of cypress roots. Like rhododendron ponticum, this
cypress sent roots down from ground-touching branches.

The lopping opened up the view a bit

While the chain saw was out, BJ-of-2-fields-away (definitely not BoJo!) lopped some of the overgrown sallow that's up top as well and some of the top heavy and leaning towards the house prunus tree on the front bank. I've a bit of tidying up to do and a few roaring bonfires of green, terpene-rich smaller cypress branches to enjoy.

Sallow, left, to be added to the as yet not very dead dead-hedge that can be seen top left of the photo and, below, some branches of the overgrown front bank prunus tree to be tidied up.

There is a lovely fresh piney smell up here!

The original deal was that our friends would take half the wood but since we made that deal they've found another source of free wood (free but for the work, I mean) nearer to them so they didn't need it this year. When they do need some more wood they can come and hack away at the fallen wild cherry. The upper of the two cherry trunks shown below is still alive but the lower one is, as one might say in yoof speak, well dead. And there is a lot of dead wood above it too, still propped up for the best drying effect by the old cherry tree's offspring.

dead cherry wood

Elder

The Boggy Brae's self-seeded elder tree is nearly flowering. It grows in the shade of a rowan so its flowering is  behind that of its parent tree in the nearby copse.

copse elder

The lower branches of BB-elder have bowed down to the ground to get more light but some others are stretching up high into the rowan. Last autumn, when the rowan had lost all its leaves, the elder leaves were a bright shot of green. I enjoyed that.