Bee house under the step

Looking south from back door yesterday afternoon

There are very few days when it's warm enough to sit outside to eat one's muesli. Yesterday was one such. I put one of my sit-upon-ery mats on the middle stone step at the front and enjoyed the morning. Looking down to the bottom step–a rough slab of conglomerate added after some house settling, I think–I saw a small bumblebee disappear 'into' the step. I had noticed it had an arch in previous years but hadn't seen anything going into the hole.

the rough conglomerate step

The first pic shows where the bee went in. A bee came out of the other end of the step (second pic) several times. Whether it was one bee or several I don't know. I didn't get any pics of the actual bee.
I wondered, sitting there munching muesli, whether I should mow the back terrace yet but decided to wait a bit. The primroses that have seeded themselves from elsewhere in the garden onto the terrace haven't fnished flowering and making seed yet.




The photo below is of a small bit of the back terrace where bugle and ferns grow on and near the retaining wall.

Primrose, daisy, azalea

This photo was taken looking down squintwards on the primrose bank from beside the drystone wall above it. Some of the seeds from these plants have made their way over the wall and onto the terrace at the front of the house. Initially there was just one clump in the corner (not shown) but now there are these three new ones as well.

over the wall primroses

Also at the base of this wall there are numerous entrances of bank voles. It seems they sometimes nibble the daisies. Something does anyway.

half-nibbled

If you sit on the doorstep and look straight ahead, the flowers of the yellow azaleas,

which also grow on the front bank are now visible.

Twigs and beasties

I had left a bundle of fuchsia sticks on top of the garden wall. This morning I went down with a piece of string to tie them up and add them to the coal sackful of roots, brambles and other twigs that I was going to take to the dump. I used to shred all this sort of stuff but I think that the dust and vapour from plant shredding is one of the things that does my head in (in a painful clogged up hay feverish sort of way) so I do less of it nowadays.

Underneath the bundle was this shiny beetle. I managed to get a pic before it ran away. Look how grainy the top of the wall is where moss and ivy have worked on it!

Then I noticed a whole crowd of beasties: millipedes and more beetles. The picture isn't very well focussed, I'm afraid.

Then they all ran away and I felt like a rotter for removing their roof!

Meanwhile the pond had a certain tadpoley wriggliness about it in all the shallow parts. Sorry, no pic of tadpoles just my favourite pond edging of tiny Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage plants.

Gall midges, flowers and leaves

In a break between rain pourings yesterday I went out to look at leaves, aka greenness. The lobelia and the yellow loosestrife caught my eye. Flowers do that :)

But the greens did too, especially of this fern with leaves at various stages, the basal rosette of a Cat's-ear growing in a boggy bit, and some aquilegia.

And then I spotted something new which turned out to be midge galls of the Gall Midge (Dasineura ulmaria) on meadowsweet leaves. Apparently they turn red as they progress.

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:

Making, cooking, looking

Yesterday I made
<<< this, with the help of instructions creatively translated from Chinese (well done, whoever! it's not as if I could do it t'other way!) and a YouTube video by MO3MINI...

...into this,

a necessity because what with the lawnmower Toad uses conking out and being now at the menders, and scything not being suitable for some places, I need a tool with more power. It has a blade as well for stuff the strimmer wire can't deal with. I haven't used it yet because the single shoulder strap isn't enough and we need 2-stroke oil. Toad offered to pick some up today.

While the tool assembly was going on
<<< this bowl of egg whites, having been made into meringue, was cooking in a slow oven.

And very nice they were too for afternoon tea.
It's always good to have an excuse to eat thick cream ;)

The yolks, by the way, had gone into a cabbage carbonara sauce the day before.

Meanwhile in the garden, apart from a lot of lush grass, late summer flowers are blossoming and, in the case of wild angelica, being taken advantage of by Sphlex maxillosus wasps. I think that' what they are anyway.







Irrepressible Rose is doing what it does best after being chewed down to the ground earlier in the year. I hope it will flower next year. I'm going to try and tie it on the inside of its trellis to see if that keeps the deer off it. Some chicken wire might also be deployed.

Oh, and I made a pie with my benchmark pastry :)

A headache, snow, and scratched car kind of morning

Went to bed soon after eight last night with a humdinger of a headache that nothing would shift. Woke up with it three hours ago too. This morning's dosing of decongestant and antihistamine seems to be taking effect, thank goodness. So, this morning:

I've dealt with a dead mouse (flung it in the field for a scavenger), noticed it was snowing and that the temperature was below freezing, decided to take the car down the hill in case of further freezing, scratched it on a wall trying to dodge some ice, repeated my favourite slang word of annoyance all the way down the hill, parked at the bottom, walked back up, snarling at myself, had more coffee.

The day's got to get better. Right? Hey ho.

It's actually quite pretty out there:

The Irrepressible Rose
by the front porch

The dead flower head of a Reflexed Stonecrop at the end of the drystone wall. The wall runs across the front terrace at the edge of the steep bank that the house is built on.

New shoots of Reflexed Stonecrop among the mosses

Still a lot of (light) snow cloud out there. I hope it clears to the sunny morning the Met Office forecast. 

Here is a feather from yesterday. And breathe...