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

Unbridging Rhododendron ponticum

Bit by bit I am raising the canopy–or, as I put it inside my head, unponting the ponticum where ponting means bridging from Latin pons meaning bridge–of the large rhododendron on the south-east side of the boggy brae garden. The area of ground it covered was getting larger and larger and the get-at-ability of some parts of the garden near it was getting harder and harder. Also some of its bridges were putting down roots. In due course this would have speeded up its conquering of more and more garden space. Enough was enough and I wanted to be able to walk underneath it without it trying to scalp me. One of the most effective and fun ways to deal with its rooting offspring is, I discovered, to light a fire at the bottom of one of them and burn various bits of garden prunings including the leafy branches. In due course the bridged and rooted extension keels over, one saws or twists off the trunk part, burns the small stuff and leaves (they burn very well), and stacks the thicker logs on the bridge stack for cutting into wood stove lengths in due course.

a keeled over R.ponticum offspring

the 'bridges' wood stack

only this and a few of the 'hangers' in the first photo to go

Cherry wood and speedwells

I was cutting some cherry wood into shorter lengths yesterday. I like the rose-like pattern of the darker centre wood.

Veronica chamaedrys

Speedwells have begun to flower: Germander Speedwell and Thyme-leaved Speedwell.

Veronica serpyllifolia

A juxtaposition of wild and manmade: sycamore bud casings and other plant detritus off the roof.

Hazel up the hill

Hazel catkins are beginning to open and the tiny red flowers are beginning to show.

Hazel flower

I just checked in our Collins Tree Guide and it says that old hazel plants may reach 15m in height. Our UTH (up the hill) tree reaches about that height (18 long paces) except that it is horizontal so I should probably call it length. I started pacing from just beside the boulder in <<< this pic, sploshed through the boggy bits along the length of the trunk, 

Fallen but flowering hazel

and had reached eighteen by the time I got to the end where the young shoots off the old trunks are flowering and budding. If you enlarge the photo by clisking on it, you may be able to see the puddle underneath in whcih I was hoping to find frog spawn but didn't.

Nearby is a fallen birch tree on which I found this frilly fungus.

Fungus on birch

and this resupinate one.

And all along, under and beside both horizontal trees were small bluebell shoots. I must go up there again in a few weeks when they should be flowering.

Bluebell shoots under birch

This is the root ball of the birch. You can see the chunks of slate around which its roots have grown and, to the right in the photo, a very large slab. The foundations, terracing, cellar and lower walls of our house are made of this locally available rock. Beyond the birch root ball are the huge roots of a beech tree which towers above the hollow where the hazel and birch grow.

The exposed rock under the beech tree is covered in liverworts, mainly White Earwort (Diplophyllum albicans) and Overleaf Pellia (Pellia epiphylla), I think.

White Earwort looking very green!
It is white when dry. There was a constant drip of water over the rocks where this was growing.

Pellia epiphylla

I liked the dark colour of the collapsed Scaly Male Fern (Dryopteris affinis) leaves from last year and concluded my hazel flower hunt thinking that there's a lot to be said for collapsed plants.

Cutting back spiraea and grey sallow

I'm doing some weeding in the top west corner of the Boggy Brae garden. It is overgrown with grey sallow and spiraea. The grey sallow is getting some hefty pruning and the spiraea I'm cutting back and pulling out to within a yard of the fence. Those stems of spiraea in the middle of this pic are 10 metres from the fence. They would carry on encroaching if they weren't 'discouraged' a little.

In the process I'm making a woodpile. Some of it may make decent firewood eventually and in the meantime I can study the mosses and fungi that grow on the wood.

I'm putting the spiraea stems (some of them over three metres long) just over the fence where there is an odd little corner in the now unused field access track–well, deer use it and so do I to get to the burn this way:

I haven't decided whether I'll just let it rot down or make a bonfire of it next summer. In the meantime, it's quite a good trampoline! This is it after I jumped up and down and rolled on it a few times. It's quite springy!

And talking of springs, I found part of an old bed among the spiraea stems. I need to cut back another metre or so of the hedge to get it out. This is the second old bed I've found. I suppose they can just muddle in with the fencing and rust gently away.

When I went out just now to pace the extent of the spiraea's encroachment, I found some new outcrops of fungi, including this interesting one. I wonder if it's in the group called coral fungi?

I've also been shifting wood, kindly split yesterday while we were at archery practice, by some very good neighbours two fields away who have a log-splitter.

They even stacked some of it by the shed. Now I just have to deal with this lot below–stack the split pieces and sort out what from the right hand pile below will be useful. Plenty of sawing practive for me this winter.

Six barras of wood, a moth, a newt, and a fungus or two

Lovely day today so I decided to finish shifting the pile of wood by the old rowan–pieces of rhododendron and goat willow that I sawed and piled several years ago. It's not the best firewood but with a bit of help it should burn allright this winter.

When I pulled the blue cover away I noticed what looked like an etiolated white fungus:

Then I noticed the little stripey beastie next to it–a newt. There was a tiny one too but it ran away before I could photogragh it. Nice find.

Trundling my wheelbarrow of wood down the garden, partly to stack neatly in the den to use in the stove in there over the winter, I noticed some other fungi and a pretty moth beside one of them. It seems that keeping a look out for fungi makes you notice other interesting things too. Firewood pics first...

One of the den piles

Part of the wood (two barrows) I just tipped haphazardly straight out of the wheelbarrow onto the ridiculous hearth in our living-room (we did not install it but we did install the stove). We've begun to feel the need of an evening fire lately.

I chucked the damper pieces at the side of the woodshed–there is a space at the right hand side next to my mega-NEAT pile of fresh cypress and eucalyptus that still needs to dry out a bit before we can use it. There is more cypress (like the bottom stripe) to go in before we stack this winter's fuel, but Toad hasn't finished splitting the logs yet. It's a bit by bit process like much else at the Boggy Brae. He has discovered that the cypress logs are getting easier to split as they dry a little. The eucalyptus was easiest when very 'green'.

So, here are some other wee fungi, and the moth

ME payback is telling me to go and have a nap now, so more of this morning's boggy brae bumblings anon.