Preparing to build a "dead hedge"

The sun rose in a nearly cloud free sky this morning a little before eight o'clock. By  a little after half past one it was slipping behind the hill that is behind the Boggy Brae garden. The temperature starts to drop after that. One has to make the most of short winter days. Today was a glorious one but I think we're in for a wet day tomorrow.

So I made the most of it pulling out spiraea and pruning the overgrown grey sallow, again. I think that particular sallow is done for this year though there are others elsewhere in the garden.

Spiraea with roots like this I am piling up to dry and supply a bonfire at some point (not tonight). I daren't include them in my "dead hedge" plans because if laid on damp ground they will simply regrow. I learned that boggy brae plant behaviour from fuchsia several years ago!

Here is a wee runner with roots, roots, roots. Given a chance to invade one's garden, spiraea will.

That said, the flowers are very nice in summer. Insects like them.

So, today I have got all but about three metres of what I suppose was planted as a wee hedge many years ago pulled out.


Below is the stuff I need to get at for my 'dead hedge'–all those old, moss covered stalks will be ideal. Getting at them is the job for another day (or days). Maybe I can use some of the still live shoots higher up the dead hedge, in the hope that they'll be too dead to grow new roots by the time they get to the bottom!

Here is a stretch of double fence on the south-east edge of the garden between RhodoDen and the field into which I wander for sunrise pics. I cleared it yesterday of rhododendron branches that were growing through it. Suitable dead stuff will be stacked up between the two rows of wire fence. Yes, that is an old Wayfarer sailing dinghy tiller extension that is propping up a bit of fencing wire. Waste not, etc.

And so the sun goes down on another boggy brae day and the temperature drops. Currently 5.6ºC and falling. I wonder if it will beat last night's low of 4.2?

I leave you with a blurry pic of the moonrise across the loch at the end of a satisfying and enjoyable day. Now for a large mug of coffee and a very large cookie that I made earlier.

A cracker of a morning

I watched the sun appear over the horizon from among the whins and brambles at the top of the field. It's going to be a cracker of a day!

In the shelter of the whins, brambles are still flowering, and in among the brambles the gorse flowers too.

Early morning light on brambles

and on a non-native oak leaf

                                                      Most of the dock looks like this >

< But some of it looks like this

And the bracken looks like this in the morning light. It is the golding glory of the hills in autumn and their greening glory in spring.

<< here I'm back at the south-east border of the Boggy Brae garden looking down towards the loch and I look back east to the rising sun >>>








before I scissor-step over the fence.

On my wander down the Boggy Brae, I notice a new crop of Glistening Inkcap mushrooms on the old rowan,

rain pock-marked wood ash from some garden bonfires,



and the crack patterns on an old birch stump at the same bonfire site.

I will take care with the secateurs today. Yesterday, while snipping rhododendron to feed to a small bonfire, my left hand got in the way and got slightly snipped. It's a very neat V-shaped cut. It'll be fine–one of those serves me right injuries!

Now I'm off out to begin my "dead hedge" building. More of that anon.

Have good day! It's a cracker of a day here.

Toad's Ear

This fungus, which I found today on the north-west terrace near where raspberry canes grow, is apparently called Toad's Ear, or Otidea bufonia. Chuckle.

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.

The visible progress of Fuligo Septica

....otherwise known as Scrambled Egg Slime Mould (among other things!).

I've seen this slime mould growing in two places on the Boggy Brae now. Last year on the old, rotting rowan tree and this year on the felled cypress that was threatening to fall on the car.

 These first two pics (click to enlarge, or 'embiggen' as a friend of mine says) show the mould looking really eggy in July last year. Don't let this put you off scrambled eggs! This is not to be eaten.

<< This is it growing on (and presumably in) the stump of the cypress tree, and below, same day side on:

              Here is the same patch two days later >>

On 31st October I found some of the mould in grass and on a stalk of plantain. These plants are a metre or so away from the cypress stump. I suppose the mould is growing underground on the roots of the cypress and that's why it appeared like this.

The photo below shows the cypress stump patch of the

mould on 1st November. Click on the pic to enlarge and see

that some of the spore-releasing 'capsules' have burst

I didn't observe this phenomenon with the mould on the rowan tree last year. That may have been because the yellow mould showed on top of mosses that were also growing there, which may have hidden the later stages of the slime mould's development from view.

Autumn Gold