Midsummer finds on a midgy brae

I spotted a white foxglove so donned my midge jacket and went for a closer look. Then I did a Boggy Brae wander in search of whatever might have turned up since my last look. My searches are not aimless. I remember where things have turned up before and keep checking to see if they reappear. Sometimes something new turns up.

First I looked round the base of a wild cherry tree to check the progress of the Lesser Stitchwort that lives there. Sitting on an old, punctured Thermarest mattress that last summer my grandsons used as a summer sledge down the Boggy Brae banks, and peering through the midge netting covering my face, I took some hazy photos of it.

Lesser Stitchwort (Stellaria graminea)

In my quest to remember botanical names I shall think of this as the star flower in the grass. the Latin name actually describes it perfectly. Was stitchwort a cure for stitches or does the English name mean something else?

I enjoyed the haziness of the photos when I looked at them on the Mac.

Then I spotted something reddish purple where red clover does not gow but where a Northern Marsh Orchid has been known to pop up. Sure enough, that's what it was. I left its protecting Cat's-ear in situ and marked the spot for mowers to avoid.

Checking other known orchid spots, I found another Northern Marsh Orchid among the tall fescue grass on the south-east bank and the leaves and early spike of a Southern Marsh Orchid on the north-east bank where it has flowered for several years.

Northern Marsh Orchid (Dactylorhiza purpurella)

Southern Marsh Orchid (Dactylorhiza praetermissa)
at summer solstice this year

Southern Marsh Orchid,
in the same spot as above,
at summer solstice last year

In the boggy lawn below the north-east bank clumps of Star Sedge are making a pale yellowish haze.

Star Sedge (Carex echinata)

The Yellow Flags have finally got going and the flag patch looks good with the Meadow Buttercups around it.

Toad has finally got rid of his Wayfarer dinghy that hasn't been on the water for a decade. The Vice-Commodore of a local sailing club has taken it away to make it seaworthy again so it can be used as a training boat. We're pleased about that. I had mentioned that I needed to have it moved so that I could burn the pampas grass. Once every few years the clump needs to be set alight in dry weather to keep it under control. The little Topaz dinghy has been dragged up the hill a bit to be out of the way too. There's a big muddy patch where they have been and I discovered a new plant, which almost but not quite got crushed in the boat moving operations – boat moving operations that required a tow rope and the Rattletrap in haul away mode because the boat trolley wheels had sunk so far into the mud that they were unbudgeable without a fair tonnage of pulling power. Bog power!

This is the new plant. It's nearly a metre tall. The leaves are mostly basal and are flat and ridged with slightly ripply edges. If anyone recognises it, please do let me know. There are mosses and liverworts in the Boat Bog area too. More on them anon.

Gardening boots, hats and gloves

The weather is overclouded, muggy and midgy today so I decided to have a clear out of the old gardening gloves and boots and hats that live in the wash-house. I even took the welly rack off the wall so I could clean behind the tumble dryer. I don't use the tumble dryer much because we have pulley ceiling airers inside and washing line outside but it's useful just to finish things off in summer when the heating isn't on in the house to dry stuff and the atmosphere is too humid outside to be sure that things that are put away are dry enough that they won't grow mould.

Boot rack

It seems I wear out right-handed gloves faster than left-handed ones.

Here is the boot rack back in place and reloaded and behind it on top of the dryer the wire basket refilled neat and orderly with spare hats and gloves. I wonder how long that'll last.

Loaded boot rack

Summer hat

It must be summer because I got the Tilley out. Mind you, it's to keep the rain off rather than the sun. Plus, the pocket in the crown is a good place to carry one's phone when lacking pockets elsewhere. And yes, I am wearing a thick wool jumper... well, was wearing... the temperature has soared to 14.6ºC so I've donned a jumper that has slightly less hot air knitted into it ;)

Hot air sweater

Boggy Brae flowers

Inspired by Derbyshire daughter, who has grown in her new garden the flowers in the red coffee pot, I went out with a trug and secateurs and brought in some of our wilds for the kitchen.

Daughter's garden flowers

Layers of growth in the garden

Being on a hill means vertical gardening of a sort comes naturally at the Boggy Brae. Looking up the garden in a more or less westerly direction gives this view.

Starting at the bottom layer there is the small 'umbrella' willow, its lower leaves eaten off by roe deer; to its right a pieris and the rhododendron I've called Pale Pink Glory which, as you can see, is past its best glory– sic transit gloria mundi. Between the pieris and Pale Pink is a lemon-scented fern (Oreopteris limbosperma). In front of that – properly the first layer, I suppose – is pignut. Of course. :)

The next layer is less easy to distinguish to the unpractised eye. My eye is practised. Leftmost is some of the ancient apple tree, then an escallonia behind the pieris, and the mauve-flowered Rhodoendron ponticum whose roots are actually in our neighbour's gadren. The blue thing below it is a tarpaulin over a wood pile.

Above the apple tree is a large goat willow with a honeysuckle bedecked holly tree growing close beside it.

Right at the top, up the hill beyond our garden is a birch tree, some kind of conifer standing tall and alone, and a massive old beech tree by the burn. That tree is probably where all my beech seedlings have come from. I guess last autumn was a good one for beech mast.

Lower down, just behind the house, is the retaining wall at the back of the back terrace. The corner by the old ship's companionway steps (boat builders used to live in this house) has layers too.

At the bottom is a good bunch of Common Haircap Moss (Polytrichum commune). This is just getting back to its former glory, recovering from the depradations of a pair of geese we had some years ago. Unusually it is quite dry in the photo because we've had four dry warm days. Yesterday got back to 'normal' and it has rained all night from late afternoon.

Growing above it are ferns, mostly Lady Fern (Athyrium filix-femina), including what I believe is a naturally occurring red-stemmed variety of which there are quite a few on the Boggy Brae. To the left of the ferns, though difficult to see in this pic is a clump of roseroot. There is an even bigger clump to the left of that. Above the ferns are chives and just above the chives, just beginning to flower, some blue irises.

In among the chives is an irrepressible rose – the semi-wild kind that do so well here – which keeps trying to grow across the steps. I've been hacking it back each year but decided on a change of hack, sorry, tack this year and recently pegged back a young stem with a strong tent peg and will continue to do this as it grows in an attempt to train it the other way.

Purple layers

Up a little again, towards the shed, there is another unplanned layering of creeping buttercups, red campion, alkanet, and ox-eye daisies, with the first two African daisies just showing to the right. Above them all is the ubiquitous pignut in the grass. When the ox-eye daisies open (soon!) the alkanet will not be visible from this viewpoint as it is behind.

Summer white

That wee rowan just visible behind the Toadlet in yesterday's post, looks like this now. I love it. It glows.

Rowan in bloom in June

The white blossom in the field hedge beyond is hawthorn and the white flowers in the foreground are pignut. Summer white.

Honeysuckle 2015

When we moved here nine years ago, the honeysuckle stump (someone's old Christmas tree that had been allowed to grow enormous!) looked like this. That is daughter number three aged just six.

There were self-seeded strands of young honeysuckle growing near it the following spring which I tied over the top of it thinking to make it look a little more attractive. That worked. This looks better than a bare stump.

Other plants came to live by the stump too, Scaly Male Fern (Dryopteris affinis), brambles (which I pull out), holly, rushes, bracken, and a downy birch tree. I left the birch, which you can see growing to the right of the stump in the photo below, last year and am thinking of letting it grow there as a support for the honeysuckle which now needs something to climb up. Time will tell whether this is a good idea.

Beyond the honeysuckle stump, just over the field fence, near those two dead stalks of dock, I think there is a Chiffchaff nest in among the bracken and some cypress branches we left there. I saw a bird flitting to and fro collecting food or nesting material the other day. There is a Chiffchaff chiffing right outside the window as I write and it or its friends have been quite vocal over the last few days. I'm wishing it breeding success.

There are Willow Warblers about too but they are not being so loud at the moment.

Plum bank south-east

Link to today's post on my Wordpress blog ArgyllGarden: Plum bank south-east