Good old Rattletrap

Every year at MOT time the mechanic sucks air in through his teeth, full of doubt and misgivings, and then Rattletrap sails through the tests.

The photo, taken last Saturday evening, is deceptive. In the low light you don't see the oldness and shabbiness so well.

Good old Rattletrap.

And below a morning sky, also from Saturday.

Planting tulips

Potted up some tulip bulbs this morning. Freebies that I got from Thompson & Morgan along with some seeds. The last time I planted tulips it was directly into the ground and they did well until the roe deer found them. So this lot are getting some protection in their pots on what is euphemistically known as the sun terrace at the south-east side of the house.

Pieces of old yogurt pot are being used as labels. There are ten of each of "Queen of the Night", "Flaming Flag", "Fontainbleu", and "Menton". The bits of shell and stone from near the Irrepressible Rose are at the bottom of one of the pots.

Looking up from my potting by the shed, this was my view of Monster Cypress corner (where I've been having the most recent bonfires) and above it in the wood beyond.

Then it was time for some tea and a jam and cheese 'piece' on the heel of the loaf.

The Rhododendron luteum is having a slight autumn flowering.

There are very few montbretia flowers this year because the deer seem to have discovered their deliciousness as snacks. They eat the leaves too.

Miss Cutey Deer and the Irrepressible Rose

Okay, Miss Cutey Doe, Miss ButterWouldn'tMelt, this means war!

She has been making herself so comfortably at home that she even reached round onto the porch to eat the single porch rose that bloomed despite earlier deer depradations on the plant!

My guiding of the shoots as they recovered behind the porch trellis clearly wasn't enough to keep deer off these tasty morsels.

yesterday

and, below, today:

I've been meaning to do a proper tidy up there. I've forgotten why the shells and wee stones are there. From now on Irrepressible Rose is getting industrial strength protection.

Growl. Snarl.

Well, a sigh anyway.

Letting the light in

My view to the north from up in the top south corner, sipping tea before I started my bonfire a couple of days ago. I'm making the most of a spell of dry weather. Stuff in the house has to wait at times like this. Dry weather spells here remind me of having a baby in the house. Other than keeping the kitchen and bathroom hygienic and  feeding everybody, housework becomes even less important than usual while you drop everything and attend to baby needs. Tending to the Boggy Brae garden works a bit like that too.

Same principle as making hay while the sun shines, I guess.

It used to be very dark under the big cypress up there and if you weren't a chicken, it was difficult to get into the space underneath its low branches. When two of its several trunks began to keel over a couple of years ago some light got into the dark spaces. I decided to let in some more. Some of the low branches have been sending roots down. I don't really want any more of these trees so I'm cutting back the smaller low branches, burning the dead (and some not dead) foliage, and making a wood pile. Any excuse for a bonfire? Well, maybe ;)

Dead bracken stalks make good fire starters.

After I'd put away tools yesterday, tramping up and down between the shed, the house and up top, I spotted this drowsy deer just a few yards from the back door. I think she might be quite a young one. She seemed unconcerned by my presence.

Burnt out rowan

After torrential rain and ferocious winds yesterday the stillness of this silver morning enticed me out for a welly wander. This photo is from the top of the garden looking east.
Below is a photo of the birch, cypress and rowan clump in the middle of which is my fire basket. The wee shed in the front was once a goose house and then henhouse; now it acts as small woodshed.  The top corner is behind all that.

Oops!

It seems a spark must have got into the hollow trunk of the old rowan and, without noticeable smoke and through the drenching rain, it has burnt out the rotting wood. It must have been incredibly dry in there! The remaining part of that tree, seen above the goose house, still looks fine. It will be interesting to see what happens next spring.

So my unsmothering of the rowans under the cypress will continue over the winter. Not that the boggy brae is short of rowans; I've lost count of the number of rowan seedlings all over the place. Left to go wild the garden would soon turn into a forest of birch, rowan, holly, sallow, oak, wild cherry and beech. I find that a reassuring thought even if there were rhododendrons in the mix. I read somewhere that before the last ice age there were native rhododendrons in Britain anyway. Nothing stays the same for long.

More bonfires

Continuing the bonfire theme, I'm also lighting fires under the big cypress in the top south corner. A big chunk of it, a couple of heavy trunks' worth, has keeled over without any help from me but from Root Rot, sometimes known as Root Fomes (Heterobasidion annosum), which is also attacking the old rowan up there.

Root Rot fungus

I've felt tempted a few times to just light a fire under some of the low branches where detritus has fallen and collected over a number of years as you can see here. But I thought such a fire might quickly get huge and out of control and anyway part of the job is sort of about rescuing some half smothered rowan trees. The light-coloured branch on the ground is a rowan trunk, believe it or not. Most of the tree emerges on the field side of the fence.

birch, rowan, dying cypress from the field

There is another rowan trunk in among these rooting cypress branches.

So instead of setting a tree on fire, I'm lopping off small bits at a time and keeping the fire, more or less, within the confines of the fire basket that's visible in the first photo.

In moments between feeding the fire I've been enjoying small details: the redness of the cypress under bark, small fans of feather moss, and baby ferns growing in bark depressions.

Just in case someone happening to wander up the hill (likelihood close to zero, actually) to where the fire is (another close to zero likelihood) without noticing the smoke, I have my warning sign – a beachcombed part of a "Warning! forest operations" sign.

Actually, I use it as a bellows for the fire.

At some point I suppose I might get someone with a chainsaw to chop up the big branches but there's a lot of bonfiring fun to have before that.

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