Spider silk with green and red

A misty day made the spider silk show very clearly

The top of  peony plant

The peony web spider (not properly in focus but you can see her colours)

A misty hammock of spider silk strung between holly and yew

And closer

One of the garden 'windows' between tree trunks

red and green

A baby rowan tree growing between bird cherry trunks

more red and green

August News

The August highlight was the visit of my two grandsons with their parents. At least, their dad delivered them and collected them, staying overnight each time, but between times got the train to London for a friend's wedding and to spend some time with old pals. His journey back to the Boggy Brae was a little disrupted as some problem on the West Highland line meant all the trains westwards out of Glasgow were cancelled. Toad came to the rescue and drove to Queen Street Station – something that would terrify me and, in any case, I'd probably lose my way. Minibus taxis must have got plenty of custom that evening.

Manny, who will be 4 this September, wanted to go on a boat so one morning we trooped down the hill to catch the bus to the pier and we took the ferry to Gourock. Manny fizzed all the way in the bus. The boats on the loch were pirate ships. Then he fizzed on the ferry.

Fizzing on the bus

Fizzing on the ferry

 Once at Gourock we searched for a cafe and as luck would have it found one just across the road from a kiddies' play park:

Howie (6months) enjoyed some frothy milk
off the top of a latte

Manny played in the park while I wheeled Howie around in his buggy till he fell asleep. We visited the lovely Gourock wool shop, Once a Sheep and when we arrived at the pier to take the ferry back home, the ferryman took Manny to the wheelhouse. Manny then fizzed all the way home. 

(Pictures above all by Toadlet)

On less sunny days than the boat trip day we went down to our local beach and did some beach treasure hunting. You can see what treasure I found in my blog posts here and here. Meanwhile here are two daughters and two grandsons

plus one grandson and a sea monster

Another fun activity was duck racing in the burn

Space duck in a jam

Arty duck and Stardust Duck

And, of course, feeding the baby. He enjoyed some fromage frais by sucking it off a champagne cork

Grandson Howie and the DerbyshireDaughter

The champagne cork I've forgotten to tell you about! On the evening of the Derbyshire family's arrival we opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate DerbyshireDaughter's degree success with the Open University. Then, on the evening of the Springboard Diver's overnight visit, we opened another bottle that she'd brought to celebrate that again but also because it was her first meeting with her younger nephew. Champagne goes very well with sausages (various varieties) baked in the oven with shallots and then eaten off a fork or fingers.

Grandson Howie and the DivingDaughter

Late in the month I met my friend, KintyreAnnie in Lochgilphead for a lovely lunch at The Smiddy. We sat by this window for our lattes and a shared chocolate chip cookie which was perfectly crisp and buttery. Then, after we'd blethered enough to get properly hungry, we had a baked cheese, avocado and breadcrumb dish with salad. I brought my date slice home but Annie forced hers down there and then. It was certainly very good, all of it, the food and the chatter between good friends. I'm only a few years older than Annie's eldest son but the years between us are nothing because we love the same things in life.

I always love the drive through Argyll via Rest and be Thankful. That day flurries of smirr (soft, fine rain very typical of western Scotland) were blowing through all day, some heavy, some light. The misty clouds floated over the mountains in beautiful drifts and the damp air picked out the early autumn colours on the trees and the late summer flowers in the verges: meadowsweet, wild angelica,  purple loosestrife, rose-bay willowherb, himalayan balsam. The road between Lochgilphead and Furnace has been resurfaced in the not too distant past and the cambers on the curves beautifully done, making the driving quite enjoyable.
On the way I listened to the Vermont band Atlantic Crossing on their 1998 CD Wind Against Tide. We have Full and Away too. Peter MacFarlane, one of their number, was an enthusiastic member of Oxford University Scottish Dance Society at one time, and came to play fiddle (brilliantly!) at one of the OUSDS Ceilidhs during the time when I was teaching the class.
On the way back I listened to Quimantu – a superb and varied collection of South American folk music. Since there was no-one else in the car, I sang along both ways.

The next evening Toad and I went to hear The Outside Track who were absolutely superb! A good way to end the month.


And now I must let Toadlet get back onto the computer where she was having a conversation with other Potterheads on a virtual journey aboard the Hogwarts' Express from Platform nine and threequarters at Kings Cross Station.

Field Flowers

I went out looking for fungi in the wood at the back of us – climbed over the fence, jumped over the stream and clambered about among fallen old trees and little young saplings. I found a couple of little toadstools

The moss is Polytrichum commune – very common around here

and some hard fern, some heather, and a tiny oak tree growing out of the root ball of a fallen tree.

By this time I'd acquired a new collection of midge bites and decided to go back into the massive, open, midge-free field and follow some deer tracks. Heading away from oor hoos at the Boggy Brae,

the first thing I came across that I've never seen before was dock leaves eaten up between their veins:

Then I came across various lovely wild flowers and realised where the Devil's Bit Scabious in my garden comes from

Devil's Bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis) and soft rush

Devil's bit Scabious

Sneezwort (Achillea ptarmica)

Wild angelica (Angelica sylvestris)

Thistledown of Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense)

The lovely colours of ripe dock seed against bracken

Along the top of the field the rowan trees were looking good:

The field dips away at the far end so, without climbing onto a fence post or up a tree, this  is all you can see of  Boggy Braedom from there:

At the far end there are larch trees

A curtain of larch with rowan behind

larch cones and 'larch lumps' of leaves
(spruce some singly, pine comes in pairs, and
larch comes in larch lumps ;-)

And then I was homeward bound, just as the smirr began to feel a bit damp, so the camera went in the rucksack 

ME payback and Dahlias on the compost heap

The 'payback' associated with ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) is difficult to adjust to. The problem for me is judging correctly what will trigger its worst effect which, in my case, is a kind of nauseated, zapped feeling and a sore chest on top of the usual achey limbs and painful facet joints.

The weather over the weekend just gone has been lovely. On Saturday morning I started the autumn- and winter-long task of Boggy Brae hedging while Toad and Toadlet still slumbered. I wedged a ladder between the NW bank and the hedge, making sure it was well tangled in firm branches so couldn't tip, and attacked the top few feet of the rhododendron hedge.

[I just went out at this point and actually measured the longest branch I cut off – two and a half metres. So, yeah, a few feet!]

I didn't do an awful lot – not more than half an hour or so of cutting. Then it was a case of tipping three wheelbarrow loads of small branches and leaves onto a heap in what is fast becoming the Jungle Corner, breaking or cutting some of the woodier parts and stacking them beside the bike shed (there's a convenient narrow space between the bike shed and the coal bunker), and putting the tools away. I left some of the larger branches to deal with another time and just pulled up a couple of barrowsful of Lesser Knotweed (Persicaria campanulata) to finish off with. I found underneath it two small holly trees, a small St.John's Wort and, best of all, some more of the delightful Alpine Enchanter's Nightshade.

So let's say half a morning's work, and I don't rush this stuff. I was hot and needing a cold shower when I'd finished but it was a warm day.

Then yesterday I mowed and strimmed the NW and NE terraces – about six barrows full of grass cuttings and ferns and trimmed back periwinkle (Vinca major). I'd decided not to do more hedging just yet because I'd clearly annoyed my back thigh muscles making them do something unaccustomed on Saturday, and anyway the terrace needed mowing. The back part to the SW still needs doing so, you see, I hadn't overdone anything. Today though: blergh.

So after hanging washing out this morning I gathered my camera bucket – a rectangular mop bucket with gaffer tape along a split in the bottom; it's not waterproof enough to use as a mop bucket any more, but it means I've somewhere dry to put whichever camera (of two) that I'm not using at any particular moment – and tootled out to try and get to know the Panasonic Lumix a bit better. I've pressed all the buttons now and tried different settings without really understanding most of them. I might have to resort to reading the manual. The trouble with manuals is they're always full of jargon that you have to be an expert to understand before you even know what they are talking about!

Last year Toadlet sowed some dahlia seeds in a trough in The Den and we left it in there all summer. They did really well, unlike our dahlia attempts in Oxfordshire which were a flop. In the autumn, when they died down, I tipped the trough of earth onto the compost heap. It got buried over the winter with vegetable peelings various, coffee grounds and teabags, and this year some dahlia plants sprung up. I shall let them do their thing, bury them again in situ and convert that heap into The Dahlia Bed. I like plants that just get on with life.

The sunlight was shining through the petals and insects and spiders were clearly having a ball:

And now, having done that and written this, I'm ready for a venison burger sandwich. Flowers are good for the spirits.

Beach geeking 2

Something on seaweed (open egg cases?)
and some bristleworms

Barnacle encrusted mussel shell

Young barnacles, old barnacles and periwinkles

A limpet shell pool.

The beasties above and below are Lipura maritima. Description in Collins Pocket Guide to the Sea Shore, Barrett and Yonge, 1958: "perhaps 1/8inch long; usually on surface film of rock pools especially where these are small and very sheltered. Upper half of shore, often in groups; also moving on rocks and weeds." I think pools in limpet and mussel shells count as small!

A mussel shell pool

Sand in the making

Just below the water at the low tide mark

Barnacle 'mountains' whose lower slopes look like teeth