Tormentil, beech seedlings and spreading flowers

I found the first Tormentil flower (Potentilla erecta) this morning, looking somewhat wind and rain battered, but sturdily bright for all that.

Also some beech seedlings (Fagus sylvatica) in the earth behind the uprooted eucalyptus tree. I'm hoping one of them will survive and grow into a tree but they will have to run the gauntlet of roe deer nibbling unless I give them some protection. Deciding whether to thin them now or later is the next issue...

Between spots of rain I managed to get a pic of our late narcissus. I'm calling it My Sister's Narcissus because this year it started flowering on her birthday, 12 May. There are now five clumps of it from an initial two and they are not all near each other.

A May narcissus

Bluebells are spreading too. These, just beginning to flower, are on a northwest-facing bank and only get sunshine in the late afternoon. I found two new plants round the bank corner on the bit that faces northeast this morning. My practice of not mowing certain areas until flowers have set seed is paying dividends! I found a single bluebell quite far into the field too this morning and immediately imagined how awesome it would be if they covered a largish area. Fingers crossed the farmer doesn't mow until September like last year.


At the bottom of the same bank Devil's-bit Scabious grows near the base of a downy birch tree. They have also spread round the corner and are establishing themselves in the shade of Toad's boat across the garden in the east corner as well. Pictures anon. They don't flower until later in the year.

Finding things in the grass

I've got into the way of scrutinising the greensward of the Boggy Brae as I walk about. The other day I noticed a patch of green that differed from the rest in the field. when I went for a closer look, it turned out to be a patch of grass of a different species from that surrounding it. I'll investigate further in due course. In the meantime my self-testing guess is one of the soft grasses, Holcus species.

The other evening, in the slanting light, as I was walking up the south-east slope after abandoning the lawn-mower in a boggy bit where it had got stuck beyond my strength (Toad later rescued it and finished the mowing I had started), I noticed a different green in the grass again. closer inspection revealed it to be the leaves of Whorled Caraway (Carum verticillatum) in one of the places I had first found it growing last year.

As you can see from the photo to the left (click on it to enlarge it), Whorled Caraway leaves look quite different from grass. The first pic, above, was my attempt to show how the leaves' colour differed from that of the grasses surrounding them. It was more obvious than the photo shows.

Anyway, since I want these to flower later, I set about fencing them off marking them so that Toad doesn't mow the caraway patches by accident. Out came the canes and string – see pic below. The mower was round the corner of the bank in the left of the photo, and that is the loch you can see through the trees.

I call it the SE slope because it is on the SE side of the garden but the incline is actually north-easterly.

It's just as well we got that boggy bit mowed when we did because the heavens opened later that night and it has rained fairly steadily since.

Bears in the wash-house

Yesterday and today I've been cleaning the wash-house. This involves moving the fridge and freezer, which are on a kind of raised platform. That involves jiggling them forward onto a breeze block and a lump of eucalyptus wood that are about the right height so that I can get behind them and clean what was underneath which is usually a lot of dust and cobwebs and leaves and small twigs. The platform, and another even higher one on the other side where the washing-machine sits, is necessary because the floor slopes down from the edges of the wash-house to a drain in the middle. This does mean that if the washing-machine leaks and when I want to defrost the freezer, I don't have to worry about catching water. It can trickle away across the concrete floor and not be a problem. Unfortunately, the lack of a damp course in the walls of this ancient wet room means that mould grows so the cleaning involves mould killer, bleach and a scrubbing brush, especially as I don't do it very often – probably averaging about once every three years at the moment, about as often as I really thoroughly clean out the garden shed. When trying to imagine the Boggy Brae wash-house, don't think sparkling modern utility room, think very old, usually messy, stone shed.

Anyway, to get to the point. I found some bears. This one, made of some stony, plastery conglomerate, I found on the beach some years ago. He has been sitting in a cobwebby corner of the wash-house. He got a brush up yesterday. Today I found his friend so now they are together.

Beach bear and plastic bear

At the time I photographed them they were making sure I'd hung up all the gardening gloves and hats and ear warmers. Now they have a been allotted the corner of one of the steps that lead up into the kitchen from the old wash'us.

Wavy Bitter Cress

Here is my picture proving to myself, with the help of a blob of Blutak to keep it in position, that it is Wavy Bitter Cress (Cardamine flexuosa) that's growing on the terrace and not (yet, at any rate) Hairy Bitter Cress (Cardamine hirsuta). WavyBC has six stamens, Hairy only four.

Wavy Bitter Cress with six visible stamens

According to W Keble Martin, WavyBC can grown to about 45cm in height and HairyBC is smaller. My plant measured 13cm, which is actually shorter than the lower size Keble Martin quotes for HairyBC. BoggyBrae breaking the rules as usual?

Now follow two bad photographs illustrating that the stem of my Wavy Bitter Cress has about the same waviness as Roger Phillips' photograph of Hairy Bitter Cress.

Wavy stem of BoggyBrae Wavy Bitter Cress

Photo of Roger Phillips' photo of Hairy Bitter Cress
showing its similarly wavy stem

WavyBC is hairy too, by the way. This is where I need a dead straight face emoticon.

Bonfires, Swallows, and Cuckoo calls

The last two mornings I have been tackling this green pile of branches from an old cypress tree that we had cut down last summer. This picture was taken in early August. Since then the pile has settled a bit and I had shredded some of the green and piled the logs to carry on seasoning at the edge of the garden. They can be chopped and used in the stove in due course.

Wood pile on part of the climbing frame
that got bent by another falling tree.
It has come in handy for stacking wood on.

There's still quite a bit of the green pile to go but I can now see the Rattletrap over the top of it, which I couldn't a couple of days ago.

I decided to burn the green stuff (it burns very well) so the task involved grabbing branches by the horns, so to speak, and dragging them up the garden to near the bonfire site.

Dragged by the horns

I won't be able to stack much more on the climbing frame so I've started a 'wigwam' pile against the Grey Sallow I pruned last autumn.

During a break for a breakfast slab of home-made bread with butter, quince jam, and Cambozola cheese and a mug of tea, which I consumed sitting in the sun at the top of the companionway steps, I used a posh plastic bag that came home full of Fortnum & Mason biscuits when Toad returned from a London trip recently, to cover the nearside wing mirror of the Rattletrap. Bluetits were getting very angry with competitors that they saw in the mirror and were making a right mess of the car door!

Oh yes, swallows and cuckoo calls.... well, I had my first sighting of swallows flying over while I was eating my piece, and throughout the bonfiring exercise I could hear cuckoo calls from up the hill.

Spring bonfire

On the morning of 22 April the weather was just how I like it for making a bonfire. The outside temperature in the shade was a little less than 15°C, there was hardly any wind, and it had been dry for a week. That itself is unusual in Argyll but it does happen and April seems a good month for such wee dry spells. So I made my bonfire of dry twigs and leaves and added chopped lengths of the woodshed rose that I'd chopped down in the autumn. That metal bar you can see in the photo is the edge of an old bed base. There are two tangled up in the spiraea up in the top west corner. I expect they were put there, possibly as part of the fence, once upon a long time ago.

This is the woodshed rose in July 2013. I just don't want it to grow right up the side of the house any more because it sends its vigorous shoots into the eaves and would damage the roof if we let it. It is looking robust this spring so don't worry, I will just limit its imperialism a bit!

woodshed rose

also woodshed rose, same plant

I kept back some thicker pieces and will let them dry out more. We can use them in the stove in due course. They are resting right now on the other old bed base.


After that I cleared out the messier side of the tool shed where Toad had flung various bits of sailing gear. It was hot enough in the sun and under a thin shed roof to be dressed in shorts and a vest top (the British kind, not the American).

Perfect spring weather. Not too hot and still comfortably cool in the shade. I'd be very happy for summers to be like this, especially the midge-free part! The blighters will start biting soon.

Inspired by Nick Ray (@LifeAfloat), I left a small tower of the stones I unearthed from the spiraea and grey sallow hacking last autumn up by the bonfire patch.

Boggy Brae's answer to the Kensington Stripes

Someone painted their house in red and white stripes in Kensington. Apparently the neighbours are appalled. The funny side appeals to me.

The Boggy Brae house is red and white too.

Front terrace in summer

Through the bathroom window

I don't think our neighbours mind.
Magnetic Hippo likes it:

The disapprovers should steer clear of Tobermory and of course nothing beats the Oxford shark! Go, Kensington!