19 March garden welly wander

Link to today's welly wander post over at Argyll Garden. Blogger is clunky on an iPad.

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Freeing violets

 It has been a pleasant afternoon with no rain and a lessened wind force. I have been freeing violets from the oppression of tough grasses and a cotoneaster. The violets seeded themselves into the cracks and crevices of the steps leading up to the shed. This year they did not flower very well.









Happily, this afternoon, I discovered that they had been spreading themselves near young ferns and under the cotoneaster to the side of the steps. Perhaps there were more flowers than I realised, or perhaps the few flowers I saw were champion seed pingers. Whichever it was, I'm hoping for a violetty spring.



Before I came in for tea and biscuits I looked for daffodil and snowdrop leaves poking out of the ground. I usually see some during December but not this year.

Boggy Brae banana walnut bread

Yesterday I made some banana and walnut tea loaves in my maternal grandma's old bread tins. They have interesting bottoms: an extra piece of metal has been added that stands away from the from the bottom of the tin and has air holes. I'm presuming this was to prevent the bottoms of loaves from burning.

bread tin bottom

Although I make a chocolate banana cake quite often and have its recipe in my head, I wondered if tea bread with nuts would have any particular requirements. My recipe tin is often more productive than recipe books, or even searching online, so I had a rummage. The tin is full of recipes I've written down, that other people have written down for me, and that I've cut off food packets and boxes. It provided a banana bread recipe from an Oxford friend and something off a packet of something — walnuts perhaps.

The actual ingredients and quantities I used were as follows:

4oz butter
4oz soft brown sugar
one and a half oz golden syrup (I have a very handy weighing spoon for awkard stuff like syrup; see pic below)

Melt those ingredients in a pan, then add:

4oz chopped walnuts
4 mashed bananas
2 eggs
9oz wholemeal self-raising flour
heaped teaspoon of baking powder

Bake at 350ºF/180ºC till done (I turned the tins around after 20 minutes and left them another 15. I think! In short, cook till a skewer comes out clean from the middle of the loaves).

Handy weighing spoon. Goes up to 200g
depending what you're weighing and whether it will fit!

Updating my photos on the iMac, it seems I took an accidental selfie while I was making banana walnut bread, and that I was having fun.

Cycling on Great Cumbrae

Went full Norwegian today to Largs and then onto Great Cumbrae again for a bike ride. Lovely cold day but four layers of clothing and three on my head meant I was toasty. We went up one of the inner island roads (there are two) and the bikes and we got a bit clarty coming down to the ferry slip because the road was muddy after some hedging activity. I'm still in shock cos Toad not only washed the car when we got home but the bikes as well!! Shoulda seen him with the pressure washer! Is washing bikes even a thing? Anyway, it's fine by me for someone else to keep my bike all shiny.

Third pic is what we decided is Cumbrae's swimming pool. 

Arran (pic 4) stayed cloud topped but pretty all day.

Mellow yellow sallow

Looking up from my holly lopping the other day I was struck by the beauty of yellowing sallow leaves. Sallow can be a bit of a nuisance in a garden and it's not very good for firewood so I try to keep it in some kind of check. If the spreading branches of this plant come any lower (see pic below) I'll probably lop them. I've removed some already, those that I bumped my head against once too often.

Left to itself I think a good deal of Boggy Brae, especially the lowest, boggiest parts, would probably become sallow carr. Where my childhood family first lived on the Fylde was willow carr, called Oldfield Carr. I didn't appreciate the name's meaning at the time but thinking back I do remember some huge willows that we climbed and, where big branches looped low and up again, they were our rocking horses.

For those who are new to the Boggy Brae garden, the thing with the white rubble sack over it is an archery target boss. The bit of shed to the left is the old goose house, now being used as a small woodshed. Up near the top right corner those familiar with the Sentinel Tree that lives up the hill may be able to make out its photobombing antics.

The holly lopping mentioned above was to give a young oak more space and light. It has survived, with a little help from chicken wire judiciously applied, having its young bark nibbled by roe deer so now I reckon it's raring to go. There are several other self-planted tiny oak trees in the garden too—two years ago was a rich oak mast year. I'm willing them on where there's space for them but have had to pull out a couple of dozen that sowed themselves too near the house.

A line of golden setae

The sun was sinking as the smoke from my small bonfire drifted up the garden and its rays shone through the  bright setae of the moss growing on the trunk of the fallen wild cherry tree.

It was high winds one night in December 2013 that brought the old wild cherry tree down. We knew it was affected by the parasitic fungus, Laetiporus sulphureu (Chicken of the woods), so its collapse was not totally surprising. One of its offspring is still holding part of it up. The same storm also brought down a tall eucalyptus which added some interest to the climbing frame.

Some of the eucalyptus wood is still in the woodshed. It burns well in the stove. Some day I might shuffle up the old cherry trunk and start sawing branches....

Rain later

This morning I woke to a starry, clear sky. The weather forecast said "rain later" so I cycled to work thinking that it wouldn't matter if I got wet on the way home. There was a ten percent chance of rain when I would be on my bike. Toad and I have often interpreted that ten percent chance, as the met office call it, to mean that we'll be in the raining ten percent of Argyll. This interpretation works well. Today I took a chance based on the clear and starry, crescent moon lit sky and got wet, well, damp. Hey ho.

Based on the weather forecast I expected to get wetter cycling home but as it happened the 40% chance of rain for that later time meant that my cycling home period was dry. So I had a chance to stop and chat to a raft of eiders on the loch. They were very chatty. There was even a wedge of blue sky over to the north-east.

 

It was light enough not to need bike lights by then but I have pinned to the back of my Aran cycling jersey the back half of the reflective whatsit that Toadlet used to wear when walking to school in the winter. I also have reflective stuff round my ankles. I'm one of those strange, old-fashioned people who just wears ordinary clothes for cycling.

Even without that whatsit the light wool should be easily visible in car headlights. I have good bike lights too. Most drivers around here seem to know how to overtake cyclists properly but it never hurts to be hyper visible.