13 Sunday Aug 2017
Posted in boggybrae, garden, wild garden, wildflowers
08 Tuesday Aug 2017
Posted in boggybrae
01 Tuesday Aug 2017
Posted in boggybrae, garden, insects, wild garden
Last year when a small potted lavender plant that Toad brought home one day had finished flowering, I put it in an empty corner. Empty corners don’t stay empty for long on the Boggy Brae and this was no exception. Bistort, bugle and young ferns, not to mention random grasses, soon hid the wee pot. Yesterday I noticed a tiny bit of lavender blue poking through (top left in first photo) and today a larger bit. Since the plant seems quite happy under its plant blanket, I’m going to leave it where it is for the time being.
Funny how once you see a colour where you might not have been expecting it, your eyes seem somehow attuned to it and see more. I spotted two blue leaf hoppers near the lavender and then the apparently blue edge of a snail shell.
31 Monday Jul 2017
Having protected it from roe deer nibbling this spring, the Irrepressible Rose, a rambler whose age and name I don’t know, is flowering again even though affected by mildew. Second pic is for scale; I have small hands.
27 Thursday Jul 2017
Onion bags for the bulbs and a cut up yogurt pot for labels, bits of string tied in clove hitches to close the bags, a treasury tag to hold all together, and a hook made years ago at school by Toadlet is all you need for tulip bulb storage.
26 Wednesday Jul 2017
Posted in boggybrae, wild garden, wildflowers, wildlife
On warm summer days on the Boggy Brae one’s surround sound is the ‘chirr’ of grasshoppers. One doesn’t see them often because they have a perfect grasshopper jungle to hide in. Sometimes, though, one of them will happen to move and you will see where it lands for a chance to photograph it. I took several of the chappy below. I was looking at the yarrow yellow and saw the grasshopper’s movement out of the corner of my eye. The photos were all bad but here’s one for the record.
24 Monday Jul 2017
Posted in boggybrae, wild garden, wildflowers
The speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys, I think) plant from which this 70cm stem comes (there were several others similar to this) is growing right next to a compost heap up at the top of the Boggy Brae garden. The leaves are 4cm long. I’m sorry I missed its flowering. I shall look out for it next year.
24 Monday Jul 2017
I’m impressed with my left-handed writing ;) (right wrist still mending)
17 Monday Jul 2017
Posted in boggybrae, ferns, garden, summer, wild garden, wildflowers
Today I measured the tallest Boggy Brae foxglove after it keeled over. It was two and a half metres tall (over eight feet).
Then I continued my wander and enjoyed the yellowish stipes of lemon-scented fern and four baby trees. They are all right at the base of two well grown birch trees. The question is whether to leave them there to grow or hoik them out. I’ll leave them for a while anyway.
If you look up from near these wee trees, there is a treescape of birch, sallow and a bit of honeysuckle that’s growing up on of the sallows.
14 Friday Jul 2017
Posted in boggybrae, flowers, fungi, summer, wildflowers
On Wednesday I found a single plant of Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor) just outside our top fence in the green lane between two fields.
On Thursday, as it was a lovely morning, I decided to walk around the field to see if I could find any more. I started at the top where it’s easy to do a scissor step over our fence and I was nearly round to the bottom field gate before I found some good sized patches. I photographed the field border below them so that I could find them again.
During my trundle I found some other flowers and a couple of fungi:
Foxgloves put on a good show against a backdrop of gorse bushes intermingled with brambles.
