Walking the rainbow trail

Kingcups by the Swine Burn

The RAF Tower from the Lochielair field

This afternoon Grey Granite and Rufus enjoyed an hour's amble through a sea of fragrant, coconut scented gorse between Pitheughie and Lochielair. As an avoidance tactic, they wandered through the park behind Lochielair and along the Swine Burn before cutting through the gorse between the Red Well and Pitheughie. The warmer weather of the last few days (17C and desultory light rain this afternoon) has had a huge impact on the flora. There is suddenly an abundance of wild flowers; violets and a single pink campion along the banks of the burn, creeping willow showing yellow pollen bearing catkins in the shortest grass. A semi permanent pool, which seems to have built up during the last wet twelve months near the new pond, is already almost choked with ivy leaved crowfoot - in flower. Surprisingly there were sycamore seedlings germinating near the mill lade, their survival seems unlikely. Most striking of all there were huge eye catching clumps of bright marsh marigolds in the burn below Pitheughie, down on the shore by the Red Well and the Swine Burn. The scurvy grass has grown taller and the celandines are fully out by the burn. In the boggy area below Piheughie the reddish leaves of marsh burnet can be clearly identified. This annual re-emergence in the usual places strikes Grey Granite as nothing short of miraculous and puts her in mind of the concluding 'tangled bank' passage of Origin of Species.

Equally miraculously, Rufus reveals himself as being the ideal companion for walking the rainbow trail of the Wastart, making no demands on thoughts, not caring how fast or slowly we progress nor minding about dubs, delays and back trackings, existing in his own parallel doggy world.