Philorth Woods

 Philorth Woods, suddenly, beautifully, pungently flooded with wild garlic and with sunlight filtered through the fresh new leaves. 

Further Chelsea 2013 Highlights

The orchid emblem of the 100th Chelsea Flower Show

Stop the Spread featured dead elm trees, a thought provoking timely warning  of the dangers facing our environment.

Epitaph for the Elm

Brmingham Blitz, striking fiery red plantings and a Spitfire made from sedums.

The East Village Garden, based on the Olympic village of 2012 had a striking planting of arum lilies

An Alcove (Tokonoma) Garden

Grey Granite urges everyone who admired this garden to read 'The Garden of Evening Mists' by Tan Twang Eng

Calm tranquil planting in the Mindfulness Garden, cow parsley

in evidence here and throughout the show

A section of tranquil plantings in the M&G Centenary Garden, Windows through Time which cleverly traced the development of garden design over the century.

Chelsea crowds, the Australian garden in the background

The Seeing Garden

Under the Sea, floral art  in the Great Pavilion

And making one appearance only the gnomes!

Chelsea 2013: Highlights - Mainly Retrospective

Grey Granite and Dr Anne went on their annual expedition to Chelsea, this was the 100th Chelsea show and many of the exhibits which particularly appealed to Grey Granite were slightly retrospective.

Grey Granite was delighted by the luxuriant hawthorn bushes flowering along the Chelsea embankment,  seen here with the towers of Battersea power station in the distance. Grey Granite thinks of the hawthorn hedges surrounding the garden of the house in which she grew up.

E.W.King's stand included this intriguing collection of small seed measures and these old fashioned sweet peas which Grey Granite remembers her father growing.

The National Dahlia Collection Stand in the Great Pavilion, this reminded Grey Granite of gardens recalled from the 1950s, probably based on her Great Uncle Jack Aden''s small market garden, known as his 'plot' . This was where Grey Granite many happy, and she now realizes formative, hours with her Dad helping to prick out seedlings and carrying out other simple horticultural tasks. Alan Titchmarsh thought this display reminded him of a Marie Lloyd song, originally banned by the Lord Chamberlain, 'She sits among the cabbages and peas' (Modified to 'She sits among the cabbages and leeks' which satisfied the Lord Chamberlain's sense of propriety)  Grey Granite was reminded of  a passage from 'A Green and Pleasant Land, How England's Gardeners Fought the Second World War'   by Ursula Buchan

  'In peacetime, gardening is an activity that is pursued by millions of people, more or less willingly, sometimes to the exclusion of much else. It has practical, aesthetic and spiritual dimensions; it is both earthily satisfying and emotionally recuperative. As all keen gardeners know, gardening is a potent consolation in bad times or circumstances;so it is small wonder that in wartime people often strove very hard to tend a garden, sometimes in extremely unpromising circumstances. Small wonder, too, that the way they  tackled gardening in all its forms during the war years turned out to be emblematic of the way they dealt with many of the difficulties and constraints imposed on them; with thrifty ingenuity, a keen scepticism and invincible humour.'

Alpines displayed in  a traditional alpine house

The undoubted highlight of Chelsea for Grey Granite was seeing this spectacular Lady's Slipper orchid (Cypripedium calceolus), Britain's rarest orchid growing in the Le Jardin De Yorkshire garden. This demanding orchid, once widespread in the limestone areas of Northern England, has been pillaged so badly by plant hunters that it is now confined to  a single, closely guarded site in Yorkshire.

Sculpted wire sheep in the Yorkshire garden, which was inspired by Yorkshire's successful bid to host the grand Depart of the 2014 Tour de France. 

Reading University's grass free lawn is biodiverse and wildlife friendly.This species rich planting is designed to be walked on like  a traditional lawn  its diversity includes garden and native species, reminiscent of grassland before the mass use of agri-chemicals.

Miracle-Gro'wers 1970's garden

Blackmore and Langdon have exhibited their magnificent begonias and delphiniums with great  success at every Chelsea Flower Show.

Grey Granite's Dad grew huge begonias. These were grown in clay pots lined with cow pats which Dad somehow acquired in old Ostermilk tins, possibly from a boy at the school where he taught for over 40 years interrupted only by service in the RAF.  

Traditional herbaceous borders and a modern statue in the Arthritis Research garden.

Sudden greening

Within the last week, despite the hail showers on Tuesday there has been  a greening in Philorth Woods.
This morning delicate, fresh green  leaves had opened on trees such as the horse chestnuts and beeches.

Delicate flowers of ash - no leaves on the ash trees yet

A patch of Tall Rockcress (Cardaminopsis arenosa) towering above buttercups and plantains in  Philorth Wood

Pittulie Castle in  a sudden sea of oil seed rape, Peathill kirk in the distance

Birds foot trefoil, flowering in warm sandy places along the shore road between Rosehearty and Pittulie

Forget-me-not in the among grass and nettles on the verge by the glebe at Peathill 

Campions and Bishop weed on the bents

The first of the creeping buttercups, their bright flowers attracting small insects

Small green veined white butterfly, the first we have seen this year feeding on a plantain flower

Behind Pitheughie:gorse and lousewort, astonishing swifts

Fragrant Gorse filling the bed of the burn beside the ruins of Pitheughie

The warmth of recent days has coaxed the gorse into sudden flower and there is a fragrant sea engulfing the easterly part of the Wastart, attracting bees and other insects along with a small flock of twites and a few chaffinches. Scolding stonechats were, as is their wont,   perching on the topmost sprigs of the gorse. Evading a large straggling group of walkers we pottered above Pitheughie but noticed that there were small groups of gannets flying east close to the shore at frequent intervals.Swallows and or martins swooped regularly in low elegant arcs over the lochans hunting small insects. From David Attenborough speaking on this morning's Tweet of the Day (BBC Radio4 - catch it on Iplayer) Grey granite learns that swifts regularly fly as much as 500 miles each day in search of food, most of which actually comprises minuscule spiders being carried on gossamer threads. 

Marsh Lousewort, (Pediculous palustris)

Wandering across the boggy areas grey Granite made the annual mistake of taking the first emerging flowers of the semi-parasitic lousewort (Red rattle) for the more exciting spikes of the first orchids.

Sting in the Tail by Dave Goulson

Grey Granite urges anyone who is interested in wildlife conservation and who shares concerns about the fate of our bees to read 'A Sting in the Tail' by Dave Goulson, founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust,  Grey Granite first came upon the abridged reading of this amusing and fascinating account of bees as it was being read as book of the week on Radio 4 (available on I player for the next 7 days). Part biography part hard science, the excellent accessible, example of modern nature writing  details the extraordinary life cycle  and powers of  bees and their vital importance to the survival of mankind.

The the fuller print version contains recounts Goulson's bee hunting expeditions, conservation  measures and  accounts of the amazing powers of bees to navigate, find nectar, cooperate, communicate (partly by means of smelly feet) and to survive. For Grey Granite this raises questions about the 'superiority' of mankind and our achievements. Goulson strikes a careful balance between the anecdotal and serious factual writing which makes for an informative and entertaining account of these fascinating and important insects 

Male willow catkins providing pollen for this bumblebee.

New Aberdour: A single ragged swallow

A perfect May  morning we decided to go in search of primroses. This involved a leisurely walk along the gorse lined  track behind Aberdour School to Mains of Aberdour. here we saw  the first butterfly of the season, a small tortoiseshell feeding on dandelions along the track. we crossed the road, found that the gate was open so walked  and down the field to the headland above the caves. 

First glimpse of the bay, looking east towards Strahangles Point

Walking down we were accompanied by larksong  and saw Kathleen Jamie's 'single ragged swallow' sweep in from the sea and a male yellow hammer conspicuous by his bright yellow head fussing about the dyke. 

The beach was almost deserted, the sea really was this blue!

The south facing bank at the top of the cliff between the Boat  Shore  and the Aberdour beach was studded with violets, primroses and celandines.  

We visited the kirkyard for the pleasure of sitting on the dyke enjoying the peacefulness and looking over to the den. many of the graves near the dyke are of Pennan folk, Gatts, Watts and Wests, some of the earliest carried here along the corpse road.

Rufus enjoying the sun in the kirkyard, too hot despite having recently been divested of his winter coat.  The temperature was 19c when we reached the car.

Greater stitchwort, (Stellaria holostea),  a modest member of the pinks family,  growing at the roadside  opposite the kirkyard.

Green  Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) bright and colourful at the roadside, there were also the first flowers of ground ivy among the grass on the bank.

This is a familiar walk to childhood haunts which Grey Granite likes to do each Spring, today was the perfect 'Glad that I live am I, that the sky is blue...after the rain the sun, this be the way of life till the work be done' sort of  day for such a venture.

Strichen;down by the Ugie

Writing his railway guide 'The Howes of Buchan' in 1865, William Anderson  eulogised : 'Strichen which is without exception, the most attractive and picturesque spot on the whole line. Lying in a snug little valley, with the towering crest of Mormond on the one side, the limpid waters of the Ugie on the other, and embowered among trees - Strichen is, without doubt, one of the prettiest little villages in Buchan.'

Anderson's description of Strichen seemed particularly apt between the hail showers as we walked along the riverside path from the railway viaduct to Howford. Within the last week the wood anemones have come into flower, hawthorn leaf buds are at last opening, there was much bird activity suggesting nest building, larks over head and  a pair of roe deer peered shyly at us from the trees near the foot bridge.

 

Wood anemones, (Anemone nemorosa) and the occasional Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) on the banks of the Ugie

The 'bridge of the three sevens' built in 1777, carries the old coach road over the Ugie at Howford

Looking over the village from the coach road close to the junction with the road from Skillymarno. This time last year the trees were in leaf.

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The verge near the old parish church and graveyard is bright with masses of Lesser Celandines, the gutter running with water from  a passing hail shower.