The Territory in August

We went away in summer, and it feels almost as if we have come back to autumn. It is mostly the illusion caused by the week's gap, but not all. The rowans are red, the elderflower is over (it seemed to go on and on this year, and in England it is flowering yet), and all the birds have fledged, even the big black-backed gull chicks who were trampolining about on their warehouse roof, while the older birds all trash-talked them into finally making the jump. The swifts have gone, and I've seen the first geese and heard curlews heading coastwards.

Ther vegetable patch is coming good. We've started eating courgettes, and the first beans will be later this week. There are tomatoes ripening - not many, pollination has been poor, and now the bean plants aren't so tall the pigeons can't find the cabbages so easily.And my companion planting of borage and marigold looks fabulous, even if it doesn't seem to achieve much!

This photo was meant to be a spider's web, coloured rusty with the spores of the fern it stretches over, but I'm not sure whether you can make it out.I've sown some of it, according to the instructions on Sunday's Gardener's Question Time, just for curiosity. Fernseed is curious stuff. Apart from the fact it isn't actually seed at all, it was popularly supposed to be magical - if you mixed it with oil it could make a potion enabling you to see fairies. I think I'll settle for some more fernlets to plant in the shady places!

The week of the Wetland Flowers

At the weekend we went with some friends to see the Falls of Leny at Callander. They were pretty spectacular after all the rain, as you can see.

But the thing that made this trip was the sight of several flowers I'd never seen before.

This one is cow wheat. It was everywhere.

This one is marsh cinquefoil.

This one caused us some bother. The only thing we knew was that it wasn't ragweed.We finally decided that it must be goldenrod - not the Canadian one we see in gardens, but our own smaller native one.

But this one was the best. We think it is a butterfly orchid. I'd never seen anything like it before. I gather that this is a very good year for orchids because of the wet, and all I can say is I'm glad it's good for something!

Now that I am back at the desk, I have been updating the web-site, and I have added an article on Cistercian spirituality, (on the publications page) for those who are interested.It was originally written a good while back, but I've revised it in the light of the Beauvais film Of Gods and Men, and my more recent involvement in the Transition movement.

Walking the Territory in June

June had its moments - between showers.

This is British hogweed, not the giant Japanese stuff. It looks quite airy and delicate, and has nice seedheads in the autumn.

There are whole stands of this stuff growing along the riverbank -

It's comfrey, a plant which is not only brilliant for gardeners, providing a potash-rich mulch for tomatoes, but had many medicinal uses in the past. A wiccan herbalist friend of mine reckoned that it was a survival from the days of the Abbey, which might be the case. Augustinian Canons elsewhere had a very good reputation as healers, growing herb gardens and building hospitals within the monastery complex.

This year the wild roses are spectacular. I don't remeber ever seeing them so prolific.

Most of the nestlings are fledged now, though I notice that the sparrows appear to be trying for brood number two. The exceptions are the black-backed gulls, whose fat fluffy brown chicks are walking all over the roof of the warehouse their colony has nested on. I'm not looking forward to them taking off. The adults are big, noisy and aggressive and the colony has doubled since last year. I know magpies have a bad rep for killing things, but they are nothing compared with gulls. On Orkney I saw a black-headed gull stoop and lift a plover chick out of a nest without the slightest effort or hesitation. All the meditation on the circle of life and gulls have chicks to feed too doesn't always cut it when you see the bereaved birds circling ad screaming and trying to chase the predator away!

This is fairly irrational I know. I was delighted to find an owl pellet on the parapet of our bridge, but the owls could have eaten all sorts of creatures I'm fond of. And as for the seal I saw going down the river with the tide - that was pure joy, although it could have destroyed untold fish stocks as it came upstream. But there it is. I find some of my wild neighbours easier to live with than others!