Winter woodland walk

Since we have returned from New Zealand I have walked through our garden and woodlands most days. 
It is usually late afternoon before I start up the hill, well wrapped up against the cold with fleece and my wonderful possum hat from New Zealand.

Daylight is drawing out markedly now. I am still finding the mornings very dark, but the evenings are stretching nicely and it is now well after five before it is dark. Hoorah!

This late afternoon light is special.
We are having a quiet cold spell just now and the light on Loch Ness is great.
I always think of Loch Ness as steely grey and it looks wonderful, arctic cold glinting in moonlight and mirror glass calm by day. 

December was very wet and the footpaths are still greasy in places
The last of the leaves are brown and damp and the air is heavy with the humus smell of woodlands.
Bark and branch dominate the foreground, with pockets of dark holly and Blechnum spicant; the elegant hard fern; on dry banks.

Of course snow drops are through and the garden looks well, temperatures have not been below -4.  Fingers crossed.

M

Romping away after the rain

It is grey and overcast today, but perhaps we are through the gales and lashing rain of the past two days.
It was very cool first thing and I left the house with five layers, It is now after 9am, and I am down to four.

There was fresh feel to the air, but none of the wonderful after rain smells that you get on a warm day. Is anything nicer than the peppery smell of your birch leaves, a pulse of wild garlic from the stream or the lovely sharp apple scent of Rosa eglanteria. I will wait for them to return with the warnth we are all missing.

'This is the time of year when you loose control'. I heard a character on the Archers say that, when I had it on in the car yesterday evening. He said that things race away from you, and they do. It is not so much the ever present weeds; though of course they are accelerating; it is the lush growth.  Warmed in April and watered in May, many plants are romping away.

So I walk along a path, peering eagle eyed for weeds; wheeking out the seeding bittercress (I try not to hold botanical grudges, but bittercress comes near!) and than I stop think, "Were there primroses in this bed? well yes, when you look below the Geranium Jolly Bee and the Ferns, there are some yellowing primrose leaves.

Early in spring everything has its place and there is none of this exhuberant growth, but you have to adnmire it.
This is the time of year when you loose the heart to cut down and banish the Campanula lactiflora seedings and the just flowering Jacob's Ladder.

NO No No this is definately a case of less is more, the garden will be the better for less Campanula...but I'll just let it flower.

Some days I think if we went away for a year and returned we would find the garden populated by Campanula , Hardy Geraniums and Bittercress of course!