Bog Myrtle & Peat

Walking out across the Chayne today, I was amazed at how badly the plant life is progressing. We haven’t had rain for almost a month now, and the wet ground is cracking up into dust and dead moss. The oats are coming along nicely, although they are starting to turn slightly yellow. If we don’t have any rain in the next week or so, things are going to start getting a little bit worrying.

High up on the moor, I was amazed to see the first purple heather flowers emerging. Cross leaved heather is far ahead of the ling, and the tight bunches of egg shaped flowers are just starting to poke out of from the grass. By comparison, the ling is looking like some kind of dark green coral, showing no intention at all of flowering.

In amongst the tussocks of grass, cotton grass seeds lie like confetti, and the plants themselves have shrunk back into obscurity again, naked and dull. I have been absolutely amazed by how quickly my birch whips have grown. The first batch I received were fourteen inches long, and now that they have been in the ground for just three months, they have grown almost ten inches. Some of them have outshot thier protective tree guards, which may have been a little foolhardy of them considering the cows are still on the prowl, but their determined growth is extremely satisfying.

None of the other tree species I have planted have done half as well; the rowans have become exceptionally leafy but appear not have made their way upwards, the willow whips have withered away in the dry soil and the juniper has simply changed colour, showing no signs of progress whatsoever.

Frustratingly, many of the larches and birches that I took from my friend’s wood haven’t survived, probably because they didn’t have the root systems to deal with the unrelenting dry weather. It would have been worrying if the weather had been too wet over the last few weeks, because the grouse chicks need dry conditions for their first few days, but I wish there had been some compromise. Dusty peat hillsides covered in burnt and shrivelled vegetation look decidedly depressing. It wasn’t all grim, though. As I walked back to the car, I was cheered up by a pair of small heath butterflies (coenonympha pamphilus) bombarding one another in the sunshine.