Bog Myrtle & Peat

As the new year approaches and a new list of projects starts to be made up, I decided today to make an early start on a length of hedge which will go in along the inside of the field where the game cover went in this year. Fortunately, the dyke is in relatively good nick, so it only means that I have to run stock fencing along one side of the area that will become the hedge. It’s only a hundred yards long, but along with some other bits and pieces which I will do over the next few weeks and combined with last year’s hedges, things will soon start to look a little more substantial. Hawthorn is a really nice tree, and there needs to be more of it across the Chayne. Not only are the haws handy for black grouse, but the blossom is a boon for insects and the thick cover of young trees is ideal for nesting songbirds.

I know that yellowhammers don’t really have a vested interest in hawthorn, but I did know one little cock bird who always sat out in a hawthorn hedge to sing. Next to black grouse, yellowhammers are pretty much my favourite birds and their song is the sound of summer in Galloway. Sadly, the only link I can make between yellowhammers and any species of undergrowth is with whin (gorse) bushes. Down where I was brought up next to the Solway Firth, great banks of whin bushes ring to the cheery grasshopper trill of yellowhammers – they seem to love the prickly, sweet scented bushes but somehow I don’t think that the tenant on the Chayne would be very happy if I set up a plantation of whin bushes on the hill. Whins are amazingly invasive, and once you’ve got them, you have to fight like mad just to keep them contained.

The first straining posts went in today, so 2013’s projects have begun early. It wasn’t all plain sailing however. At a depth of three feet, I broke through the water table and the holes for the straining posts filled up with water. I hate putting posts into water, and it always seems to give a wobblier strainer at the end of the job. Let’s hope that this first tiny setback will not set the tone for the rest of the year…