May flowers

We were at the Wood with Ursula last weekend; and she took lots of lovely pictures of flowers with her smart camera. We have chickweed wintergreen, lots of proper bluebells (hyacinthoides non-scripta, not the Spanish sort), violets, lousewort, milkwort and anemones both white and pink. Also wood sorrel, which Ursula spotted and I didn't. The bluebells have the true dark blue, accentuated by dark stems.They tend to impress as a sort of shadow, rather than a solid colour, which is what the more blowsy Spaniards do.

There are lots of rowan seedlings, so we instituted a search for parents, which we found quite far away at the eastern side, not far from the stream. There are also alders which I had not found before, most noticeably down at the bottom of the east burn. They are quite old, and I didn't see many cones on them; but as the photographs show, they have the distinctive alder leaf shape. Ursula noticed another oak on the far side of the east burn. I went on a walk right up the land over on the far side of that burn, a thing I hadn't done before; but I couldn't find any oak seedlings there. We now have five oaks.

Graham Tuley the noted tree man, whom we met on Loch Hourn a couple of years ago (he advises Kinlochhourn Lodge on forestry matters) had most genially agreed to come to lunch and look at the wood with a view to advising us on its management; but we arrived late on Saturday morning, and missed him. Black mark.

He looked around the wood without us, though, and he was kind enough to give some advice by telephone. He suggests we should spend a few seasons observing some marked seedlings, measuring them in the spring and autumn, to see if our presence in the wood is disturbing the deer enough to warn them off the seedlings. I suspect we are not there often enough at present to have much effect. Probably we will have to fence. He thinks we should have a try at establishing more oaks in the places where bracken and blaeberries grow at present, and also that we should try reintroducing Scots pines, of which there are none at present. He thinks they were there in the past, as chickweed wintergreen grows with pines.

He also said we should not cut down the dead tree trunks as there are woodpeckers in them. We went and looked and lo there were holes and places where woodpeckers had been after grubs. So maybe I shall use some of the dead trunks for growing things on.