The end of an era

Another changeable day - warm sunshine, dark clouds, light rain, in no particular order.

I've spent part of the day working on the narrow border above the house, cutting back all the dead fern fronds and attempting to begin the removal of the almost total cover of celandines. It's very hard to dig them up complete with clusters of tubers, and it looks as if each plant sheds a batch of micro-tubers, or so it seems. Next spring I'm going to have to spray each individual plant as it comes up if I'm ever going to get rid of them. Anyone want several big bags of celandines?

I went down to Dunollie for 5pm as I was expecting the big consignment of shrubs for the garden there. Fiona arrived on time and we carried them round to the back of the house. This is where the big job begins - cutting and making a big Weldmesh cylinder for each shrub of which so far there are thirty. Roe deer have been nibbling in the garden over the winter. I must revise my planting plan as some of the shrubs are replacements for those which were apparently unavailable. I hope the Dunollie volunteers are up to it as I'm definitely not doing it all!

Since I last went the old monkey puzzle tree has been taken down, or most of it - my Blip for today. I'm expecting some criticism as it's quite a historic tree, but it was in a bad way with a very sparse top and leaking sap from around the base and I recommended that it be removed and replaced for safety reasons. All good things come to an end!