I potted the root divisions of Aster ericoides that arrived as a free gift with my delivery of Foxgloves [see yesterday's entry]. I haven't decided where I'll plant them so will grow them on for the time being.

 The Foxgloves will go in the ground at the weekend. Bare root plants need to be planted asap on delivery but resting a day or two in a tub of moist compost keeps them healthy. 

 The ground is arguably too cold for planting this early in the year but outdoor grown Foxgloves are very hardy and I bought them for the garden of my flat in London. The metropolis is a heat bubble; in effect the growing season in London extends as late as November and begins as early as February.

 Having said that we are having an actual cold winter by recent (southern) standards so I will pot some of the Foxgloves as well for planting in a month or two. 

 Delivery of bare root Foxgloves (Digitalis pupurea) as I didn't get round to sowing any seed last year. They make ideal 'gap fillers' to be dotted here and there. These are a year old and D. purpurea is biennial so should flower late spring/early summer. 

 I bought some excellent Geranium phaeum on the interweb last autumn from the same source (Tanya's Blooms). Also bare root they were healthy, hardy, outdoor grown, sufficiently mature to be planted with confidence. I'm sorry to say many garden centre plants are pampered polytunnel weaklings which immediately succumb to slugs in search of tender morsels.

 Her Foxgloves are equally good, excellent value at £21.64 for ten including delivery. In fact she included several more and an envelope of Foxglove seed plus some root divisions of Aster ericoides as a bonus! How good is that?!

 As I've noted before bare root seems to be enjoying something of a revival as a way for small scale growers to dispatch plants by parcel without the weight of pots.

 Time to harvest the Jerusalem Artichokes, said to taste a bit sweeter after the first frosts. They don't store well so the best thing to do is leave them in the ground and dig them up as needs be during Jan/Feb/March before they start sprouting with new growth.

 They are ridiculously prolific. I dug over a square foot or so of the bed which yielded several kilos. The smaller ones I replanted, some of the bigger ones I'll cook with. I'll have to give a lot away. A couple of years ago I planted twenty of the knobbly tubers which begat hundreds. I returned several dozen to the soil; there will be sackfuls this year. 

 Looking forward to some wildflower walks when the days get longer and warmer. Perhaps a sighting of the rare Pasque Flower at Eastertide, the county flower of Hertfordshire. Seen here at Knocking Hoe which means venturing into Bedfordshire.

 The warmth of the sun! Brightest day of the year so far; it seemed sensible to hop on the bus and have a pint at the Strathmore Arms in St. Paul's Walden. The local churchyard has a fine show of Cowslips (Primula veris) in the spring. I see they encourage this by having sheep chew the grass to a short sward over winter.

 Churchyards can be a good repository of wildflowers. Typically they are kept fairly tidy but not overly so and that mixture of maintenance and neglect suits certain species. Indeed there may be species that have declined in the surrounding area but find sanctuary in the grounds of the church.

 Good and bad news for bees as reported in today's Guardian. Bad news is a study by the University of Sussex that demonstrates the effect of the high application of fertilisers (i.e. NPK) on agricultural grassland. Their test bed was a swathe of permanent pasture at Rothhampsted, Hertfordshire which has been studied for over a century. Flowers have been reduced as much as fivefold thereby halving the number of pollinators particularly bees.

 Good news is that the government has refused the use of the neonicotinoid pesticide Cruiser NB for the first time in five years. In 2018 it was banned in the EU but the Conservatives authorised its use on sugar beet on an annual 'emergency' basis post-Brexit.

 Professor Dave Goulson at the aforementioned University of Sussex has stated that one teaspoon of the chemical is toxic enough to kill 1.25 billion bees. Furthermore he has noted that "Just before the ban we were applying 110 tonnes of neonics to the British landscape every year". 

 

For the winter garden: Hellebore and Heather.

 

Assemblage.

 

Constructivism.

 

Geometric abstraction.

Nature's abstraction.

 

 The rays of the sun dissipated the freezing fog as I wandered across Walsworth Common yesterday. A veritable winter wonderland was revealed, not snow but very hard frost across the expanse of marsh and meadow. Besides being beautiful a cold winter is nature's reset so I welcome sub-zero temperatures. 

Walsworth Common, hard frost at sunrise.

Winter silhouettes 

A frosty footpath

 Remarkable how these mushrooms are thriving in the timber of this retaining wall. This thickness of timber is generally referred to as a 'Railway sleeper', which our American cousins would call a 'Railroad tie'. They are commonly used in landscaping projects.

 The wood will undoubtably have been tanalised i.e. pressure treated so that chemical preservatives penetrate to the centre of the wood. That is to prevent decay, mould, fungi etc. Nonetheless these fungi are flourishing. 

 I've a notion they may be an edible species BUT many wild mushrooms are toxic. I'm not going to address the subject of foraging for mushrooms in this diary because my ID skills are too limited. I once went on a one day course about edible mushrooms taught by two microbiologists. They seemed to relish describing how horribly you might die from the non-edible ones!

 Furthermore mushrooms are highly absorbent of toxins from their surroundings e.g. heavy metals on contaminated land. Indeed, there is some intriguing research that fungi could be used to decontaminate polluted ground. The mushrooms seen here seem to be resisting and perhaps processing the chemicals in the timber.

 "There's a feeling I get when I look to the west" is how Led Zeppelin once put it. In an idle moment I took out the Ordinance Survey map and a compass to take a bearing from the attic window. There is a woodland on the distant horizon. Visually I reckoned it to be on the brow of the hill beyond which lies Knocking Hoe and the Pegsdon Hills.

 Sure enough the bearing confirmed it; they lie due west give or take a degree. Interesting to note my position on the flat plane of a map. My sense of direction is generally pretty good based on my perception of being "here" in relation to looking "over there". Map and compass add another perspective to one's concept of space and surroundings. 

 I have always had a particular fondness for the West Country. Perhaps that is the feeling I get when I look to the west. 

 Snow is forecast... in California. At this time of year I like to see how the snowpack is doing the Golden State. I don't know when I'll be there again but the snow lingers well into summer as seen here on Mount Shasta in June 2016. I hiked and camped just below where the treeline meets the snow, further up there is a permanent glacier which is one for the mountaineers.

 This year I can report that snowpack was at 108% of average as of 2nd. January. The distribution is not even. Northern California is at 161% so that will include Shasta which is part of the Cascades mountain region. The Sierra Nevadas running through the middle of the state are at 94%, further south it's only 75%. The snowmelt has consequences for the year ahead because it constitutes a large amount of California's water supply.

 In the past 20 years California has had periods of severe drought with both snowfall and rain way down on the yearly average. Then again there have been several extreme years. For example a couple of years ago the Sierras ended up at 228% snowpack by early April.

 I was looking at a graphic showing snowpack over the past 20 years. I noted that two of the extreme winters coincided with hikes I did the following summers. In June 2017 I skirted Crater Lake (in Oregon but part of the Cascades area).  I had to wait several days for the snow to melt sufficiently to access the Pacific Crest Trail. In July 2019 I had a tough couple of hours trekking uphill through a thick band of snow on the PCT near Lake Tahoe.

 We had a smattering of snow in London and Hertfordshire last night but snowpack is not really a consideration in southern England! 

 Is this the remnant of a sacred grove? A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Tatmore Hills Lane, an ancient track near Preston, Hertfordshire. [see entry 16th. December]

 Once called Wayley Green Lane it is believed that a community known as Weilei lived hereabouts a thousand years ago. Local historians have noted references to the manor of Weilei where around 60-100 people lived on 240 acres of pasture and woodland with 300 pigs. The earliest is the Domesday Book of 1086 but there are none after 1342. The Black Death arrived in England in 1348 which may be significant. 

 Phillip Wray speculates that Welei derives from the Old English "weoh" meaning sacred place and Gilbert Burleigh suggests "sacred grove" with the inference that it was a place of heathen worship. Such things are lost in the mists of time, I doubt the etymology can be established with any certainty. 

 Nonetheless I walked this way today and I want to make a case for it being sacred. For one thing there is still a grove of sorts though none of the trees are a thousand years old. But this small pocket of woodland has survived for no obvious practical purpose eg coppicing or shooting which are factors in some of the larger woods nearby. 

 Perhaps some archaic folk memory lingered that it was a place that should not be cleared? Then again perhaps it was just too saturated a hollow to be ploughed? A winterbourne i.e. winter steam flows through it and there is a permanent pond/sump on the other side of the lane which is probably a spring,

 The presence of water is significent though. There are no other streams I can think of in the immediate vicinity. A community needs water and it is often at the centre of a community's location. Indeed, the life giving power of water is a facet of religious belief the world over. 

 One thing above all else convinces me that this locale was sacred though it is pure supposition. Intuitively I feel there is something primitive/primal in the spirit of the place. In spring Ramsons aka Wild Garlic carpet this section of the lane and a damp dell adjacent to the trees. 

 They grow in their millions in the wet woods of the West Country and Wales but are found hardly at all on the dry chalky terrain of the Chilterns. Certainly not in the ploughed fields nor even in the ancient Bluebell woods nearby. The nearest colony I am aware of is several miles away and not extensive. The Tatmore Hills population of Allium ursinum has probably persisted in this secluded spot since the Ice Age ended about 9500 years ago. 

 So a sacred grove? A place for nature worship? I like to think so but I am a bit of a heathen.