New refugia & thistles

It has been a mild opening to the year, but is now turning colder – only 6.8 C on my midday visit. I have installed a pale orange chunk of split sweet chestnut (from the wood at the end of the garden) to where the first piece of wood, now long decayed, once lay. It was called ‘Gingerbread Refuge’ and I shall continue to use this name.

Just outside the north west corner of Emthree I have replaced an old, black plastic plant tray with a reddish house brick, its frog (the indentation on one face), lain downwards. I might add another brick, face up, so that the frog acts as a tiny shallow scrape, though I will have to keep it topped up with water.

I noticed two kinds of thistle rosette. One, growing almost vertically on North Wall, has very weakly serrated leaves quite different from the marsh thistle towards the south east corner of Emthree whose leaves are deeply serrated and very prickly. Both will need watching as the season advances.