A New Leaf

I keep taking pictures of honeysuckle, thinking that will be my blip photo - "before it's over" - but then something else comes along. It has been magnificent this year: long-lasting and dense blossom and flowing all over the garden wall. I have been complaining about its lack of perfume, but today it came good, with a subtle scent hanging in the air. Perhaps it was the damp afternoon that triggered it. As you see in this picture, there was enough rain to cause a glistening, but barely enough rain to wet the ground. When you measure how much rain the soil is getting, I remember that you have to make an allowance for rain that falls on leaves, then evaporates without ever reaching the ground - it is called 'interception loss'

Beech is a slyly aggressive tree. It has very efficient leaves, meaning it can grow in the understorey of a wood, shaded by other trees, but eventually infiltrate their canopy and shade them out - victory by stealth.
I love having a beech hedge. I enjoy the sight and sound of the dessicated leaves that it holds all winter, until the buds are breaking. But even more, I love these huge, soft spring leaves. They always seem much bigger than mid-summer leaves. I don't know if it is a trick of memory - my mind having adapted to the shrunken winter leaves - or whether the leaves do shrink as they develop more robust stiffness

One copper-leaved plant within an otherwise green hedge was probably unintended by whoever planted it, but I like it, and I have filled a gap with some copper-beech plants that you can just see on the right, hoping to add to the effect. True to its character, the new plants have done well in the semi-shade of the old hedge. I always trim it just as it is coming into leaf, which seems to suit it. For the first time in my life, I have bought a have bought a mechanical hedge-trimmer this year, and felt like a true Jedi when doing the cut. I can't remember if it was 4th May