Hortillery & Articulture...

...or something like that.

Big 'uns

Little 'uns

It's taken a while to get everything ready (because artillery is fiddly), but my ECW armies finally have guns. In fact they are rather over-supplied now, but there is an element of future planning in there (he lied). I still need to get a couple of big bombarding guns and a couple of mortars, since you can't do the ECW without sieges, but this will certainly keep me going in the meantime. A dozen new guns with crews are going into the boxes tonight - very good.

Topic 2

In the garden, Nature rears her formidable head once again. Last October I posted here to express our astonishment that our half-hearted attempt to grow Edelweiss from seed produced a single fine bloom. This year we didn't know what to expect. Are they annuals? We had no idea.

Well they have come up fine and strong, and we have the beginnings of a marvellous show. Unbelievable - and this is despite the environment in our garden being wrong in a number of ways:

1. Next to the sea - salty air and high humidity

2. Wrong type of soil

3. About 1000 metres lower than their preferred habitat

4. Permanently overcast, near-Arctic climate

We can only assume our Edelweiss don't know any better. Here they are, anyway - alive and well and living in entirely the wrong country. We hope our experiment is not endangering our Scottish ecosystem...

Bless my homeland for ever - erm - just a minute...

Late Edit...

Thanks to John P and Ross for comments - here is a relevant clip I found, which shows how the Sappers might have looked in action. It is a surprisingly long clip...

Strangely, all suitable clips I could find apart from this one were filmed in Oregon. Cultures obviously can be transplanted, like wildflowers.

ECW Dragoons - including squad players

DIS...(wait for it!)...

...MOUNT!

Restored after some damage inflicted by Royal Mail, I now have a unit of dragoons to add to each army. Lovely painting, as ever, by Lee, with a little subsequent gluing, straightening and touching up by moi. I have little to say (nay - in truth, I am afraid to say very much) about the shipping incident, other than to mention that once again I have learned that it doesn't really matter how carefully you pack goods for mailing, there will still be some height a package can be dropped from, some degree of lateral acceleration which can be applied, which will defeat your efforts.

Anyway, here they are. The first pictures show Col. Henry Washington's Royalist unit, in both mounted and dismounted guises. In my rules, mounted dragoons may ride up to three hexes, or may ride up to two hexes and dismount. Dismounted dragoons may walk one hex, or may mount and ride up to two hexes. These distances, of course, are subject to normal terrain issues. Mounting/dismounting consists of switching 3 of the 4 bases, as shown. The command base remains mounted, to represent horse holders who may not fire, and also to make it easier to spot them in the woods! Dragoons who end their move dismounted may fire - they may not fire from horseback. They may also, of course, take part in melees in either state, but are not very good at it - mounted dragoons are half as effective as normal cavalry in a melee.

Overall, to be honest, dragoons are not very lethal - an irritant rather than a major threat. They have the advantage of being able to move and fire (which normal musketeers cannot), and they can fight as soon as they arrive in woods or a village, without forming up, but they are gnats rather than hornets. They have been known, though, to pick off the odd general...

Roundheads + subs

They do look nice. Here are the Parliamentarian unit. This is a posed team photo, featuring a typically dastardly Roundhead trick of fielding the substitutes at the same time as the original line-up - they would not be seen like this in a battle. The unit purports to be Tom Morgan's boys, though of course they could be anyone.

The figures are Les Higgins, mounted on Higgins horses, though the command chaps are SHQ/Kennington, also on Higgins horses. The careful observer may notice that the officers are rather better fed and wear slightly bigger hats than the rank-&-file, but you'd expect that. They probably have thicker underwear too. By the way, I keep seeing mention of "out of production" Les Higgins ECW and Marlburian figures on eBay - not so - the ranges are alive and well and available in any numbers you fancy from Old John, whose blog is here. These lovely old figures deserve better recognition, I believe - I keep doing my best to plug them.

My special thanks to the Contesse Foy, whose heirloom embroidery scissors were just the thing for cutting out those pesky dragoon standards.

Syringa vulgaris ‘Madame Lemoine’

Elsewhere, Spring has definitely, finally arrived in our garden. We have a super little lilac bush which blossoms every year, but the flowers are fragile and short-lived, They go brown within a couple of days, and they are so easily wrecked by rainfall or any kind of a stiff breeze that it is very easy to miss them. If you blink, or the weather is wrong, you have to try again next year. Well, this month they are in fine form - does your little heart good to see them.

And just wait till you see how the edelweiss are getting on. Assuming the flowers come out nicely, and the deer can refrain from eating them, there should be quite a show later on.

Alien Life Form

What are you doing in my garden?

The wet summer last year and the generally odd weather so far this year have had a marked effect on our garden. The most obvious excuse we can offer in our own defence is that there has been reduced opportunity to get out there and do something about it, but the damp has produced changes in the lawn, a lot of moss, almost uncontrollable weed growth and these things, as seen in the photo. The biggest is about 6 inches tall, but they have appeared very quickly, so no-one knows how large they might grow if left to get on with it.

We had a large tree cut down a couple of years ago, and I suspect that these are the result of the root system starting to rot away. Anyway, there's a lot of them (the tree roots, of course, will be under most of the garden) and I've never seen them before.

I don't think we'll be eating them. It's unnerving when your garden turns into a science project. Damp and decay - theme of the month.

Hooptedoodle #69 - Edelweiss

Brand new this morning...

On last year's Austrian holiday, we bought some packets of Edelweiss seeds (leontopodium alpinum) in a gift shop, along with some picture calendars, a silly hat, a cuddly-toy marmot* in lederhosen, etc - as one does on holiday.

We knew the seeds wouldn't grow, so promptly forgot about them. However, this Spring, Mme La Comptesse found them in a drawer (I was going to say "unearthed", but I'm a stickler for accuracy) and reasoned that a plant which is famous for growing at sub-zero temperatures, in one of the most harsh winter climates Europe has to offer, might just make it in Scotland.

Accordingly, seeds were put into little pots and carefully nurtured in the attic bedroom, then the seedlings were moved to a coldframe, and eventually the strongest of the baby plants were planted out. I was highly sceptical about the entire operation, and tried (in my miserable way) to do a bit of gentle expectation management.

Today, despite the efforts of foraging deer and the wettest Summer on record, we have a bloom! Possibly it is partly because of the wettest Summer - not sure how that works - but it looks healthy.

To celebrate this event, I had a look on YouTube - confident that the song Edelweiss must have some of the most toe-curling performances imaginable - so that we could all sing along nicely (sit up straight at the back, please). I briefly considered a heartwarming duet version by John Denver and Julie Andrews, but it was so cute that I had to be dragged out of the office feet first before I suffocated. I also was tempted by this clip, which is getting away from the point a bit but is crass enough to be of interest, but I eventually picked the Hutterer sisters, Sigrid & Marina, with this version - faultlessly sincere, wholesome and - well, just really nice.

If you find you are not singing along, then you should be ashamed.

*By the way - earlier reference to marmots reminds me that I now know quite a lot about them, since this is what Google thinks I meant when I search for information about Marshal Marmont. And, yes - since you wanted to know - the cuddly-toy marmot does squeak when you squeeze it, but - surprisingly - not when you hit it with a chair.

Hooptedoodle #63 – The Hedge You Could See from Space

...and other gripping tales.

On the South boundary of our garden there is a very big hedge. It is a Leylandii, and it has been there since about 1985. The previous owners of my house had some problems with an elderly neighbour, who liked to watch them sunbathing though his binoculars. Their response was to plant the hedge.

I don’t know how big it was when they planted it, or exactly how fast these things grow, so I am unable to tell you when they were able to resume sunbathing. I do know that when I moved here, in 2000, it was about 12 feet tall, and in an excellent state of maintenance. It has occasionally been a source of a little neighbourly friction, since it shades a part of next door’s garden in the late afternoon. Accordingly, we have lopped a bit off the top – it is now around 11 feet, and we also had it shortened at its Western end by some 7 feet, two years ago, when we had tree surgeons in removing our legendary eucalyptus tree. The present neighbours, by the way, have nothing to do with the gent with the binoculars – he died years ago.

So we inherited the hedge, but we like it because it maintains a nice measure of privacy. It costs a bit to keep it groomed, but overall it’s worth it.

In recent years, a vigorous Virginia Creeper (from next door) has begun to grow through the hedge, and it produces a most attractive show of red foliage in the late Summer. When it first appeared, we were surprised, but very pleased with the look of it – “How lovely!” we exclaimed, clapping our hands in childlike delight.

Three years later, the creeper has taken over, and has removed so much light and so much water from the hedge that the poor old thing has turned brown, and is not well at all. Yesterday was vengeance day. I put on my oldest clothes (which may also be my third newest clothes) and burrowed into the hedge to see what could be done. I found it was stuffed with creeper vines, some of them an inch and a half thick – a real tangle. So I got to work with secateurs and branch loppers and a pruning saw and gritted teeth, and I howked out [Scots] a very large amount of tat – 2 or 3 big builder’s bags – maybe a couple of cubic yards. With luck, the creeper will die off – it is certainly drooping badly this morning. With even more luck – and maybe a little bonemeal – the hedge may recover.

Sitrep as of this morning – the hedge looks a bit scorched, but the

creeper hanging from the top is clearly withering...

Hooptedoodle #58 – The Adventures of Max Spinnejäger

Had an exciting episode last night. What follows contains reference to extreme violence, and even some cruelty - so if you choose to read on, having been warned, please make sure that no children or unusually timid adults are looking over your shoulder. If you choose to read on, you are certifying that you are over 18 years of age and are accepting all Terms & Conditions, published or still to be made up, etc etc. Yawn.

I woke up about 3:30am, and there was a spider on the bedroom ceiling - approx 3 inches across overall (75mm) , which may not be big by your local standards but is close to a Scottish national record, I would think. Our spiders aren't poisonous, but I don't like them at all - especially on the bedroom ceiling, where they tend to drop on the bed. My wife is absolutely terrified of them, so we always get rid of them as soon as possible. I would maintain that I am not actually frightened, but this one was above some threshold size which causes unreasoning panic - something about being able to see their kneecaps. Even Robert the Bruce would have kept well away from this one.

First embedded footnote I'd like to make here is that there is something about spiders - they have a psychic presence. If there is a big spider in the room, somehow you can sense it when you go in (or wake up, as in this case). They may be sitting there, thinking, "right - now wake up and scream". Power of personality. Awesome. Or it might just be that they have a stronger personality than me.

Anyway, I went to find something to catch it with. The battery in the humane catcher was so flat that the spider would have taken the thing off me and broken it over one of its many knees. I considered the vacuum cleaner for a moment, but it would have woken the entire household, and there is also a fair chance that in my haste I might have fallen down the stairs with it, which could have been marginally worse. So I found one of the trusty old fly-swats, and by the time I got back to the bedroom, of course, the bloody spider had disappeared. This is not a good scenario for going back to sleep, so the bed was stripped, I shifted the chests of drawers and the bookcase etc, and found the spider after about 20 minutes (maybe I heard it laughing) - behind my bedside cabinet, so I whopped it and disposed of it, and the bed was re-made and things calmed down again. Adrenaline still pumping. After a few minutes, I started to wonder if that had been the same spider...

Let's assume it was. To those of you who live in countries with poisonous beasties, I offer my deepest respects. I don't think I could handle that.

Second embedded footnote: like a lot of other areas in Northern Europe, we have been having a great deal of rain recently, and yesterday I spent a couple of muddy hours, swinging from ladders like a silly old fool, cleaning out the roof gutters - or what in Scotland are called "rones". This invariably chases a few big friends out of the eaves, to take shelter in the relative calm of the bedrooms. So it's probably my fault anyway, which you may think makes it doubly unfair that the visitor should have been so harshly treated.

I confess I do feel a bit uneasy about killing living things (apart from dandelions), but it was him or me, guv. Look at it this way - if I invade a spider's home I expect him to deal with me as he thinks fit - seems fair all round. If you really are upset by this tale of dreadful arachnicide, let me say that I am probably killing off only the slower specimens, or the ones that are dumb enough to walk across my ceiling, so I am strengthening the species.

As some light relief from all this bloodshed, here's a pithy (and probably fake) piece of Scottish wisdom on the subject of rones to end with:

“Nae wonder yer walls are damp, yer rones are fu' o tatties [potatoes].”

Hooptedoodle #55 - An Unfamiliar Bug

Just another from my occasional series of dumb observations on Nature. We've had a little excitement last week since we've had siskins on the garden nut feeders, which is very unusual here in the Land of Mud, but today I saw something I've just never seen before. Here he is - about 3mm across, round and very flat, with some little spidery legs at the front. He was walking on the curtains in our attic. Anyone ever seen anything like this before? - it is suggested that it may be some kind of tick - I really wouldn't know.

If these are commonplace, and everyone knows what they are - if there are likely to be specimens living in my navel, for example - then I shall express amused surprise and move lightly on, having learned something, but it's certainly not anything I've seen before.

In case anyone is anxious, we released it carefully and gently in the garden, of course, so I certainly hope it's not dangerous...

Hooptedoodle #44 - Stereotyping in Nature

Occasionally, when I'm watching TV, I suddenly realise that the adverts are aimed at me - I mean me personally. I just know I am a target - I'm in the crosswires somewhere. Someone who is good at this stuff has doubtless worked out the likely profile of the people who will be watching this particular show, on this channel, at this time of day, and will have identified what other things that stereotypical viewer might be interested in. This afternoon I will be watching football (that may be soccer to you), so would expect to get plenty of ads for beer, or gents' toiletry products, or smallish cars. Maybe even for sports drinks, or football boots, or for those PlayStation sports-simulation games which have begun to replace actual physical exercise for our kids [which of course is why we have to import so many of our sports stars from developing nations which have not yet attained our own level of inactivity - separate topic for discussion...] There will be no ads at all for facial moisturiser creams.

The other night I was watching a programme about the D-Day landings on the UK History channel, and found that the ads were about life insurance for the over-55s, comfortable shoes by mail order, incontinence pads. Just a minute - that's not so good, is it? Should I be keeping an eye on the adverts, to check that I am correctly following the correct stereotype? Which way round does this work? I think I would be uneasy about someone accurately predicting that I would be watching a particular show. I would definitely be disgruntled by their then predicting what my marketing profile was likely to be, and I would be mortified if they were right! [In passing, is it possible to be gruntled? - I am interested in things like that.]

I guess it's something to do with not wishing to be predictable - I have always felt that if someone knows what I am going to do there is hardly any point doing it. In fact there may not be any point in being here at all.

I got to thinking about whether creatures other than humans consciously feel obliged to conform to some idea of stereotyping. In particular, do the birds come to the feeders in our garden because they are hungry and that is what they like to eat, or is it because they know we would be disappointed if they didn't? Who is watching who here (sorry, whom)? Is it possible that left to themselves the songbirds we know in our garden would actually prefer to eat at KFC?

Among the birds that come here, we are especially fond of the goldfinches. They are lovely, vigorous little things, with smart rows of buttons down their backs like Napoleonic footmen, and that wacky clown's makeup. Recently we haven't seen as many as we would expect, and Mme Foy came home a few weeks ago with a hefty bag of niger seed, and a special plastic feeder to dispense it. Niger seed, it says in the books - and especially on the back of the pack of niger seed - is what goldfinches really like. Interesting. Trying to ignore the fact that, gram for gram, niger seed is about the same price as prime foie gras, I think this through:

* could this be why the goldfinches have been neglecting us? - because we have had no niger seed?

* does this, in turn, mean that goldfinches eat nothing else? - in fact we know this is not true, since we have often seen them busily hoovering the general-purpose bird seed.

* perhaps it means, then, that they prefer niger seed if there is some, and a neighbour has had it on the menu? - in fact this is not likely either, since as far as I know none of our neighbours is that interested, and certainly not daft enough to pay out for niger seed.

* no - none of this seems likely - probably we'll put out the niger seed and we'll continue to have few goldfinches. We will have the same number of goldfinches, but less money. Perhaps they are dying out.

Don't you believe it. Within days the place was buzzing with goldfinches. Since they are untidy eaters, they throw the niger seed all over the place, and then there's a big feeding frenzy on the ground (see illustration). So where have they been? What's going on here? It is possible, of course, that we have now pinched all the goldfinches from the surrounding area, but in fact there were not many around. Probably best not to worry about this, I think, enjoy the little chaps while they're here and plan ways to save up for the next niger shipment.

It is interesting, though.

Hooptedoodle #25 - Things Seen Outside the Kitchen Window

I was sorting out some files of photos from earlier this year, and found this one from late February - a fine chap indeed. A young male Greater Spotted Woodpecker, busy with the suet balls, getting himself into condition after a hard Winter.

We are very lucky to be able to watch a decent range of wildlife here - nothing truly exotic, but good by British standards. We have always had a family of woodpeckers around, ever since I came here - they are great characters, though very nervous of humans (as, of course, am I). This Spring we have had some birds we haven't seen before - Nuthatch and Siskin, for example - quite rare in Scotland normally. Must be the climate change, I guess.

We also get the occasional deer in the garden, and loads and loads of pheasants - the pheasants are bred here for the shooting. I'm really not a big fan of the shooting, though I'll eat the things if someone else shoots them. I'd rather leave them in peace and take pictures.

About 3/4 of a mile offshore - directly opposite our beach - is the Bass Rock, which is the chief breeding ground for Gannets in Northern Europe - there are about 1/3 of a million of them on the rock in midsummer. Strangely, they never come ashore - in 10 years, I've never seen one on land, apart from the occasional storm victim washed up on the beach. Only 3/4 of a mile away, but it could be a completely separate planet.

And, speaking of separate planets, I must make mention that I'm a little fed up today - I have recently read on Sam Mustafa's Honour website that the development of Blucher, which is expected to be the mummy and daddy of all grand tactical Napoleonic wargames, appears to have been abandoned - at least for the time being. Mustafa (I am quite a fan) makes an unusually full account of why, which is worth a read, but the main message is not good. It seems that development of such a game is not straightforward, after all. Let's see what happens.