an afternoon in the bog bed

Having preened myself on cutting down the Geranium phaeum in time, I fear I have been too late with one of the weed grasses in the bog bed.  I know that in a well-ordered garden there would not be weed grass in one of the borders, let alone two different sorts, one fine and one coarse, but weeds grow awfully quickly in permanently wet soil, while weeding it when it is at its soggiest is a difficult job.  The mud threatens to come over the tops of your wellingtons, and every handful of weeds comes up with a clod of mud the size of a grapefruit.  I went over the bog bed a few weeks ago, but didn't manage to get to its wettest parts, and since then things have grown like crazy. Most of the taller growing grasses have not yet ripened their seed, and I thought I had time on my side, but I am very suspicious of the tiny brown specks littering the surface of the bog bed.  At first I thought they were the discarded skins of aphids, and that something in the vicinity had suffered from a really bad insect attack, but then I began to suspect the grass with very fine-awled seed heads, that had sprung up in the middle of the bed.  It would be pretty if I could not see from its habit of growth that it is a rampantly invasive weed.

Looking on the bright side, the young plants with bright green leaves, puckered like miniature 'Tim Thumb' lettuces, are baby candelabra primulas, lots and lots of P. bulleyana.  I was cross with myself that I never got round to collecting seed last autumn and sowing it in the greenhouse, and lo, the plants have done it for themselves.  In places they are as thick as cress, and once they have grown a bit, and the weather is slightly cooler, I'll try spreading some around into the gaps.  Primula bulleyana is a most attractive plant, carrying tall stems with several layers of apricot coloured flowers held at intervals up the spike.  I have them at one end of the bed, and the lemon yellow Himalayan cowslip Primula florindae at the other.  I sometimes think about introducing a pink strain of bog primula as well, but suspect that in a limited space less is more.

My three sensitive ferns, Onoclea sensibilis, are looking reasonably cheerful as well, though they have yet to form extensive colonies as promised on the RHS website.  Although ferns like damp and cool places, not all that many will grow in liquid mud, and I cautiously started off with one, to see how it did, before investing in a couple more.  According to the books the Onoclea would grow with its feet in water, but it feels odd dropping new plants into a bog.  Perhaps I am scarred by the loss of the hydrangeas and viburnums that used to grow in that corner a few years back, when the ground was merely reliably moist, before the water table shifted and it became a swamp.

It is one of the chickens' favourite corners of the garden.  I do not think of hens as being marsh animals, but when let out for a late afternoon constitutional they often make their way down to the bottom of the hill, where they root happily in the mud.  Today, to my relief, they went and rooted in the darkest corner where nothing at all grows, except for one self-sown holly and a few nettles that need pulling up.  That was far better than if they had come and scratched up my primula seedlings.