Start of the 7th year

It was on 4th November 2005 that grandson Jamie and I set up the window box with a bag of sterile compost from the local garden centre and a few bits and pieces.

In the last six years I have recorded over 90 species of flora and fauna (including a rabbit) and, as well as several articles and radio broadcasts, it has been on TV several times and travelled to Scotland, Bristol and Boll Oddy's garden in Hampstead.

Today I tied up a bit, taking away some of the dead stalks of the all-embracing hairy tare.  Underneath there were, as usual, some unexpected things.  Earlier in the year I found some poison pie toadstools (Hebeloma crustuliniforme) - see below - identified by the mycologist Martin Allison. 

As the name suggest, they can give you very bad indigestion.

Yesterday there were a couple of very small Marasmius on the mossy bark of the sallow log.  They look like the collared parachute, M. rotula, but are maybe too small and therefore possibly M. bulliardii.  (The moss is common feather-moss, Eurhynchium praelongum.)

I also discovered several ivy (Hedera helix) seedlings and one of holly, possibly the garden Highclere holly, Ilex x altaclerensis, rather than our native      I. aquifolium.  I will leave these species to grow though maybe this will produce some management problems in the future.  There was also much creeping bent, Agrostis stolonifera, another new record, and some other developing toadstools, lots of them, that may be honey fungus.  So half a dozen new records: not a bad start to the 7th year.

More on all this tomorrow.