When trees growing in or near bogs get too big for their roots to anchor them in the peat the wind- “the muckle forester”- fells them with his blows. This one in the lagg fen of Bankhead Moss has finally been axed.

 

Moss, mossier, mossiest.

The peat bog at Bankhead Moss preserves traces of the past from pollens to footprints…a bit like memory chips in printers fly tipped at nature reserve car parks. @FifeCouncil @ScotWildlife

Pale moss evening.

Spring blooms on the moor.

Iona’s mother was from Mull. Rather than building a stack outside they stored their peat in a shed. The shed was once her grandmother’s house. A wall of cut slabs was built across one end then creels of peat emptied behind it, like this.

Equinox, Flanders Moss.

…Isle of Lewis bus shelter.

Slabs of cut peat drying on the moor, three leaning against each other and one on top.

The earliest mention of the three witches is in lines by the Scots poet Andrew of Wyntoun(1360?-1425?) in ‘The Orygynale Cronykil’. Macbeth dreams he is out hunting with the king when:-

“…He saw three wemen by gangand;
And thai wemen than thoucht he
Three werd systrys mast lik to be…”