When the Moss Sighs: Uncovering the Bog's Hidden Hues

Forget drab – discover the surprisingly rich colour, captivating detail, and wild visitors of this vibrant Scottish landscape.

After a couple of letters about creativity and process, I’m back to letting the visual lead this week.

Greetings from the moss,

I pack a bag with sketchbooks and graphite blocks, head out, and realise I’ve forgotten the camera. This happens three times, and I contemplate seeing how long I can forgo photography, but then I remember the sundew: I have unfinished business.

Each time I think the moss has released its grip on me, I'm pulled back. I thought the magic diluted. That is not the right word—dried out would be better. Parched, baked, desiccated. And yet...

I come out on a still morning before the cloud has broken. Having seen some accessible round-leaved sundew on a previous walk, I debate which way to approach. I settle for what I think will be the quickest, even though I know the sun, if it appears, will be at my back and less likely to highlight hidden treasure.

Through the birch and pine, to the edge of the moss; I've scarcely begun. Even before I get to the lower levels, here are ruby rosettes of sundew. It's a place disturbed by deer and I don't remember seeing them here last year. This is a luxury—previously the sundew I’ve found have been hard to photograph, tucked in among other plants or out of reach in the mire. Minutes pass, an hour or more.

There is something about these images, about the fringed discs and sweeping lines, that makes me think of fairgound rides and not their danse macabre.

I never get to my original destination, so settle on a little detour before I return home. And again, I'm drawn down to the ground, to the weave of lichen and moss, cotton grass, cross-leaved heath, and more sundew. Softness, rich colour, for what is often considered—as a lowland raised bog—to be a drab brown place. It is anything but.

A little prose poem I wrote last year:

After snow
        	    melt

or 		rain
     heavy

I imagine I can hear
the moss
     	          s   i   g   h

The ground again is soft, and in places there's a squelch. Saturday saw a welcome 35mm of rain. The next morning I go to see how much the moss has drunk, and what might lie still on the vegetation that covers it.

A liquid stare interrupts progress; the sedge fringed eye of a puddle once again filled with water.

Turn right by deer, between two pine trunks, towards the blip of pink that is one of those troublesome rhododendrons. A faint path through blaeberry to the wet places: hollows from old peat cuttings that hold water once again and glisten in the sunlight.

I watch lines of ants busy. I wonder what they carry, and then—if they steal from the sundews?

Until next week,

I hope that this week’s letter has brightened your day a little; I appreciate each and every comment, like and share. I’m especially grateful to those of you who have made a small donation to say ‘thank you’.

PostScript

A garden is a buffet spread too tempting for deer to ignore. It can be frustrating—much as we love seeing them, we wish they would stick to the native species and not sample the supposedly less palatable ornamentals we have selected from the lists to add to the inherited shrubs.

This week, the roe doe has brought one of her twins. Yesterday morning, a short distance from the back window, the milk bar was open and there were lessons in pruning rugosa roses. I didn’t plant these, they’re invasive, so that’s a relaxed ‘go on then’.

Happy too to have also managed a grab shot of a wren amid the broom while out for a walk.

Words and images copyright © Michela Griffith 2025 except where otherwise credited