The beautiful sunshine over the last few days provided ideal conditions for a walk by the river. It was good to see the evidence of spring all around including olives hatching and trout rising but not so welcome was the appearance of new growth amongst our expanding collection of invasive weeds.
The year old Giant hogweed plants are already over 1′ high and the Japanese knotweed is sending up new growth spikes which are a similar height. My colleague tells me that the cold winter will have stimulated a lot of the giant hogweed seeds in the ground to germinate and that would appear to be the case as there is a profusion of new seedlings in some locations. 
We will be starting the control spraying of Giant hogweed in the upper Ayr soon as we must maintain the good work carried out over the last two years.
