Apologies

14 Fri Feb 2014

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geese, mallards, marriage etc, moorhens, rooks

I feel I must apologise for last night’s sentimental outburst. There is no real excuse for it, but the night was so lovely, and, a little bit of soppiness (within reason, of course) never did anyone any harm – yet.

Not much to report so far today. The day started cold and frosty with ice on the ponds. This quickly disappeared as the wind got up and it is now raining hard – again.

The rooks have started fiddling about with their old nests in the rookery. Mark Cocker in his book ‘Crow Country’ says that they dismantle the nests each year and start again. I am not sure about that, though I am no expert. The rooks pair for life but they still feel the need to court each other again each year – bowing and nodding and lifting the feathers on the back of their necks. Human couples, in the main, don’t seem to continue to woo each other after they have decided to get married/live together. Perhaps they should (I don’t mean bowing and nodding etc. – they’d get funny looks from passers-by) but perhaps try to remember what it was that attracted them about their partner in the beginning/make an effort to listen to each other or spend more time together/try not to take each other for granted – I’m sure you can think of lots more. (What has got into me?! It must be Valentine’s Day!) R and I decided some years ago to forego sending each other cards and giving presents on this day (at my instigation if I remember rightly) and what a relief it was not to have to sort through hundreds of simply awful cards trying to find something appropriate to us and our marriage. We ended up with cards with no message and scenic views or gardens or flowers on the front and then wrote our own rather restrained messages. I’m not usually a sentimental person (last night was an aberration) and I found it an uncomfortable experience. It all seemed very silly. As a girl I would have loved to have received a card from an unknown admirer but as a middle-aged woman….. No, ridiculous!

The geese don’t have the big pond to themselves any more. The moorhens are very busy, paddling about doing moorhenny things and a group of five male mallards have arrived. They are stalking one lone female – waiting for their chance!

Lunch break over – I must get back to the ironing and then I’m off to Diss to pick A up from the station. She is coming home for a long weekend and I am looking forward to it very much.

Moonlight

13 Thu Feb 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary

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Moonlight, orion, shooting star, stars, ursa major, ursa minor

I just happened to open the curtains upstairs to see what the weather was doing and saw a magical landscape. I put on my jacket and went out. The moon is almost full and the light so bright and silvery I could see everything clearly, even the colours of some objects – my car, the garage doors. The stars seemed dim next to the moon; orion at the front of the house and when I walked to the back I saw the plough and ursa minor. All I could hear was the soughing of the wind in the trees and the drumming sound one hears as the wind hits ones face and ears. No owls or moorhens – then a solitary car coming along the road from St. Margaret South Elmham. When it’s noise had died away I looked up at the stars again. A shooting star – a millisecond of light streaking across the sky from near ursa major. I didn’t make a wish. There didn’t seem to be anything more to wish for. I thank God for this beautiful world and for being alive in it.

Flowers

13 Thu Feb 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary

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flowers, hazel catkins, miniature iris, primrose, snowdrops, witch-hazel

This post is full of photos of some of the flowers in my garden at the moment.

A plum-coloured miniature iris

Blue miniature iris

An early primrose

Snowdrops under the crabapple tree

Witch-hazel flowers

Catkins with tiny crimson female flowers. These will turn into lovely hazelnuts that will all be eaten by the squirrels!

Catkins

Spring is on it’s way!

Wind and Rain

12 Wed Feb 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary

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flooding, power cuts, Storms

Yet another stormy day! How many have we had since the end of October? I have lost count now. R and I were talking about this this morning before he went off to work. Here in East Anglia we have been much more fortunate than others around the country and on the near continent, but even here many have had property lost or damaged. The news of the surge tide at the beginning of December, when a number of people lost their homes, was overwhelmed by that of Nelson Mandela’s death.

I am feeling so sorry for everyone trying to deal with the floods, whether it is home owners, farmers, people whose businesses have suffered through flooding or not being able to get the stock or customers they need, people who have lost relatives by drowning, the officials (flood wardens, ministers, members of the Environment Agency), members of the emergency services, the police, the army – I could go on. My sister, who is a paramedic working in Kent, tells me many people will not help themselves and/or won’t take advice they are given to move out of their property in good time, and then expect to be rescued afterwards by her fellow workers wading chest deep in sewage!

I took my mother out shopping earlier and was pleased that we were able to get it all done before the rain came and the wind really picked up. She is quite frail now and finds it difficult keeping upright in windy weather. It was raining hard by the time I got home. I had some lunch and then went out to feed the birds and check that all was secure around the garden. I was soaked through by the time I got back in the house. I obviously wasted £12 on the reproofing spray I put on my coat the other week. It will all have to be done again.

I have just seen my bird table blow over!

I dread the power going off, especially in the winter. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen here as often as it used to up to ten years ago. We have butane gas (we are not on the gas main here) and have gas central heating and a gas hob. Obviously the heating doesn’t work in a power cut so we have a portable gas heater and a gas fire in our living room. We also have a carbon monoxide alarm in our living room! We have some good torches and all members of the family keep one next to their beds in case of emergency. With cloud covering the moon and stars it can be extremely dark at night here. We also have a few lamps, some better than others, and candles. But don’t we all rely on electricity being there all the time! Isn’t life difficult without it? And boring! And cold!!

Listening to the wind buffeting the house and howling down the chimney makes me glad I am inside, warm and dry. I am very lucky.

Travelling

10 Mon Feb 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary

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'The Company', Chesterfield, Ely Cathedral, Grime's Graves, Hundred Foot Washes, Peterborough, Sheffield, swans, The Fens, Thetford, Train journey

I enjoy looking out of the window on train journeys and there is a lot to see on the route to Sheffield from Norwich. The first stop is at Thetford. R and I have only walked once in Thetford Forest and that was years ago before E was born. However, nearby is a favourite place of R’s and mine – Grime’s Graves. This is a really interesting and beautiful place. A wide open grassy area of quite a few acres surrounded by trees. The ground is pock-marked and humped – the remains of neolithic flint mines which had been back-filled after the flint had been abstracted. The first time we went there we went down one of the shafts which is open to the public and saw the extremely narrow tunnels made thousands of years ago. The experts think that children were used to dig the flint out which was very valuable and highly regarded at that time. R and I love walking around above ground too. It is very peaceful and there are so many different wild flowers growing in the short grass. The sound of sky-larks is all around.
The fens begin shortly after Thetford and even though we have had so much rainfall there didn’t seem to be too many places suffering from flooding. The soil is such a rich black colour and the contrast between it and the vivid green shoots of the wheat and barley was quite striking. This is no doubt one of the places where the ‘dirty celery’ comes from that I see for sale at home.
I love seeing Ely Cathedral as we approach it across the flat fens. It is an enormous building but so delicate looking. R and I went to Ely one weekend about twenty years ago and attended the Sunday morning service. I think it was late winter/early spring time and very windy just like now. It wasn’t that many years after the 1986 storm: the wind made me very nervous and I spent a sleepless night cowering under the bedclothes. I was also a little shy about going to the service at the cathedral; I remember feeling very awkward. We haven’t been back since – mainly lack of opportunity and time – but I would love to go again. From the train I saw many boats and houseboats tied up to the quays and boatbuilders working in their yards. Lots of birds too – heron, ducks, geese, mute swans, little egret.
Between Ely and Peterborough are more fens and The Hundred Foot Washes with the New Bedford River or Hundred Foot Drain on the Ely side, the Old Bedford River on the other and inbetween a wide expanse of water. The railway crosses this on a little causeway and with the wind making waves on the water one feels quite vulnerable and glad to get to the other side. I saw large flocks of swans on the fields; I couldn’t see whether they were Bewick’s or Whooper swans as the train was going too fast.
From one side of the train at Peterborough you can see the large mosque with its green dome and minaret and on the other side the rather squat cathedral.
After Peterborough the Fens are left behind and the countryside gets more hilly and wooded. I like to imagine myself walking through these woods and across the fields; wondering what I would see over the hill in the distance. The train goes through Grantham, Nottingham and Alfreton – lots of woody knolls near Alfreton – and then to Chesterfield of the twisted church spire, which can also be seen from the train!
I got to Sheffield in the pouring rain so decided to take a taxi to my hotel instead of walking. The lifts weren’t working and I foolishly said I didn’t need help with my luggage. After struggling up seven flights of stairs to get to my room I regretted this very much! I met A almost immediately and we had a very pleasant couple of hours chatting over a meal in a vegetarian café while it got dark outside and the rain got heavier. A’s dramatic society is called The Company and they were performing Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’. A had to be at the theatre at 6.30 so we set off at 6.00 to walk there – a fast walk and all uphill so I certainly got plenty of exercise after my sedentary journey. A had her umbrella; my coat has a hood so I carried the bag of things I had brought from home for her – a book, some letters and her walking trainers. We got to our destination just before 6.30 and A went to the dressing room to get ready. The doors didn’t open until after 7.00 so I waited outside – A left me her umbrella but I didn’t need it as I managed to get some shelter under the portico over the doors.
The play was very well performed; A was so good, as always, as Portia and the young man who played Cassius was excellent too. Afterwards, A walked back with me to my hotel to have a drink in the bar then came up to my room to see the enormous bed there. Four people could comfortably have slept in it! I walked with A to her bus-stop and saw her on to it before returning to the hotel. She texted a little later to say she was safely at home and already in bed. I spent the night clinging to the edge of my bed as to a raft in a stormy sea! I am not used to such space.
When I got home the following afternoon I found not only had I missed the septic tank being emptied (what a shame, I don’t think! Glad it’s been done though) but the work to clear the willow from around our pond had started that day and the top of our tall leylandii hedge, which serves as a windbrake on the south side of the house, had been trimmed. The pond and surround looks so different now especially as the JCB had sunk into the ground all round the pond and has left quite a quagmire. Most of the daffodils have gone and all of the cowslips and violets. Nevertheless, the work had to be done and we can always replace the daffodils if we want to and the cowslips and violets will return eventually. The men weren’t able to finish all the work so are coming back on Monday.
A phoned me today to say the rest of the run of the play went very well and they were reviewed in the Sheffield Star. She was mentioned personally!

Preparations for a Journey

05 Wed Feb 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary

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'Julius Caesar', Diss, fir tree sapling, flood warning, greylags, Halesworth, Harleston, Norwich, Sheffield

I have only spent a little time in the garden during the past two days. I won’t be at home for the next couple of days so I have been doing housework and shopping to make sure E and R will be alright while I am gone. I am going to Sheffield to see A, my eldest daughter and to watch her perform in her dramatic society’s production of ‘Julius Caesar’. A is playing Portia and I am really looking forward to seeing her and watching the play. I won’t be staying with her this time as she is now in a shared house and there isn’t the room. I am staying in a hotel in the centre of the city close to the Cathedral. I hardly ever go away on my own – in fact the last time I did was just over three years ago when I attended A’s M.A. graduation ceremony in Sheffield. She has been studying for her PhD for the past three years and it is nearing completion. She is also looking for work and running out of money!

E, my younger daughter, has been looking after a little fir tree sapling in her room for a year since my mother gave it to her. It is growing quite well but looking a little pale. I have been suggesting for some time that it ought to go outside and get some fresh air but she has been reluctant to let it go. I think she remembers the ones I grew from seed a few years ago that were doing very well until I put them outside only to be eaten by something. I have put her little tree in the greenhouse with other trees I am growing – a yew, two beeches, two oaks and a couple of laburnums. In the spring they will go outside but somewhere where the deer and pheasants can’t get at them. While I was in the greenhouse yesterday I checked all the plants in there – tidied them up and gave a little water to most of them.

The geese are making themselves at home as usual. They wander about over the garden leaving ‘little messages’ all over the place. They join next door’s chickens in pecking up spilt seed under the feeders and bird tables. The female especially has started following me about when I am outside in the hope that I may give them something to eat. They were around this morning but when I got home about 3pm they had flown off somewhere less windswept. I spent most of today with my mother helping with shopping, going to Harleston and Diss with her and then collecting her medication from the surgery. We had a nice chat over a cup of coffee when we got back to her house and then I had some shopping of my own to do in Halesworth and my own medication to collect. I also remembered, at last, to call in at the church and change the church colours; the altar frontal and the cloth on the pulpit have been white since Christmas but now that we have had Candlemas the green cloth and frontal must be put up. The colours will stay green until Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, when all changes to purple. R usually does this as he is one of the Churchwardens but he has been very busy this week so I offered to do it. He had to take his car in for a service today at the recommended garage in Norwich. In total he has driven about 140 miles today just for a car service! Thirty miles to Norwich, probably over forty miles to his place of work, the same distance this afternoon back to the garage and then thirty miles home again

. I didn’t spend long in the garden this afternoon as the weather was so wet and windy. I saw more molehills, more wood down off the birch tree and all the ponds have risen again. R tells me that the there is a flood warning on the Waveney and the Beck today – this does not surprise me though we have had less rain here than most other places around the country.

Candlemas

03 Mon Feb 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary

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'washes', Candlemas service, greylags, the Beck

I went to Flixton St. Mary’s Church yesterday to celebrate Candlemas – the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. The church was prettily decorated with very many lit candles on all the window ledges and other surfaces. I went to church on my own as R was in Manchester visiting his family and E doesn’t usually come to the local services. Snowdrops and aconites in the churchyard.
Making my way home afterwards, I had to find a passing place very quickly as a police car with flashing lights was driving towards me on the single track lane. A rare sight in this part of the world! In driving through St. Peter’s washes I saw that the Beck had recently flooded the road. The water had gone down quite a bit but had left the lane very wet and muddy. Our little river is called the Beck. One usually thinks of Yorkshire or Cumbrian brooks being called becks but as the danes took over East Anglia in King Alfred’s time and it became part of the Danelaw many place-names are of Viking origin. Washes are low roads prone to flooding – best avoided in times of high rain fall. Because they don’t often dry out for long in winter they can be very slippery in icy weather. The Beck is a very pretty brook and used by lots of wildlife. E and I had to walk home from Flixton after my car broke down the autumn before last and in stopping to rest at the bridge we saw not only a kingfisher but a watervole in the space of a few minutes.
I didn’t do much gardening yesterday afternoon as I had washed all the gardening gloves and my warm coat and despite the weather being quite mild and sunny yesterday the soil was still very wet. The birds were all singing very loudly, dunnocks, robins, a song thrush, chaffinches, blue tits, great tits gold- and greenfinches. A third greylag (a female) had turned up and kept being chased off by the male of the original pair. They were all quite noisy. I had forgotten how loud they can be – we will soon be used to it I am sure. The females are less suspicious than the males and will come closer to us. Greylags in this part of England are descended from feral birds. Owners of country estates brought wild birds from Scotland, I think, to stock their ornamental lakes and the birds liked it here and stayed. They prefer to nest on islands in lakes away from predators and East Anglia with its Fens, Broads, old gravel pits and abundant ponds provides ideal sites for them. Greylags are also ancestors of the domestic goose. Lag is an ancient word for goose and Greylag means ‘grey goose’ – to call them Greylag geese is tautological. Lag is also, in origin, a word used in farmyards to call geese – ‘lag-lag-lag’. The goose in our garden has already started laying her eggs on the island. I am so sorry they have arrived so early and the work we have planned hasn’t started yet.
Today has been spent in doing a fair amount of housework. In the garden, I only had time to pull up a few stinging nettles, dig out some cow parsley seedlings and dig up a few tussocks of grass under the large crabapple before R arrived home from his travels. We have had four beautiful days – frost this morning but no ice. The roads are beginning to dry out but the ponds are still filling as the land is still draining in to them.

Winter Gardening

01 Sat Feb 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary

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cold-weather gardening, heartsease, moles, Speedwell, violas, worms

I have realised that winter gardening is a race against time.

I have been trying to do at least one garden job every day. I go into the garden to top up bird feeders, put rubbish or recycling in the bins, collect the post from the box at the gate – I’m already out there so I might as well stay there a little longer and do something useful. I love gardening and would much rather garden than do anything else. However, I have this nasty little puritan voice in my head that tells me that as I enjoy it it isn’t real work and therefore should be left until all my other chores are done. As anyone who has a house knows, housework is never-ending so I sometimes leave the garden for weeks without doing anything in it at all! If I do look around me on my walk to and from the post-box, bin etc it is only to see the mess and feel miserable. What stupid behaviour! Hence the decision to do a little bit of gardening work every day.

I usually go out to see to the feeders during the afternoon so that is the time I have decided should also be gardening time too. I go out in all weathers so rain, wind and cold shouldn’t be an excuse not to garden. The days are lengthening now and as I put my coat and boots on I think that there will be plenty of time to do all that I need to do. All goes well at first. As soon as I get out in the fresh air I begin to feel more relaxed. I look about and decide what needs doing – some jobs, of course, cannot be done in bad or cold weather – but plenty can be done, especially tidying up – sweeping paths, clearing brushwood, some pruning/cutting back etc. However, as I work I realise that maybe I won’t be able to do all that I wanted to. The rain is getting heavier, I am getting too wet/cold/tired, it is getting too dark to see! Also, the cold makes my eyes water and when I stoop to look at the ground my vision is so blurred with tears I can’t see properly. My nose runs all the time so I have to keep stopping to blow it. Despite gloves and thick socks my fingers and toes have become painful with the cold. Can I manage to finish the task I am doing before having to give in and escape indoors? I think of the ease with which we garden during the rest of the year and never appreciate it at the time.

One of my flowerbeds is thickly covered with speedwell. I have never noticed it on that bed before so seeds may have been in the compost of some plants I put in last year. I spent some time today trying to remove it which was very difficult because it was growing amongst viola and heartsease seedlings. I find it interesting to observe that many weeds grow next to plants with similar leaves. The weeds are not noticed until they are quite established and starting to swamp their neighbours. These speedwell plants were so close together and had also wrapped themselves so well around the poor violas that I was finding it almost impossible to remove them. I then remembered that R uses an old kitchen fork to thin out and prick out seedlings so I fetched that from the greenhouse and found I could remove the weeds without damaging the seedlings too much. I spent the rest of the time outside tidying the edges to the paths – trimming long grass away and sweeping soil back on to the flowerbeds. Moles have pushed hills up along the side of the paths too so I stamped those down. Moles tunnel in search of worms. Worms are more plentiful where there is damp soil and soil is damper next to paths because of the water run-off. Moles like to tunnel near the ditches and ponds in the garden for the same reason. There are more worms in flowerbeds because of the mulch and compost we put there; the moles are in the flowerbeds after the worms and disturb all my plants. The large crabapple tree at the front of the house has had so much mole disturbance under it that the ground is pitted and lumpy. The moles have pushed up many of our snowdrops so I have to replant them regularly. Moles are off in search of mates at the moment so the garden is covered with hills. Oh dear!