Fruity Tutti

10 Sat May 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in cooking, Gardening, Rural Diary, trees

Tags

apple trees, blackberry canes, crabapple trees, fig tree, Fruit, fruit salad, honey and lemon drink

I have been craving fruit during the past few days; that and yoghurt and ice-cream and hot tea!

This is my favourite night-time drink when I have a cold. Hot honey and lemon drink. The juice of half a lemon mixed with a good sized spoonful of honey and freshly boiled water. A little sugar sometimes but not always. R likes to add a tot of whisky with his but I don’t like whisky and prefer the drink non-alcoholic. The mug was a present from A and is just right for this drink and other herbal teas. It fits so nicely into my cupped hand!

I also made a fruit salad this evening with the first locally (well Norfolk) grown strawberries. This is so early for strawberries I was expecting them to be either sour or tasteless but they were very good. The other fruit was imported mainly from Spain – raspberries, blueberries – I can’t remember where the Galia melon was grown and the blackberries came from …… MEXICO? I do try to buy fruits and vegetables in season and locally grown but I do succumb sometimes and as I said, I really want fruit at the moment.

While I am on the subject of fruit I will show some photos of our fruit trees. These photos have been taken over the past week or two. I haven’t been out of the house today and photographing would have been difficult anyway because of the wind and regular showers of heavy rain.

This is our Concord pear tree on 23rd April and as you see the fruit was beginning to set. I tried taking a picture of the much larger fruit yesterday but I only got blurred images as it was so windy. We have found that Concord pears are best as cooking pears. If we wait until they are beginning to soften on the outside they have already started to rot in the middle. If we try to eat them while they are hard and crunchy they are quite tasteless. But, if we cook them when hard but ready to be harvested they are wonderful. My favourite is caramelised pears!

Our Saturn eating apple tree on 23rd April.

Saturn blossom. The Saturn has now lost all its blossom and the fruit is setting.

Egremont Russet eating apple tree. Note the attractive chicken wire which protects the tree from deer and rabbits. This photo also taken on 23rd April.

Egemont Russet blossom. As I mentioned in an earlier post the apples on this tree are not like true Egremont Russet apples so either we have been mis-sold or we have a tree that has been adapted to suit people that don’t like the look of traditional Russet apples. I love them with their dull, rough, RUSSET skins. They are sweet, juicy and crunchy and the skins are not tough; the flesh has a good nutty taste. One of my favourite apples.

‘Harry Baker’ crab apple tree, 23rd April. This is the tree that R has tended so carefully and it is now looking so much better and growing upwards now! You can see from a lot of these photos that the trenches made by the JCB a couple of months ago are still in evidence. We have contacted the landscaper to ask him to fill in the holes with top-soil and make good. We are waiting for him to turn up. Apparently he is on jury service.

‘Harry Baker’ blossom. The fruits are enormous and make very good crabapple jelly.

‘Evereste’ crabapple tree, 23rd April. I don’t make crabapple jelly from these fruits though I could easily. I like to leave them for the birds – blackbirds and fieldfares – who enjoy them after they have been frosted. Most of the fruits from last year were left on the tree as we didn’t get a hard enough frost this winter to make the fruits palatable for the birds. There must have been enough food for the birds this winter without them needing these apples. I had to cut them off the tree as the leaves were coming out and so we have had hardly any blossom this spring. I am glad to say that, because of this, the tree is at last beginning to grow again.

‘Evereste’ blossom.

Our weeping species crabapple. The smell of the blossom was overpowering and when I bent down and went under the tree the buzzing of the many bees enjoying the flowers was very loud. Mr and Mrs Mole have been working hard on their tunnels under the tree as you can see!

The fruits are very small on this crab tree and are eaten by birds. I have included this tree because it is so beautiful. It does have fruit but not fruit that we would want to eat!

I wanted to take another photo of our Turkey Fig tree yesterday to show the new leaves and the enlarging fruit but the wind prevented me.

This is the photo I posted in March and I will try to take a new photo as soon as I can. We have a Bramley cooking apple but it has decided not to flower this year. It is growing well so we are not worried.

This is our ‘Norfolk Biffin’ cooking apple tree. The tree is also known as a ‘Norfolk Beefing’ and is a heritage tree. The apples are very large and have a slightly spicy taste when cooked almost as if some nutmeg or cinnamon has been added. They are apparently very good as dried apples and that is how they were often used in Victorian times. We hope to get a dryer one day so we can try this out (and so that I can dry some of my herbs too). Norfolk Biffins are mentioned in Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’ in Stave Three when Scrooge is out on the streets with the Ghost of Christmas Present. He talks of them being eaten after dinner and it is true that when left long enough they do become sweet enough to be used as an eating apple.

Biffin blossom.

The greengage tree which is quite new had its first flowers this year – four of them. We may have fruit but it is hard to say as yet. The damson/bullace trees have fruit setting on them but whether I will get any before the birds, squirrels, wasps etc. get to them is anyone’s guess.

We have been harvesting our rhubarb for a while now and we are leaving it for the time being to grow more leaves.

The flowers on our blackberry canes. Last year we were able to have quite a few fruit as there were hardly any wasps about. Usually the wasps get to them and ruin them no matter how I try to protect them.

A Windy Day and a Wet Blanket

09 Fri May 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, trees, wild birds

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Escallonia 'Apple Blossom', greylags, laburnum, moorhens, peas, potatoes, runner beans, tomatoes

The day began sparklingly. Green and blue so intense and raindrops scintillating in the sun and breeze. I went out into the garden quite early to open the greenhouse and have a wander about. The wind was picking up and blossom was flying from the trees. I went back indoors and collected my camera.

The greylags keep paying us flying visits. The female goes onto the island and sorts over the old nest. Poor thing ! I wonder what happened while we were away. Did the eggs hatch out and then did she lose her goslings or did they not hatch at all? Did something (an otter?) eat the eggs or were they infertile?

Amusingly, while the female was busy on the island the gander was attacked by a moorhen. Moorhen are quite feisty birds when they want to be and despite being much smaller than the gander, this one made the gander run very fast! I walked round to the far side of the big pond and could hear moorhen chicks calling but couldn’t see them in the thick reeds. Moorhens feed their chicks until they are quite big and are very caring parents until they are spooked. They then run off as fast as their silly feet allow them, leaving the chicks to fend for themselves! Why?

I had a look at R’s vegetable patch and admired the potatoes already coming up.

We are growing two types of potato – white mid-season and red lates. I like it when R grows potatoes as they store well and I don’t need to buy them from about August until Christmas or later.

The trees were whipping about in the wind so I thought I’d better take a picture of the laburnums before the wind and rain stripped them of all their flowers.

These laburnum trees were meant to look the same, as I have been hoping to make a little arch with them. But look at them! One is squat and spreading outwards and the other is reaching for the skies! I will still try to make an arch but I don’t think it will end up looking like ‘Homes and Gardens’ material. They also grew A LOT last year and I didn’t get my act together and do anything with the trees at the right time – oh dear!

Escallonia ‘Apple Blossom’. The book I have says this is a dense evergreen shrub. This one is not at all dense and I’m not sure why not. Other Escallonias we’ve had in the past have been really good shrubs – good enough for hedging with, but this loses all its leaves in the middle and a number of branches die off after a year or two. I think I will cut it hard back and see what happens. It may also need a lot of feeding as the soil it’s in is a little stony.

I went into the greenhouse.

Some of R’s runner bean plants.

And some of his peas.

His tomato seedlings are doing well too.

The heavy showers started shortly after I returned to the house and they’ve continued on and off all day. A couple of times I’ve ventured out only to have to dash back in again, usually from the furthest parts of the garden.

And if you are wondering where the wet blanket comes in – that’s me with my woolly head and deafness, my runny nose and tickly cough.

The Archdeacon’s Visitation.

08 Thu May 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in amphibians, churches, Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, trees, Uncategorized, wild birds

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

aquilegia, Archdeacon's Visitation, Easter cactus, Halesworth, hare, lilac, newts, rowan, St Mary's church, woodpigeon

I am amazed at how lucky we were with the weather on Monday! Since then the weather has been ‘changeable’ as the forecasters say. Tuesday had showers in the morning but a sunny, breezy afternoon, Wednesday had light showers in the early morning, a very fine middle of the day and then heavy showers from late afternoon onwards and today, well, yuk! is all I can say. Light showers this morning, heavy showers by midday and persistent rain this afternoon and evening. What makes it worse is that I have a nasty cold in the head. I had hoped to go with R to the Archdeacon’s Visitation service at St Mary’s church in Halesworth this evening but E needed to see her doctor and the only available appointment time was 6.30pm. I drove her home afterwards and saw R driving past us in the opposite direction on his way to the service and there wasn’t enough time for me to drop E at home and join him. And anyway, I think I’m better off at home not spreading germs about.

An Archdeacon’s visitation, as far as I understand it, is when all the Churchwardens (R is a Churchwarden) in the Deanery get together for a special service once a year with all their priests and the Archdeacon. They hand in their annual reports and accounts if they haven’t already done it on-line and also their Declaration. Churchwardens are supposed to serve for six years at most, I think, and then a new one is voted in. However, it usually is a case of ‘once a Churchwarden always a Churchwarden’, as no-one wants the job. The Churchwardens are ‘sworn in’, for want of a proper phrase at this special service and take their oaths to do their duty. A few hymns are sung and this sounds lovely as only large churches are chosen for this service and they are always full. The Archdeacon has his or her say and maybe some of the priests will give a talk too. This year there will be an extra item. Our Rector and the priest in the Benefice next to ours will be licensed to each others Benefice. This will mean that they will be able to serve in each others Benefice without having to get special permission each time from the Bishop. Our Rector looks after a Benefice of eleven churches with a couple of retired priests, one Reader and two Elders to help him. The priest in the Benefice next to ours looks after three churches one of which is in a town. It will make life much easier for our Rector especially, once this is done. Our Rector is due to retire in a very few years and we don’t know if we will get another priest to replace him. We think there will be a lot of changes and not for the better and our priests are preparing the ground for us. To add insult to injury we haven’t even got a Bishop at the moment and haven’t had for some time!

I wanted to go to the service, not only to support R and our church but to go into St Mary’s church again. When I first moved to Suffolk in 1988 I lived in Halesworth and attended St Marys. I was made very welcome at the church and made a number of friends. I also met R there and he asked me out while drinking coffee after a Sunday service. We had our Marriage Blessing Service there too. R has just returned and tells me the service went well and the refreshments afterwards were very good.

I have been able to take a few photos round the garden during the past few days.

Our Rowan or Mountain Ash tree is flowering. It has grown well in the last couple of years and this is the best it’s ever looked.

Rowan blossom.

A very poor photo of the newts in our front pond.

White lilac.

White lilac blossom.

Pink and purple aquilegias.

This the best photo I have of the hare that has been visiting our garden recently. Back view only!

Woodpigeons having a bath in a puddle in our drive earlier today.

Indoors now. This is my Easter cactus which is just coming into flower. Unlike Christmas cacti these flowers shut during the afternoon and re-open next morning.

Easter cactus flowers.

A Walking Week Part 2

07 Wed May 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in plants, Rural Diary, trees, Uncategorized, walking

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

bluebells, Bugle/Ajuga, Bush Vetch, coppicing, Deer fences, Early Purple Orchid, Lords and Ladies, Pendulous Sedge, primroses, Ragged Robin, Reydon Wood, Roger Deakin, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, violets, Yellow Archangel

By Friday R had recovered from his trip to Gloucestershire, so when he got home from work I suggested that we might take our postponed bluebell-wood walk that evening. He thought that would be a great idea so we set off about 6.00pm and managed to persuade E to come with us. This was a real surprise as E once got lost in Reydon Wood and hadn’t been back since. To get to Reydon Wood we usually go via the road to Southwold, our nearest seaside town, passing by the Henham Estate which is the venue for the Latitude Festival. Henham Woods were awash with bluebells so we were hopeful that our walk would not be in vain.

When we got to the entrance to the wood there were only a couple of cars parked there and plenty of room for us.

The path to the wood.

The path is usually quite interesting in itself as it runs along next to Reydon Wood on one side and fields on the other. Between the path and the wood is a very deep ditch, probably quite ancient and dug as a boundary and/or to stop deer entering the wood and damaging the trees.

It is not easy to see the depth of the ditch with this photo.

We walked a little further until we came to the entrance. The wood is excellently maintained by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. They have started to coppice it again and have cleared away a lot of scrub. They have marked out paths through the wood and maintain the ditches. Bluebells are very sensitive plants and if their leaves are crushed they die so it is best to stick to the paths. Not only are there bluebells in this wood but many other interesting plants and trees. This wonderful habitat is also good for all sorts of animals, birds and insects too.

A bridge over a little drainage ditch.

An old coppiced tree ready for more coppicing. The word ‘copse’ for a small wood means that it was once and maybe still is a coppiced wood. There are many trees which are suitable for coppicing – hazel, ash, willow – as long as they re-shoot after their branches are cut off low they are suitable. Coppicing is similar to pollarding which is more often seen in towns where the branches are cut off near the crown of the tree. If you look to the left of the picture you will see how the paths have been marked out by laying sticks next to each other. A bio-degradable path and easily maintained too.

This is a deer fence made of brushwood. The area inside has been newly coppiced and the fence is here to stop the deer eating the new tree shoots. In Roger Deakin’s delightful book ‘Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees’ he goes coppicing with a friend and also says that some woodsmen put a heap of brushwood on each individual stump to stop deer and rabbit damage.

A couple of woodland ponds.

If anyone can tell me what the plant in the second pond is I would be very grateful. I apologise for the poor quality of the photo but I included it as I wished to show where the flowers are growing. The flowers are a little like primrose flowers and are in tiered whorls. The leaves are strap-like.

Lords and Ladies.

Early Purple Orchid.

Ajuga/Bugle.

Primroses.

Violets.

Ragged Robin.

Pendulous Sedge.

Bush Vetch

Yellow Archangel.

The next few photos are of the bluebells in Reydon Wood.

The Rumburgh May Day Fete

06 Tue May 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in music, Rural Diary, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

belly dancing, Children's Folk Group, fete, May Day, May Pole dancing, Rumburgh Buck, Rumburgh Morris, stalls

Yesterday R and I went to the Rumburgh May Day Fete. This has been held in the village since time immemorial and takes place on the recreation ground (which is what the villagers call the village green). The church run the cake stall and I had been asked to contribute something for it. I duly spent some time on Sunday afternoon baking some cherry shortbread and some orange tea bread. Both recipes are easy to follow and neither takes too long to cook – ideal for a reluctant cook like me.

The fete began at 11.00am so R and I arrived just before then, so that we could hand over our contributions in good time (R had pulled some rhubarb yesterday morning and brought that along too) and then have a tour of the stalls before the crowds arrived. The weather was perfect – lots of sunshine, a fairly gentle breeze and also nicely warm.

The fete appeals to all ages and is a really sociable event. All sorts of people turn up – the very elderly, tiny babies with their parents, people wanting to sell and those wanting to buy, supporters of those people taking part in the entertainment, bikers in their leathers, old hippies – we all mingled together and enjoyed the day. Lots of food and drink is on sale but a number of groups bring picnics with them.

This stall sold plants and accessories dyed with natural dyes.

This is the bag and jewellery stall.

The plant stall.

The tombola stall and a part of the cake stall on the left. The white construction is the goal post without its net.

The cake stall

The Human Fruit Machine! This was great fun and was run by the W.I. (Women’s Institute). They also ran a bric-a-brac stall.

The Candy Box Sweet Van with someone selling honey and jam next to them.

Hot dogs and burgers.

Girls eating burgers next to the toy stall.

Different types of transport used to get to the fete.

A game of petanque.

Teenagers in the children’s play area.

The ice-cream van.

The May Pole in front of the tea tents.

The entertainment was varied.

Dancing round the May Pole. May Pole dancing isn’t taught any more so these young people hadn’t much idea what to do, but they all enjoyed themselves nevertheless. R tells me he was taught how to dance round the May Pole at school. When done properly it is really lovely. The children weave in and out of each other, some going clockwise and some anti-clockwise. The ribbons are all plaited together and then everything is reversed until all the ribbons are undone again.

This was a bit of a shambles at times but such good fun!

This is the music group that played for the children to dance to.

Lovely belly dancers!

The Children’s Folk Group. These young people were very good indeed. They played without fault for three-quarters of an hour non-stop!

I like this rear view of the older ones!

This is Rumburgh Morris – our very own morris dancers. They are dancing with handkerchiefs.

The Master of Ceremonies

One of the morris musicians

The bells they wear strapped to their shins.

The antlers they always bring with them. The local pub is called the Rumburgh Buck and that is where they meet. The last time I saw these antlers was in the church a couple of weeks before Christmas. We have a Carols and Capers service with folk carols and morris dancing (a caper is a morris dance move – a leap).

Dancing with sticks this time!

Just across the road from the recreation ground is the Rumburgh Buck pub where a refreshing pint of beer or ale or cider can be drunk.

A Walking Week Part One

05 Mon May 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in domestic animals, fish, Insects, plants, Rural Diary, trees, Uncategorized, walking, wild birds

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Adrian Bell, bird-scarer cannon, Blue Tit, buttercup, comfrey, cow parsley, cows, cut-leaved crane's-bill, daisy, fairy ring, field maple, fish, Germander Speedwell, goosegrass, great yellow-cress, greater spotted woodpecker, Greater Stitchwort, greefinch, Hawthorn, Herb-Robert, Lords and Ladies, May, orange-tip butterfly, perch, pineapple weed, pond, red campion, ribwort, sheep, St Mark's fly, stinging nettle, wedding ring, wild rose

I have managed to do a little walking this week and have enjoyed it very much. Monday and Tuesday’s walking was mainly round the shops so doesn’t count as enjoyable walking. For some stupid reason I mistook the time of E’s hair appointment and we arrived in Halesworth an hour early on Monday. E kindly said she was happy to wait for an hour at the hairdressers but I thought she might go mad with boredom so we did the supermarket shopping and then I got more petrol for the car. She then went for her hair appointment and while she was there I called in at the jewellers to see if anything can be done to my wedding ring to stop it cutting into my finger. Twenty years ago we hadn’t thought that my ring would wear away so quickly. Apparently, we chose the wrong ring – a 9 carat D-profile ring – and should have had a round-profile ring and something of a better quality. Well, too late now! This is my wedding ring, bought for me by my husband and blessed at our Marriage Blessing Service. We weren’t able to be married in church as we had both been married before, but we had a beautiful Blessing Service after our Registry Office wedding. The jeweller said either we could buy a new ring or have my one built up which would cost the same as a new ring. A dilemma which we are still thinking about.

Both Monday and Tuesday were mainly cloudy days and no good for drying washing outside so I decorated the inside of the house with wet clothes. I had more shopping to do in Bungay so drove there on Tuesday afternoon and I made my purchases. On the way home I got stuck in a traffic jam! This is quite out of the ordinary, living where we live. The vehicle in front of me was a supermarket delivery van and not much holds them up usually! I couldn’t see what the problem was as these vans are quite wide, so I edged round a bit and saw….

The cows took their time to leave their field and amble down the road to the farmyard. The stockman had a busy time trying to get the cows out of people’s gardens where there were lots of interesting plants and trees to eat. I took the photos with my phone and then enlarged the pictures so the quality isn’t that good.

E asked if we could watch a DVD together during the evening which I thought would be nice but no-one thought to tell my eyes to watch too. As soon as I sat down they became extremely heavy and so I dozed most of the way through the film to the disapproval of my daughter. This is not the first time I have done this.

Wednesday is ‘shopping with mother’ day which went very well as Mum was on top form and we had a real laugh together. The weather on Wednesday was lovely too – a hazy start and then lots of sunshine. When I had had some lunch at home I decided to walk down the lane to take advantage of the bright weather and to see what was to be seen.

Lots of stinging nettles and goosegrass. Goosegrass is a relative of coffee and quinine and has many medicinal uses. At one time the seeds were roasted and used as a coffee substitute and apparently the young shoots are edible and can be cooked in soups as a vegetable. All I know about it is that if I touch it, it brings me out in a rash! The seeds are hooked and stick to hair and clothes – hence the plant’s other name of Cleavers.

Stinging Nettles are very useful, if painful plants too. They can be used for making cloth, food and medicine. My plant book says that the Roman belief that stinging nettles cured rheumatism still persists in Britain. I can say that there is some truth in this as when I am stung on my hands my rheumatic joints there become less painful. I can’t say I would care to roll about in them unclothed as some people recommend!

These are Hawthorn flowers – May blossom. ‘Ne’er cast a clout til May be out’ – either don’t leave off your winter clothes until the end of the month of May, or, don’t leave off your winter clothes until the May blossom is on the trees.

This is the wild rose and already there are large flower buds as you can see. This is early, as the rose usually flowers at the end of May and into June.

A fine crop of old equipment and other rubbish in this field. At the beginning of Adrian Bell’s book ‘Corduroy’ he talks of the Suffolk farmers’ habit of leaving implements in corners of fields or yards covered in nettles until they are needed for some particular function. They are then returned ‘to some out-of-the-way corner, to be a sleeping Gulliver for the grass again’.

These are the boys – male sheep, tups. A bit stinky – sleeping and snoring in the sun. Wandering about having something to eat now and then – not a care in the world.

Common comfrey. In medieval times the roots of this plant were dug up in the spring and grated to produce a sludge which was packed round broken limbs. It hardened to a consistency similar to that of Plaster of Paris.

A view over the fields.

Cut-leaved Crane’s-bill.

Great Yellow-cress.

The lane.

Herb-Robert. In the Middle Ages they believed that a plant showed how it could be used through its colour or shape – the doctrine of signatures. This plant turns a fiery red in autumn so they thought it should be used in the treatment of blood disorders. It has a strange odour and in some places it is known as ‘Stinking Bob’.

Daisies.

Daisies and Germander Speedwell.

Greater Stitchwort.

A Buttercup.

Pineapple Weed.

A female orange-tip butterfly. Note the lovely green-marbled underwing.

The signpost at the end of our lane.

A male orange-tip butterfly. I have been trying for over a week to photograph these fast flying butterflies!

Lords and Ladies. This is specially for Heather! At last these strange plants are flowering here. I have some in my garden but they are hidden by tall grass and difficult to photograph.