Here be Dragons!

24 Tue Jun 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Insects, music, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized

Tags

Aldeburgh Festival, Banded Demoiselle, Black-tailed Skimmer, bouquet, Broad-bodied Chaser, butterflies, damselflies, dentist, dragonflies, Four-spotted Chaser, Greater Bindweed, Hedge Brown, Ian Bostridge, Large Skipper, lavender, moths, Schubert's 'Winterreise', Six-spot Burnet, Small Tortoiseshell, Snape Maltings, Suffolk Punch, The Man of Mode by George Etherege, Thomas Ades, wedding, wedding anniversary

Four-spotted Chaser

Our garden is full of dragonflies and damselflies.

Most of the UK was basking in warm sunshine last week; Suffolk was one of the areas which wasn’t. We spent most of the time under a thick pall of cloud. There was a strong northerly breeze and some rain, though not much; certainly not enough. The butterflies and dragonflies only flew when a watery sun appeared through a crack in the cloud, which wasn’t often. The highest temperature I recorded was 16 degrees centigrade. The weather started to improve towards the end of the week with the wind changing direction from northerly to a warmer south-westerly. The clouds then began to disperse. The weekend was really quite fine and Monday morning was too. Unfortunately, we had a couple of heavy showers of rain in the afternoon and more of the same overnight. Today started with thick mist and then it wasn’t too bad until this afternoon when we have had torrential rain and thunder storms. At least today we have had a good amount of rain which has freshened things up nicely.

Lavender covered in butterflies (mainly Small Tortoiseshells)

Monday 16th was cool and showery and I had to visit the dentist because of a painful tooth. I had made the appointment a week before when my tooth had been aching for some days. It continued to hurt until a couple of days before the appointment and then suddenly felt better. I thought I’d better keep the appointment just in case there was really a problem. My dentist did her best to find something wrong with my tooth – she x-rayed it and bruised my gum with the x-ray plate. She poked and prodded it very hard a number of times with that sharp spiky thing dentists use. She gripped it very hard between finger and thumb and tried to wriggle it and pull it out. She hit it hard a few times with a blunt metal object but fortunately for me there didn’t appear to be anything wrong. I left the surgery feeling as though someone had punched me in the face.

Tuesday 17th was a much better day – some sunshine and a strong breeze which dried my washing.

Wednesday 18th was another busy shopping day – firstly with Mum who hadn’t been feeling too well and then some shopping for us. I also collected a quantity of medication from the doctors’ surgery. Wednesday was also our 20th wedding anniversary and R was due home from working in Gloucestershire that evening. Quite often he is away from home on our anniversary but this year was nicely different. He brought me home a bouquet of flowers which was very kind and thoughtful of him.

In recent years we haven’t bought each other gifts but have gone somewhere nice together – a stately home, a beautiful garden – or we have bought something we both wanted – a garden bench, a favourite film to watch together. This year R suggested we go out for a meal to the place we went to on our first date. Of course I agreed. We decided not to go out on the anniversary itself as R would have spent some hours driving and would be tired (as he was). We booked a table for Friday evening and invited E to come with us. She is the daughter of our marriage and should therefore be with us to celebrate. She agreed to come too.

Thursday 19th, Corpus Christi, and though there was a service at church at 9.00a.m. I wasn’t able to go as E had an interview that morning at City College Norwich. Surprisingly, E was fairly calm and even managed to eat some breakfast before we set off. I parked in the city centre again and we walked to the college from there as before. By the time we got to the college E was starting to feel very apprehensive and when I left her outside the interview room she was very frightened and extremely pale.

She re-appeared an hour and a half later having had an interview and done a short maths and English test. I was so proud of her and pleased that she had been able to go through with the interview and test.

E has had many problems to deal with in her seventeen years. She has scoliosis (curvature of the spine) and has had problems with her feet. Both of these problems are now well under control but getting help initially was very difficult. E had to contend with a lot of bullying at school too. Always of a nervous disposition and insecure she developed chronic anxiety which brought on panic attacks. She was helped extremely well in her Middle School but when she went up to High School the problem got so bad that eventually she was unable to attend school and wasn’t able to take her GCSE exams last summer. Eventually we found a really good therapist who taught her how to control her anxiety. She still has a long way to go but she has started to make a life for herself. The City College has a course for young people who have had interrupted education and they know exactly how to treat these young people with kindness and understanding. Their dignity is preserved and they are not made to feel guilty or odd. You can understand now why I was so proud of my dear daughter.

R and I spent an hour or so cleaning the church again that evening. There was to be a large wedding there on Saturday and the florist was coming to decorate the church on Friday so we had to do the cleaning first. We decided to buy take-away fish and chips for our evening meal to save having to cook. A real treat!

Friday 20th was a brighter day and got gradually warmer until the afternoon was quite summery. I had a blood test in the morning then did yet more shopping. The afternoon was spent doing housework – very tedious. Our anniversary meal was very pleasant. The inn looks very different from how it was when R and I went there in January 1993. A large dining area with plenty of glass in the roof and large floor to ceiling glass windows has been added on at the back.

Saturday 21st. A lovely summers day at last. We were so pleased for the couple getting married today. I went to collect some supplies from the chemist and R did some gardening – mainly hedge-cutting – and then went off on his bike to perform his Church Warden duties at the wedding. The bride had arrived in an open carriage drawn by two Suffolk Punch horses.

The church had been beautifully decorated with flowers.

Sunday 22nd was another fine day and R and I went to church at St. James’ church. I cooked our main meal as soon as we got home instead of in the evening as we usually do. This was because I was going with my mother to a concert at Snape Maltings in Aldeburgh. The Aldeburgh Festival is taking place at the moment and this year is its 67th since it was started by the composer Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears.

Snape Maltings. Photo courtesy of The Daily Telegraph

Tickets for concerts at Snape are not that expensive but it is almost impossible to get them. If one has enough money to be able to afford to become a Friend of Snape, and the cheapest annual payment to become a Friend is £300, one can buy tickets earlier by weeks than the hoi-polloi like me. All the best tickets are snapped up very quickly and us poor commoners are left with the crumbs. I have decided to pay £15 a year so that I am e-mailed the programme of concerts. This means I get to see the list of concerts a day before the people who receive the programme by post. £15 for an e-mail!!

The concert that Mum and I attended was very good and I feel very lucky to have been there. Ian Bostridge, tenor, accompanied by Thomas Ades on the piano performed Schubert’s song cycle ‘Winterreise’. We have been to hear both these wonderful musicians before so knew that we were going to have a good concert. I studied ‘Winterreise at school and grew to love it then so was really looking forward to the evening. The concert started at 8.00p.m. and the whole cycle was sung without an interval. We set off for home just after sunset and were home before dark.

Monday23rd was a busy day with lots of washing and shopping.

I took Mum out shopping today instead of on Wednesday as I am going to see A in Sheffield tomorrow and will be staying there for two nights, coming back home on Friday. A is performing in another play and I am looking forward to seeing her in it. I decided it might be nice to stay in Sheffield a little longer than usual as I would like to see the Botanical Garden which A says is very pleasant. I might also do a little shopping! A is still trying to finish her PhD but everything seems to be conspiring against her. She recently had a fall and broke one of her fingers which has not made her PhD typing marathon easy. She is unemployed again and has no income which is very worrying for her. The play she will be performing in is ‘The Man of Mode’, a Restoration comedy written by George Etherege.

As I said at the beginning of this post, the garden is full of dragonflies and damselflies. The garden is also full of Small Tortoiseshell butterflies especially, and a few other butterflies and insects.

Skipper butterfly

I think this is a Large Skipper.

Small Tortoiseshell

Small Tortoiseshell

I have included two photos of these butterflies to show the difference between a newly emerged butterfly and one that has been flying for a few days. The second one is so bright!

Six-spot Burnet moth on lobelia

Dragonfly

Four-spotted Chaser

Meadow Brown butterfly

Female Banded Demoiselle

057Greater bindweed flower with pollen beetle and micro moth

Greater Bindweed flower with unidentified micro-moth and pollen beetle

The Greater Bindweed flower is the largest of our native flowers.

Male Broad-bodied Chaser

Male Black-tailed Skimmer

The last photos I am including are of Small Tortoiseshells again.

The reason I am including this photo is because…..

….of this!!

The Young Visitors

18 Wed Jun 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, Rural Diary, wild animals, wild birds

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

hedgehog, lily-pads, mallard duck, mallard ducklings, rooks, sunset, tawny owlets, watering plants, Young birds

We had a fabulous sunset last night. After yet another cloudy start to the morning things gradually improved so that by early afternoon it was bright and much warmer than of late, though still with a stiff northerly breeze. I spent the whole day at home – a real luxury – household chores in the morning and a little gardening in the afternoon. Because we haven’t had much rain recently I decided to water everything very thoroughly yesterday evening so went outside again after our evening meal. I started off with lots of watering cans filled from our water-butts which I used in the greenhouse, on plants in tubs in ericaceous soil and on as many of the other plants and flower beds as I could manage. I then used the hosepipe for the rest of the thirsty plants. We have a water meter so are careful not to use the garden hose any more than we have to. We save as much water as we can in water-butts but carrying lots of filled two-gallon cans round the garden is tiring work.

As I watered the plants I listened to the birds calling to each other as they do in the evening. Gradually the day-time birds fell silent and the night-time sounds began. One of the sounds we have been listening to for the last couple of weeks is the calling of a couple of Tawny owlets in the trees opposite our house. It started with just one owl calling on its own but a few days later another one joined in. They call every few seconds for the whole night from about 8.30pm until dawn the next morning. They become very noisy every now and then, clamouring and squeaking and I assume that is when they are being fed. They must be getting quite big by now as their voices are louder and they are moving through the trees. Sometimes they are near the end of the lane where they started off and sometimes they are in the ash tree opposite our house. I am used to the noise they make now but at first it was difficult to get to sleep.

The sunset picture I took yesterday evening was at 9.30pm and it was still light enough for me to see round the garden without a torch at 11pm. It starts to get light just before 3am and by 3.30am to 4am most of the birds are singing again. I have to collect all the bird feeders that are near the house if they still have food in them and bring them into the porch or greenhouse. This is because of the rooks who descend on the feeders at the crack of dawn and have loud arguments among themselves just under our bedroom window. Unfortunately, we are still being woken by a rook despite there not being any food outside the house (there are other feeders further down the garden that we leave out). This rook is a young one who doesn’t seem to want to learn to feed itself. It follows its parent about calling loudly and not watching the adult bird as it shows its fledgling where to find food.

Young rook

Young rook

The fledgling has just noticed its parent has arrived. The parent hopes it hasn’t been noticed!

The fledgling is calling and fluttering its wings and the parent resignedly goes to join it.

Off they go together to look for food under the tree. Poor parent rook – all the other rooks’ fledglings have gone off a week or more ago and only this one is left, unable to feed itself.

Another young family we have in the garden are three mallard ducklings with their mother.

We have been watching this little family grow from tiny little balls of fluff to these young ducks.

An over-exposed photo of them on the 9th of June

And here they are on the 12th of June.

Here they are resting on lily-pads. The smallest one on the right is fast asleep.

They visited the ground feeder the following day. Only the smallest one can get through the mesh now.

We briefly had another family of mallards that same day. This time there were eight ducklings.

We had another visitor last night but it was an adult this time.

A hedgehog.

Trinity Sunday and Father’s Day

17 Tue Jun 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Insects, plants, trees, Uncategorized, walking

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

19th century, acanthus, altar, bedstraw, church architecture, common knapweed, corn dolly cross, cypress, Easter Sepulchre, Father's Day, font, greater knapweed, hardheads, hedge bindweed, hedge mustard, hogweed, Hoverfly, jack-go-to-bed-at-noon, kneelers, meadow vetchling, medieval, mosquito, needlework, Norman, parvise, pyramidal orchid, Rood loft stairs, rood screen, St Margaret South Elmham, Trinity Sunday, tutsan, village sign, village stocks, yarrow

This is R’s Father’s Day present from E. This is the third year she has got him the Tour de France premium pack and I am sure he is really happy with it. He cycles whenever he can and has enjoyed watching the Tour for many years.

It was also Trinity Sunday on Sunday, the day on which we have to consider God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Many people have difficulty with this concept but I have never found it difficult to understand that God is one god but has three parts or roles; though of course my ability to express this is woefully inadequate. I can accept this without having to question it. I can accept that God is Father (the Creator) and that God is Son (Jesus, who lived on earth experiencing everything that a human could ever experience and who died for us) and that God is Holy Spirit (the Comforter, our strength when we are in need). I think we are all different things to different people and have to behave differently depending on what is needed of us but at the same time we are still the same person, so we have an idea of where to start from when considering the Trinity of God. A human father has many other roles as well as being a father – son, husband, wage-earner, jack-of-all-trades. I hope all fathers were made to feel appreciated on Sunday.

The Trinity Sunday service was at St Margaret South Elmham church which is close enough for us to walk to which R and I really enjoy. The weather was cloudy and cool again but we were fortunate in that it didn’t rain while we were going to and coming from church. I saw a number of interesting plants on our walk and took a couple of photos on the way home. After doing a few chores after lunch I decided to walk back to St Margaret’s and take some more pictures and include some of the pretty church too. The light was bad and it rained a little while I was out so some of the photos didn’t come out at all well. The interior of the church was too dark for some of my shots and even with the flash most didn’t come out. I did have enough fairly good pictures though, to give you an idea of what I saw. I am indebted to the history of the church leaflet I bought at the church for some of the information below.

The old village stocks which are kept in the porch.

The beautiful South Door with the Norman archway. The stonework is at least 800 years old.

The porch has a room above it, a parvise or priest’s room but it is not normally open to the public. Parvise means ‘paradise’ but I doubt whether it is like paradise up there! The books and documents belonging to the church used to be kept in a parvise and sometimes the priest used to live there. Some of these rooms in other churches are made into little chapels for private prayer.

The 15th century font.

The font is of a design which is common in East Anglia. It is octagonal and the symbols of the four Evangelists alternating with angels bearing shields are round the bowl. There are lions round the stem of the font, too.

The Easter Sepulchre.

I was unable to get all of the medieval sepulchre in; there are a couple of pinnacles and a finial above it. This is where some of the consecrated bread from the Mass was placed on Good Friday and then brought back to the altar on Easter Day which symbolised Jesus’ burial in the tomb and then resurrection.

Panels from the base of the former rood screen.

These old medieval panels are not in a good condition but you can just see remnants of the paintings that once covered them. In my photograph you can’t see the one on the left, thought to be St Hubert but you can see the ones on the right who are probably bishops.

The 19th century altar

: Beautiful needlework

These are just a few examples of the many lovely kneelers in this church. The photos are worth zooming in on!

The tiny narrow rood loft stairs.

The stairs enabled the priest to get to the top of the Rood Screen where lots of candles were lit.

A corn dolly cross behind the pulpit

I saw many pretty flowers on my walk to St Margarets and some less pretty but equally noteworthy.

Hedge Mustard

This plant is recognised by its branches which protrude almost at right-angles to the stem. The French used to use an infusion of this plant as a gargle and to improve their vocal performance. The pungent taste of the concoction was improved by adding liquorice or scented honey. The British were not so keen and used the plant to make a sauce to be served with salt fish. The sap was mixed into a syrup with honey or treacle as a cure for asthma.

Tutsan

Another plant with antiseptic properties, the leaves of tutsan were laid across flesh wounds to help heal them. Tutsan derives its name from the Anglo-Norman word ‘tutsaine’ (toute-saine in French) meaning ‘all-wholesome’ or ‘all-healthy’. When fresh, the leaves have no particular smell, but a day or so after drying and for four years or so afterwards they emit a subtle, pleasant odour. This is likened by some to that of ambergris so tutsan is known by some people as sweet amber. Richard Mabey in ‘Flora Britannica’ says the leaves have ‘an evocative, fugitive scent, reminiscent of cigar boxes and candied fruit’. I wonder if this helps anyone imagine what it smells like? Its dried leaves have been used as scented book-marks, particularly in prayer books and Bibles.

Common Knapweed or Hardheads

Common Knapweed

According to folklore this flower can be used to foretell a girl’s future. She must pick the expanded florets off the flower-head and then put the remainder of the flower in her blouse. After an hour she must take it out and examine it; if the previously unexpanded florets have now blossomed it means that the man she will marry is shortly coming her way.

Yarrow

Achilles was said to have cured wounds made by iron weapons by using yarrow. The Anglo-Saxons believed yarrow could purge and heal such wounds when pounded with grease. It was used to drive away evil and sickness, to increase physical attractiveness and to protect people from being hurt by the opposite sex. In a Gaelic chant a woman says: ‘I will pick the green yarrow that my figure may be fuller….. that my voice will be sweeter….. that my lips will be like the juice of the strawberry…. I shall wound every man, but no man shall harm me.’ Scary!!

Meadow Vetchling

Bedstraw

I cannot decide whether this is Common Marsh Bedstraw or Hedge Bedstraw. It is probably Common Marsh Bedstraw and was used to stuff mattresses with.

Greater Knapweed

Greater Knapweed with visiting mosquito

This plant and common Knapweed are very similar but this is the larger plant and has more thistle-like leaves. Also the outer row of florets are larger than the rest and more spreading. The bracts under the flower-head are slightly different too. For many years this plant was used to treat wounds, ruptures, bruises, sores, scabs and sore throats.

Hedge Bindweed

These beautiful white flowers glow in the dusk and the flowers stay open into the night, sometimes all night if there is a moon. They attract the convolvulus hawk moth which has a long enough tongue to extract the nectar at the base of the flower and the moth pollinates the flower at the same time.

St Margaret’s village sign

This is on the village green. The old building behind looks as though it used to be the forge.

Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon

And it had already gone before I found it! I will see if I can take a photo of its large dandelion-like flowers one morning. It also has enormous ‘clocks’ of downy seeds. The long tap-roots are sweet-tasting like parsnips when cooked.

A hoverfly on hogweed

Acanthus

An acanthus plant by someone’s garden fence.

Cypress with cones

Not a very clear photo I’m afraid.

Lastly, a few photos of some Pyramidal Orchids.

Miscellany Part 2

15 Sun Jun 2014

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

barley, church cleaning, churchyard, coffin bier, electrical repairs, flowers, grasses, guelder rose, hedge woundwort, Klargester septic tank, landscaping, LED lights, lesser tortoiseshell butterfly, memorial stone, micro moth, ox-eye daisies, pond, Rumburgh Church, St Michael's water tower, St Peter's church, walking, wheat

I cannot believe how quickly this year is speeding by! I always think at the beginning of spring that this year I will definitely make a better job of the gardening and I will have the time to do all the things I need to do around the house. I always forget that as spring flows into summer the amount of jobs that need doing multiply and multiply and here I am left far behind yet again. I forget how much time I have to spend away from the house driving about the countryside and this year I have had extra places to go. Mum now has monthly check-ups at the hospital in Norwich to make sure her eyes are still free of macular degeneration. My younger daughter E is hoping to go to City College Norwich in the autumn so we have had a number of visits there over the past few weeks, getting to know the place and some of the people there.

We have had a visit from the electrician who has done some work for us. We had spoken to him a few weeks ago asking him to replace our kitchen under-cupboard lights which were very old and becoming faulty. We also needed a new box cover for the electrics for our Klargester septic tank. The old box cover had rusted away some years ago and we have had an upside-down plastic bin over the top since then! We also need a lot of re-wiring done and some outside lights replacing. The weekend before last R and I were woken in the middle of the night by a roaring noise in the house. For some time we couldn’t think what it was and where the noise was coming from but eventually I realised it was something to do with the electric immersion heater which I switched off immediately. (We use our immersion heater during the summer to heat our water; during the winter we use a gas boiler for water and central heating and this is fuelled by propane gas which is enormously expensive. We are not on mains gas and as we often have power cuts it is better not to have everything powered by electricity. We switch the immersion heater on over-night as electricity is cheaper then.) The thermostat had gone faulty and the water was boiling. The hot tank was emptying and the cold water tank and expansion tank were full of hot water – the house was turning into a kettle. I wonder if steam was rising out of the roof? If it had been left on much longer the tank would have exploded. I phoned the electrician and asked him to add a new thermostat to his list of jobs to do. When he visited last week he put in new kitchen lights for us….

A thin strip of LED lights only a centimetre wide – such bright lights!

he replaced the septic tank electric box cover…..

The septic tank with the electric box wearing its attractive new cover.

and fitted a new thermostat to our immersion heater. He will be coming again soon to do the rewiring and fitting new outside lights.

The landscaper who had worked on our big pond in February also visited our house on the same day as the electrician and filled in all the ruts the JCB had made in the lawn with top-soil. R is very pleased that this has been done at last. He has seeded it all and we are now waiting for the grass to regrow.

The ruts nicely filled-in at last.

While he was at our house we asked the landscaper to look at our small pond and let us know how it can be improved. We don’t want the pond quite so close to the hedge, the liner needs replacing and I would like a boggy area at the side of the pond where I can plant iris, lobelia and other marsh plants.

The small pond in desperate need of improvement

The last couple of weeks I haven’t had to take Mum to church. She has been taken by a young man from her church who lives in Harleston. He works abroad, especially in Asia and the far East, for much of the year as a film director. When he returns home from his high-powered meetings and filming in India and China he resumes his more important job of taking old ladies to church and being bossed about by them. Well, what else has he to do except a bit of script writing! I am really very grateful to him. He stays in this country until September and that is probably when I’ll have to resume my duties again.

Meanwhile, I have enjoyed two weeks of going to church with my husband. It is our month for cleaning Rumburgh church and when we went in last week we were amazed at how dirty it was. The church had had a few visitors who had left some rubbish about and there was dirt which had been trodden in on shoes. The main mess had been caused by our resident bats. It took us about two-and-a -half hours to clean up the worst of the mess. I think that during the summer when we have more visitors and when the bats are active the church should be cleaned more than once a month but some of the people on our rota will only come in once a month or only if we have a service in the church and of course we don’t have services every week in our church. I also find that some of our cleaners will concentrate on the entrance to the church and will often ignore the Sanctuary at the East end of the church where the altar is.

Wild flowers in Rumburgh churchyard

Ox-eye daisies in Rumburgh churchyard

A beautiful flower arrangement on the altar

The old coffin bier in the church

Memorial stone in the aisle

R and I went for another of our walks across the fields a week or so ago. We didn’t intend to go far as we were both tired.

A view across the fields

The path at the edge of the field

Hedge Woundwort

Hedge Woundwort is in flower everywhere we look at the moment. This plant has been used since the times of the ancient Greeks to stem bleeding and treat wounds. Poultices, ointments and infusions were made with the leaves and the flowers made into conserves. It has been proved that the volatile oil contained in this plant does have antiseptic qualities.

An, as yet, unidentified micro moth

St Peter’s church

Water tower at St Michaels

Most of the water in East Anglia comes from springs and artesian wells and is very ‘hard’ water. We all suffer from lime-scale in our homes and all those who can afford one get a water-softener. I love the taste of our water and when and if we get a water-softener I would have to have a tap for un-softened water.

A Lesser Tortoiseshell butterfly

We saw this butterfly sunning itself on the path.

We also saw the crops ripening…..

Barley.

Wheat

We saw other grasses too

And a beautiful Guelder Rose.

I think I would love to have one of these in my garden!

The walk took longer than we thought it would because there was a path diversion which we took but after struggling through nettles and thistles and head-high grasses we had to turn back as the path hadn’t been cleared.

R has spent all this past week away, firstly in Gloucestershire and then he travelled to Lancashire for a couple of days. He returned home on Friday having called in on his mother and spent the night with his brother in Manchester. E and I had spent the day without electricity as there was a planned power cut to enable the electricity company to do repairs. It is difficult to find things to do these days which doesn’t involve the use of electricity. We managed however, and it is a good opportunity to have silence in the house with no humming fridges and freezers, no radios and TVs. The only worry I had during the six-and-a-half hours was whether the food was still alright in the fridge and freezers. It was a very warm day! As it turned out, all was well.

A Pleasing Day. 10th June 2014

11 Wed Jun 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Insects, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized, wild birds

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

annual meadow-grass, banded demoiselle damselfly, bee orchid, black medick, cock's-foot grass, creeping tormentil, fly-past, pale persicaria, redshank, scarlet pimpernel, scentless mayweed, Trooping the Colour, wren

It was another beautiful sunny day yesterday. We are fortunate to live in the driest part of the British Isles (apparently drier than Jerusalem!) and while the rest of the country have had showers and rain during the past few days we have only had a short sprinkle of rain at about 10pm on Monday night. I decided to spend the morning at home getting on with chores – mainly washing, which dried quickly on the line. I had spent some time the evening before watering all the plants in tubs, new plants in the flower-beds and all the plants in the green-house, so everything looked bright and green and healthy.

As well as household chores I spent some time walking round the garden slowly looking for anything new which had appeared in the last few days. I have been so busy recently I hadn’t had time to do this for days. I was pleasantly surprised at what I found.

I walked down to the big pond to start with and watched lots of dragonflies and damselflies flitting about over the surface of the water. I tried to photograph them but without success – they flew too fast for me to catch them in flight and none of them seemed to settle for a second. I was excited to see a Banded Demoiselle Damselfly. I had seen one last year for a few seconds near the pond, but today I watched this one flying about for some time. I was anxious in case the dragonflies caught it, and though they attempted it a few times they didn’t manage to do it while I was there. In spite of the Demoiselle flying slowly and weakly (it flutters and flaps its wings like a large butterfly) I couldn’t catch it with the camera until it settled firstly on a lily-pad…

Banded Demoiselle Damselfly

and then on a bramble.

Banded Demoiselle Damselfly

The photos aren’t as clear as I would like but you can see the shiny blue body of the insect and the dark band across its wings, which is also a dark blue.

I then became aware that I had disturbed a wren who was making alarm calls.

Wren

I soon left the wren alone and concentrated on looking for wild flowers.

Creeping Tormentil

Creeping Tormentil with tiny black bee

I found a nice collection of flowers growing together.

005Wild flowers - speedwell, heartsease, scarlet pimpernel & red deadnettle

Speedwell, hearts-ease, scarlet pimpernel and red dead-nettle.

Scarlet Pimpernels are quite beautiful when looked at closely. They are very common little flowers but only open their petals between 8a.m. and 3p.m. and never open on dull or wet days. They can sometimes have blue, lilac, pink or white flowers and sometimes have a mixture of colours on an individual plant. The plant has many names in Britain – ‘change-of-the-weather’, ‘poor man’s weatherglass’ and ‘shepherd’s sundial’ being a few.

Scarlet Pimpernel

The next plant is one I am forever pulling out of my flower-beds. It is extremely persistent!

Black Medick

The name of this plant has nothing to do with medicine but means the ‘plant of the Medes’. It is still cultivated as animal fodder in some European countries and is one of the plants sold on St Patrick’s Day as shamrock. Other plants which have claims to be shamrock are hop trefoil, white clover and wood sorrel.

Scentless Mayweed

Scentless Mayweed usually flowers in July but this year everything is flowering early. The name mayweed has nothing to do with the month of May but comes from the Old English word for a maiden and refers to the use once made of the plant for the treatment of female complaints.

Redshank

A member of the dock family – one of the knot-grasses

Annual Meadow-grass

Cock’s Foot grass

The Trooping of the Colour to celebrate the Queen’s Official Birthday takes place this coming Saturday. There is always a fly-past and during the week before the celebration there is a rehearsal of this which goes directly over our house. Not all the planes and formations take part in the rehearsal and unfortunately this year there were fewer than usual.