The Weather

27 Thu Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized

Tags

blackberry, clouds, cowslips, gardening, primroses, rhubarb, snow, weather

The weather is a topic we British never tire of talking about. This is because it is forever changing and unpredictable. The temperature can rise or fall by as much as ten degrees centigrade in just a few hours at any time of the day; we can have warm days in winter and cold days in summer and a rain cloud is usually just about to appear over the horizon. Our lives are all affected by the weather to a lesser or greater extent. The North Atlantic Drift around our shores protects us from the bitter cold winters that other countries this far north have to endure. We are a maritime nation.

I live in north Suffolk at a latitude of about 52.5 degrees north which is further north than Winnipeg and at about the same latitude as Berlin, Warsaw and Irkutsk. We are buffeted by the strong, wet, warm Westerlies from the Atlantic but also get winds straight from the Arctic or from Siberia and, if the weather forecast is correct for this weekend, we also get nice warm winds from the south-east; from the Mediterranean. Lovely!

Yesterday began with a frost. The temperature had gone down to minus 2 degrees centigrade overnight but at dawn the sky was starting to cloud over and the frost soon disappeared. We then had a day of ‘April’ weather – lots of showers of hail, sleet and rain – and also some sunshine. Not a good day for gardening! I spent most of it with my mother taking her shopping and then to church with her for Stations of the Cross and then a Mass.

March and April can be so beautiful but the gardener must be forever vigilant and protect vulnerable plants from frost, ice and also the strengthening sun. I looked at my diaries for last winter the other day and made a note of the amount of snow we had had. The first lot of snow was on the 5th of December 2012 and temperatures didn’t get much above freezing for some days after that. A thaw on 14th December. Snow again on 13th January 2013 and snow showers continuing most days without a thaw until 26th January. A thaw on 27th January. Snow again on 2nd February and snow showers most days until a thaw on 14th February. Snow flurries from 21st to 24th February and then heavy snow from 9th to 13th March which took ages to disappear. A day of snow on 4th April. And this winter not one flake of snow here at all! Yet! The thaws and consequent ice are the real problems I find during a cold winter. This is what kills the plants and damages roads and buildings.

R and I are weather watchers and we have such a wonderful view of the wide East Anglian sky from the back of our house. I took a couple of photos of the edge of a cold front going over last Friday. The thick grey cloud overhead with a sharp edge to it to the west and clear blue sky beyond approaching on a stiff south-westerly breeze.

The following day was Saturday and a good gardening day. I had weeded round our rhubarb plant during last week, which, by the way is now ready for pulling, and I had tidied the blackberry canes next to it as well. The blackberry wanted to grow where the rhubarb is and I had a bit of a fight with it, removing unwanted canes and cutting down others. It is now nice and tidy with most of the new canes tied up and well away from the rhubarb. I also had to dig up some cowslip plants from where they wanted to grow in the lawn and put them where R and I want them to grow, on the edge of the ditch at the front of the house. R finds it difficult to mow round the flowers when they are in the lawn and even though I think they look lovely there it will make R’s job quicker and easier now they are elsewhere. We have a few different coloured cowslips in our garden and some new plants which are neither primroses nor cowslips. The bees do a good job of fertilizing all our flowers and the resultant mongrel plants are very interesting and varied. Next to the rhubarb on the opposite side to the blackberry I found a wonderful collection of different types of primula. I have dug these up and put them in a seed bed area to see how they develop.

I then spent a little time looking at and photographing the clouds. Caravans and convoys of clouds travelling across the sky. To use a well-worn simile they really are like fleets of sailing ships on the ocean. R likes to look at clouds and see pictures and objects in them: I see islands and mountain ranges in the sky.

Later that afternoon the sky darkened and even though we stayed dry there were rain clouds all around us.

Better Late Than Never

26 Wed Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Uncategorized

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Tags

aubretia, birch catkins, bluetit, Bungay, daffodils, Eye, Lent course, narcissus, pheasant, raw milk, roadworks, women drivers, woodpigeon

I don’t seem to have had the time to write a post for days and have got all behind. So, instead of trying to catch up I will start with today and if I have the time will add in some of the things I have done/noticed during the past week at a later date.

This morning was mainly taken up with housework – boring but necessary. The weather here, unlike the rest of the country it seems, was lovely. Bright, hazy sunshine and light winds which dried my washing very nicely. The wind was a little chilly as it came from the east but nothing to complain about. I had to go to Bungay in the early afternoon to do some shopping and post a couple of letters. The improvements to the town’s pavements and road system are coming along nicely and I was able to drive into the centre for the first time in weeks. When the work is finished there will be fewer traffic jams (I hope!) and the absence of kerbs will mean that those with prams and pushchairs or in wheelchairs or mobility scooters will be able to get about more easily. The town will look very different and in some ways that is a little sad. Bungay will have lost it’s timeless look; it will no longer look quaint and old-fashioned but like all other towns with the regulation one-way streets and easy-access shops.

On my way home I nearly collided with another car. All the lanes are mainly single track with a few passing places. The lanes are also windy so it is always best not to go too fast. The driver of the other car came shooting round a corner towards me and had to swerve to avoid me. She was on the phone. I am very sorry to say that a lot of the really bad driving I see these days is done by women. Women used to be reliable, sensible drivers but not any more it seems. The worst ones are the young girls who appear to be unable to drive at less than 50mph. They are also the ones using phones: twice in recent weeks I have been stuck in a queue at a junction behind young women who thought it would be a good moment to sent a text or instant message. One girl had stopped a couple of yards from the junction to message someone and had opened the driver’s door and was hanging her leg out! She may have broken down but it didn’t look like it. Many women don’t know how to reverse and won’t pull into a passing place and to be followed by a woman on the school run in the morning is a terrifying experience! They are always late and have cars full of children.

My route home was along the road from Bungay to Flixton which has water-meadows on one side of it. It has been pleasing to see the cows out on the meadows again after their winter stay in the cattle sheds. The farmer here is one of the few remaining dairy farmers around. He has recently started selling raw (unpasteurized/unhomogenized) milk from a little stall in the farmyard and this has been exceedingly popular. Every time I drive past there is always someone there in the little shop.

I took a few photos this afternoon. This first one (which I actually took this morning) is from an upstairs window and is of a couple of woodpigeons feasting on leaf and flower buds on the top of our hedge. What is not obvious is that they weren’t the only pigeons on the hedge at that moment and they spent most of the day there too!

Birch catkins and new leaves. Our horrible, tumbledown summerhouse is in the background!

A bluetit in the birch tree.

Scented narcissus

Aubretia

Scented daffodils. These have come out extremely early and have rather thick petals, almost as if fashioned out of wax.

A male pheasant. I took this photo through the kitchen window which accounts for the vague haziness.

I drove to Mum’s house this evening at 6.45pm and there was still a lot of light in the sky. We attended her Lent course lecture in Eye, the subject being Prayer for Healing and Wholeness and given by the Sub-Dean and Canon Pastor from the cathedral at Bury St Edmunds. A very interesting talk indeed.

A starry drive home with the temperature just above freezing at 1 degree centigrade.

Aside

Are You Passionate? Or Are You Just Good at Your Job?

21 Fri Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Uncategorized

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enthusiasm, passion, vocabulary

I have a bugbear! My bugbear is the over-use of the word ‘passionate’. Everyone has to be passionate about something or other. It seems that unless you are ‘passionate’ about your job the implication is that you won’t be interested enough in it, that you don’t care, that you won’t produce the goods.

In today’s post was a horticultural supplies catalogue with an introduction written by the owner/director in which she talked about her team of ‘passionate garden product designers’. This conjures up to me a rather amusing image of all sorts of extra-curricular activities going on in the drawing office! I am old fashioned I expect, but to me, to be passionate means that one let’s one’s heart rule one’s head, that things aren’t thought out properly because one has rushed into something without thinking. I don’t want passion when ordering bathroom supplies or buying furniture, I want to talk to someone who knows their job and will understand my needs. Enthusiasm, yes, I can deal with that, as long as I can be helped efficiently. I am quite happy to be advised by a miserable old sod predicting doom and gloom as long as I get the right advice.

When E started at nursery school, her teacher came to visit us to talk about E’s needs and the facilities provided at the school. My heart sank when the woman told us that she was passionate about teaching and the children she cared for. E, even more than me, cares not a jot about passion in ordinary life. She needed and still needs plain speaking, calm and authoritative but kindly people around her. E’s teacher got very upset when E didn’t really take to her. E only settled into school when she moved up to the Reception class run by a very sensible woman who was considered strict by some. Her classroom was quiet, busy and well run and E thrived.

I am not saying there isn’t a place for passion. The world would be a very dull place without it and I get passionate myself about certain things – art, nature, music, beautiful objects, certain ideals I have, the need for conservation etc. It is the word ‘passionate’ being misapplied that I object to. People think that they are expected to over-enthuse about their job when it is just a job they are good at. Unless you say in an interview that you are passionate about dealing with the public when you are going for a tele-sales job for example, you probably don’t stand a chance of getting it.

Please let us get rid of this ‘passion’ and just get on with doing our jobs properly!

Wild Flowers? or Weeds?

20 Thu Mar 2014

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

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bumble bees, chickweed, dog violet, flints, greylag, marsh marigold, narcissus, red dead-nettle, sunset, sweet violet, weeds, white dead-nettle, wildflower

Our garden is too large for us to keep every part of it neat and well manicured and I wouldn’t like it half so well if it was. I love gardening – digging, weeding, tending plants, but there is always risk, responsibility and pressure to do things properly and at the right time. The wild, untamed, untidy parts of the garden are just pure pleasure to me. I have no yearning to tidy them though I realise that some management is necessary which is why we had the work done to the big pond a few weeks ago. The ‘weeds’ I assiduously pull out of my flower beds I love to look at in the wild garden. Flowers at this time of the year are a wonderful source of nectar for insects, especially bumble bees, just out of hibernation.

The red dead-nettle, Lamium, a member of the mint family, grows all over our garden and is a very common plant in Britain and flowers for most of the year. Both it and the white dead-nettle were boiled and used as pot-herbs and as pig-swill in the past. They had many medicinal uses, most notably against the ‘King’s Evil’ – scrofula, a type of tuberculosis that caused skin eruptions. Culpepper says ‘The herb bruised and with salt and vinegar and hog’s-grease laid upon a hard tumour or swelling, or that vulgarly called the king’s-evil, do help to dissolve or discuss them’. It also ‘makes the heart merry, drives away melancholy, quickens the spirits’. If you look at the photo below carefully you will be able to see the dark anthers under the hooded upper lip and the darker purple markings on the lower notched lip.

The white dead-nettle’s flowers are bigger than the red’s. It relies on bumble bees to pollinate it’s flowers and they (the flowers) are custom made for bees. The lower lip is a landing stage for the bee and has two small lateral lobes and a notched middle lobe. The anthers are black and are under the hooded upper lip. As the bee enters the flower seeking the nectar the top of it’s abdomen brushes the stamens and gets covered in pollen which is then transferred to the style of the next flower it visits.

We don’t have as much chickweed in this garden as in other gardens we have had probably because we get so many ducks, geese and chickens passing through. They love the plant, which can also be eaten by humans as a salad vegetable. The flowers are so small that most people hardly notice them but looked at closely they are quite lovely. The botanical name is Stellaria, little star, and the name is quite apt. The styles are white and the stamens are such a pretty pink. Chickweed is a member of the pink family. It has a single line of hairs which run the whole length of the stem and if a drop of dew lands on the plant it runs down the stem by way of the hairs until it gets to a pair of leaves. Here some of the water is absorbed by the hairs and the rest carries on down the stem to the next pair of leaves and so on. This water is reserved in the plant in case of drought. It flowers almost all year round and is widespread and prolific, which is why most gardeners hate it!

This marsh-marigold plant is in our small pond and is the only decent plant in there. It flowers and flowers and looks so bright and cheerful. We have another plant in the big pond but I have never seen any flowers on that. I also discovered a very small plant in the ditch by the big pond with much smaller flowers. I posted a photo of it a few days ago. Another name for marsh-marigold is Kingcup and according to one of my flower books this is derived from the Old English ‘cop’ meaning button or stud such as kings once wore. Apparently, farmers in many parts of the British Isles, used to hang marsh-marigolds over the byres of their cattle on May Day to protect them from the evil doings of fairies and witches.

We not only have dog violet in our garden but also sweet violet which is the only violet flower to be scented. In olden times they were strewn on the floor to sweeten the air. Their scent is lost almost as soon as it is noticed and this is because the flower produces a substance called ionine as well as the scent. Ionine dulls the sense of smell so that not only does the violet’s scent disappear but any other odours too. Clever! In the verge near to my mother’s cottage are many white violets which are very pretty.

Our garden is full of flints and some of them are enormous. Trying to make new flowerbeds has taken so much time and energy as these great stones have to be levered out all the time and more and more keep appearing. I quite understand the old folk thinking that stones grew in the soil. This is our Lindt flint as we think it looks like a Lindt chocolate rabbit.

A pretty narcissus has just flowered.

The dear goose sleeping on her nest.

And lastly a few pictures of last night’s sunset.

Unphotographable

19 Wed Mar 2014

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

chiff-chaff, clouds, hare, house sparrow, nesting, phalaenopsis orchid, ploughing, skylark, spring, sunset, terrier, woodpecker, yellowhammer

Spring is definitely progressing quite nicely. We have had some really glorious weather recently – blue, shining days and mild, moonlit nights. Today we had some very heavy showers – the first real rain for some time. In fact, the mud on the roads has been drying out and cars have been causing dust clouds as they travel along our lanes. Most of the recent signs of Spring and many of the things I have seen in the past few days I have not been able to photograph. Either they are unphotographable like birdsong, or my camera is unable to take a decent picture of them – birds in the garden (can’t zoom in far enough) and the moon – or I am driving somewhere and can’t stop.

More and more different types of birds are singing each day and I have noticed more pairs of birds in the garden instead of either solitary birds or flocks of birds. The house sparrows have started building their nests under the eaves of our house. They sound as if they are wearing hob-nailed boots as they busily sort out the old nesting sites under the roof tiles and they clatter about in the gutter chattering and arguing. R and I look forward (I don’t think!) to the mornings when we are awoken by the sound of a happy sparrow singing at dawn -( ‘cheep!’ (two, three) ‘cheep!’ (two, three) ‘cheep!’ (two, three) ‘cheep!…..). When R and I went out for our walk last Thursday evening we listened to many birds singing including a yellowhammer. These birds are getting quite scarce now and this makes me sad. The woodpeckers are starting to drum. I heard a chiff-chaff warbler yesterday – our first summer visitor – and above my head a skylark was singing.

On Sunday evening at dusk I looked out of the kitchen window to see a large hare run along the road to the end of our drive and stop there for a minute. It then raced across our grass at the front of the house then out of sight in the direction of the big pond. On the way to Mum’s house on Sunday morning I had to slow down as a very small terrier dog was running up the lane keeping pace with a tractor ploughing the field next to the road. The little dog belonged to the ploughman who waved an apology to me as I drove very carefully and slowly past. This evening, on my way to Mum’s house again, the sky looked quite dramatic -a thick black cloud-covering which had rents in it with the pale blue evening sky showing through like silk beneath the slashes in Elizabethan clothes.

I will end this post with, first of all, some photos of my Phalaenopsis orchid which I won in a church coffee morning raffle on 5th October last year and which has been in continuous flower since then. (Apologies to friends on Facebook who have seen this already today). I will then add some photos of today’s sunset.

Wednesday 12th to Sunday 16th March

17 Mon Mar 2014

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

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alder, ambulances, brimstone butterfly, chaffinch, church, cowslip, daffodils, dog violet, Eye, fields, figs, greylags, Harleston, hazel, heartsease, Lent, mallards, moon, moorhen, nesting, pond, prayer, pussy willow, quiz night, rooks, Rumburgh, silverlace primula, sunset, tortoiseshell butterfly, trees, Wissett

Wednesday began with frost and mist. This soon cleared and the weather was then lovely for the rest of the day. I did my usual shopping trip with my mother with a detour to a free-range chicken farm at Eye where Mum buys her eggs. I had a little shopping to do for myself, so called in at Harleston on my way home. I arrived home just after 2pm for a late lunch and had time for a few household chores and a quick walk round the garden to feed the birds, tidy up a couple of things and take some photos before R came home.

A moorhen and a chaffinch at the front of the house.

The moorhen again.

A couple of photos of the daffodils that have come up round the big pond.

Some violet leaves that have struggled up through the dried mud round the pond.

And some cowslip leaves too!

Reflection of trees and cloud in the pond.

Afternoon moon.

I had decided what we should have for an evening meal and was about to start it when R offered to cook and I gladly accepted his offer. I didn’t have time to eat anything as I had to go out at 6.45pm to collect Mum and take her to Eye to attend a Lent course. The course in her area is a deanery course. A deanery is a collection of benefices and a benefice is a collection of parishes. In rural areas to have benefice and or deanery meetings or courses means that there will be more people attending and any speakers kind enough to visit will have a good audience. The only downside is that the distances to be travelled by many parishioners is very great. This year’s course is on prayer and Wednesday’s talk was on ‘Prayer with Words’. The speaker was the Precentor from the Cathedral at Bury St Edmund’s; a really pleasant man who gave an interesting talk. He introduced us to poets and poems that were new to us as well as reading from old favourites. My journey home was very difficult because of thick fog.

Thursday. I was woken just before 6.00am by the rooks! I had remembered to bring in the sunflower seed feeder but the rooks were trying to get the remains of yesterday’s seed off the bird-table and were tapping loudly on it with their enormous beaks. I have a cage round the bird-table which is supposed to prevent large birds from getting on it. However, it doesn’t stop the birds from clinging on to the edge of the table with their claws, flapping their wings for balance and pecking food through the mesh! Another lovely day. Went in to Halesworth for a haircut and to get yet more shopping (I always manage to forget something each time I go!) My usual hairdresser is on maternity leave so her Mum did my hair and we chatted about babies. Both her daughters are having their first babies in the next two weeks and they are getting a little apprehensive. On the way home I saw a tortoiseshell butterfly and an enormous brimstone butterfly.

I spent the afternoon gardening as well as having a short (for us!) conversation with my sister who was planning to visit Mum at the weekend. The geese have been very argumentative this week. The gander of the pair who have claimed the island has been spending most of his time swimming in the pond and seeing off any other goose/gander who dares to come anywhere near the pond bank. He must be exhausted as he doesn’t seem to have eaten anything either.

A couple of photos of the mallards in our front ditch.

Miniature daffodils in the grass.

Goat or Pussy Willow. Salix caprea.

When R got home he wanted to go out for a short walk across the fields. The wind had got up a little and it had got cloudy but R managed to take some decent photos while we were out.

Alder catkins and cone-like fruits from last year.

Hazel catkins.

More fog overnight.

Friday. A cooler, cloudier, breezier day. I did some more gardening and lots of ironing. The geese seemed to have resolved their differences. The resident pair came to sit near me while I gardened and whenever I looked up they gave gentle honks. I knew they were asking for food so when I had got to the end of my weeding I fetched some special goose and duck feed I have for just such an occasion (to quote Foghorn Leghorn) and cast it on the grass near by them. Of course, the gander then hissed at me while the goose ate the food. He is a very protective mate and even though I have provided the food he has to warn me off and so I do keep my distance!

Saturday. A quiet morning and another beautiful one. Still very breezy but much brighter than yesterday. Did some housework and spoke to A on the phone. We drove to Mum’s in the afternoon to see my sister F who was visiting with her eldest son and her dog Ben. We had a lovely couple of chatty hours and we then had to leave to get our evening meal before going to yet another quiz night. This one was in aid of Rumburgh village hall. I think it was the noisiest event I had been too since going to dances when I was young. The hall had just been insulated and redecorated but there were no curtains or blinds at the windows yet and I think this was the reason it was so noisy. The two farmers on our team were both a little deaf (caused by driving noisy farm machinery) and they were finding it really difficult to hear anything above the hubbub of loud chatter. Our local Member of Parliament was taking part too. He lives in Wissett, the next village along on the way to Halesworth, and is very good about taking part in local events and is a truely supportive MP. He had been out all day on the ambulances as there has been an enquiry about the time it takes for ambulances to get to emergencies. He was talking to R and one of our farmer friends and said he was very sympathetic towards the ambulance crews, as he had seen for himself the great distances they had to travel and also how many wasted journeys they had to make. R told him about my sister’s job as a paramedic in Kent and some of the problems she has to put up with too. Unfortunately we came ninth today but R won a picture of a tree in the raffle.

Sunday. There was a Morning Prayer service at Rumburgh today but I couldn’t attend as I took Mum to her church. She hasn’t got anyone to give her a lift at the moment and as she doesn’t usually see anyone at all during the week except me, and all her friends are at her church, I think it only right that I take her there. I got back home at 1.00pm and had lunch before doing some chores, putting a loaf on to bake and then back out into the garden. I fed the birds which took nearly an hour – all the feeders were empty, I have a number of them scattered about the garden and the garden is well over an acre in size. I had noticed this morning when I looked out of the window that the goose has started sitting on her nest on the island.

A dog violet in flower.

A silverlace primula.

A heartsease flower.

Figs are starting to swell on the tree.

Lots of pictures of this evening’s sunset.

The rookery in the sunset.

Meanderings and More March Flowers

11 Tue Mar 2014

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

blackthorn, daffodils, fish, frogs, hyacinths, lesser periwinkle, Leycesteria, marsh marigold, miniature iris, nesting, oak, pond, primrose, primula, rooks, rose, spirea, tawny owl, Twilight, viola

I went outside in the twilight this evening to collect my two sunflower seed feeders and bring them indoors. I’ll tell you why later. It was very cold – approaching freezing I should think – but so beautiful. The sky above, a deep blue with stars and a gibbous moon. The western horizon a strange mixture of misty yellow, pink and grey – a typical cold, wintry sunset. The strong NW breeze that had been blowing all day had dropped and everything was almost still and quiet, except for a few blackbirds singing and some pheasants calling across the fields. The largest feeder is hanging from the silver birch tree near the big pond and as I walked down the garden towards it a tawny owl sitting in one of the trees at the end of the garden gave a couple of loud, quavering hoots. I went to look at the pond. It was shining and the surface was a little puckered by the light breeze. It looked like pewter and reflected the trees nearby. Every now and then a ‘plip’ sounded as a fish leapt and rings appeared on the surface – frogs were croaking from the reeds at the far end.

Unfortunately, it was getting too cold to stand out there for much longer and I had the evening meal to prepare so reluctantly I returned to the house.

The rooks have definitely started nesting now. They no longer fly off to their night-time communal roost towards Beccles but are staying with their nests in the rookery. At nesting time they use a different call – almost a bleating sound – and as soon as I hear it I know that spring is here. The reason I collect the sunflower seed feeders in at night is because of the rooks. They descend on the feeders ‘en masse’, just at dawn and any seed left overnight disappears very quickly. I have known them unhook the feeders and take the lid off to get at the seed more easily. The smaller feeder is hanging from a pole stuck in the grass at the front of the house. At this time of year dawn is still quite late, but by May and June with dawn at 3.30am it is not pleasant to be awoken by twenty or more squabbling rooks just outside the open bedroom window. Until I decided to bring the feeders in I was having to get out of bed and shoo them away every few minutes. They soon realised that the noise they were making attracted my attention so they started eating in (almost) silence. Their rookishness always eventually got the better of them and some little ‘whispered discussion’ invariably got out of hand and there I was at the window again. I am a very light sleeper and I began to wake up at the slightest noise outside so something had to be done.

This morning started very overcast and cold but by 10am the clouds were breaking up and the sun coming out. I had some shopping to do so drove to Bungay. Bungay is a little difficult to get around at the moment as it is having lots of new pavements put in and the centre of the town is shut off to traffic. My ankle has been painful recently and I found walking through town difficult. Added to this, I was called ‘dear’ twice within about five minutes and I really object to being called ‘dear’ by strangers. I got home again at 11.30 and put the radio on while I had a cup of tea. Lisa Stansfield was choosing her favourite ~~records~~ tracks I mean (showing my age there!) and one of the ones she chose today was by Sylvester. Listening to this took me back to my youth. My friend W will remember that I used to go out with her brother who had a mobile disco which he ran with a friend. I used to go with them to gigs and help them set up and get the dancing going if it was a bit slow. I could dance for hours without tiring! (This also reminds me of a really good spoonerism I came out with at the time, when telling a friend what I did. I intended saying that I was ‘a roadie and a groupie’ but what I actually said was ‘a rudie and a gropie’). I thought a lot about this while drinking my tea. It didn’t seem that long ago when I was dancing all night with no aches and pains and now, here I was hobbling through town carrying my shopping bag and being called ‘dear’! What would be next, I wondered? Mowing passers-by down with a mobility scooter? Elbowing my way through shoppers to the freezer cabinet in the supermarket and running over their toes with my shopping trolley while they tut-tut and raise their eyebrows to each other over my head? Hmmmm….

To cheer myself up I went out into the garden and took a few photos.

We have a blackthorn tree at the back of the house. It is now in full blossom. The blackthorn at the front of the house is still covered with small tight buds. The temperature at the front of the house is very much lower than at the back and there is often about a weeks difference in flowering times.

Blackthorn tree

Blackthorn blossom

Blackthorn

Bumblebee on blackthorn

This oak tree was given me by my father a year after we moved into this house. He had dug it up from his garden and at the time it was only about nine inches tall. I call it Dad’s oak tree. He died nearly four years ago. A wood pigeon nested in the tree last summer and the shallow nest is still there.

I think this is a marsh marigold. Please correct me someone if I’m wrong. I found it today at the top of a shady ditch near the big pond.

This is of of my newest miniature iris ‘Natascha’. I only planted the bulbs last autumn.

Early daffodils with pretty hanging heads

Early pale daffodils

Perhaps these photos of my Delft Blue hyacinths show up their lovely colours better.

Delft Blue hyacinths

Delft Blue hyacinth

New leaves on the Leycesteria or Pheasant Berry

A self seeded primula in the grass

A yellow viola

Lesser periwinkle

New leaves on R’s spirea

Deer damaged daylilies

New leaves on one of R’s roses

Primroses

March Flowers in my Garden

10 Mon Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Delft Blue hyacinths, flowers, Goldbrook, Hoxne, iris danfordiae, lesser celandine, Rip van Winkle daffodils, scillas, tautology

Looking at the village map of Hoxne that R picked up on Saturday, I see that the little river running through the village is called the Goldbrook Beck. Another example of tautology. A beautiful day today though much cooler than yesterday. We have a strong NE breeze blowing which is drying my washing very well indeed.

While I’m posting I might as well add a couple of flower photos.

Lesser celandines growing in the tub containing my standard bay tree.

Iris danfordiae

The scillas have grown a little!

My very favourite hyacinth of all – a Delft Blue. It isn’t easy to see with this photo, but the outside of the flowerlet buds and the centre of the flowerlets are a wonderful turquoise. The outer part of the petals are a lovely clear blue which darkens with age to the purpley- blue of Delft pottery. I think I like blue flowers best.

Rip van Winkle daffodils

And again

Tubs of tete a tete daffodils outside the house

A Busy Week

10 Mon Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in amphibians, churches, cooking, Gardening, Insects, music, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized, walking, wild birds

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Ash Wednesday, Billingford, birds, burdock, church, embroidery, fish, Flixton, food, frogs, Goldbrook Bridge, goldcrest, gorse, Hoxne, ladybirds, Lent, lichen, moss, Norfolk & Norwich Hospital, orange tea bread, pancakes, Porgy & Bess, pulpit, rood screen, RSPB Minsmere, Rumburgh, Shrove Tuesday, St Edmund, St Felix & St Michaels church, St Mary's, tapestry, trees, windmill

This has been such a busy week that I have only had time for two posts.

R had Monday and Tuesday off work and it was so nice to be able to spend more time with him. I always have lots of boring chores to do on Mondays so I rushed through most of them and was ready to go out with R at lunchtime. We decided to go to the RSPB reserve at Minsmere which is about nine miles away. The day was fine and not too cold. We had lunch in the café at the reserve and then walked round the woodland walk. The walk out past the Scrape to the sea seemed a little cold and windswept and we thought that as some damage had been done during the tidal surge in December we would be better off avoiding that walk. It was very pleasant to be visiting during the week instead of at the weekend. It was peaceful and quiet. We didn’t see many birds as we decided not to go into any of the hides and it wasn’t quite warm enough to stand still for long. We did sit on a seat in the sun for a while and watched a goldcrest in the branches above our heads. I tried to take a photo but it flew away and I only got a picture of the lichen-covered branch it had been sitting on.

We saw lots of gorse bushes in flower and tried to smell the flowers (to find out if they do smell of honey) without spiking our noses.

We noticed many fallen trees from all the storms we have had this winter.

I love this picture! Whoooooooooo!!!

A moss tuffet.

Tuesday began with mist and frost but both soon disappeared and the sun came out. R took E to Norwich and they spent the morning there shopping and then had lunch. I had to take Mum to the eye clinic at the Norfolk and Norwich hospital again in the afternoon. She had both eyes assessed and all seemed to be going along well. Afternoons at the hospital are very busy and the carparks are always full. A new carpark, only opened at the end of last year, was nearly full when we arrived and completely full when we left so I think they will have to find some more carparking space before long. It is quite a new building but the architects didn’t make it big enough. It was apparent within a very short space of time after completion that they would have to add to the hospital and they have been adding to it ever since. It is on the outskirts of the city and there is still a little land that can be used for building but not much more, I think. They also assumed that most people would be arriving by bus from the city centre or using the park and ride service. They were wrong there as well!

Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day. When I got home I mixed the pancake mixture and then made us a light evening meal of fish and mixed vegetables. R made the pancakes for us; he is extremely good at making them and we enjoyed them very much. R and I had two each and E had four!

Wednesday morning was bright and frosty and poor R had to go back to work. Wednesday is my day for taking Mum shopping in Diss and we managed this quite quickly for a change. The supermarket didn’t seem as full as usual and we were soon on our way back to her house. A beautiful day – everything seemed shiny; mainly blue and green. The first day for months that I have gone out without a coat. After a chat and a cup of coffee I drove to Halesworth to do my shopping and to visit the library. I also drove up to the doctor’s surgery to collect my prescription and then called in at Rumburgh church to change the colours from green to purple as it was now Lent; Ash Wednesday.

The church of St Felix and St Michael, Rumburgh.

Rumburgh began as a Priory founded in 1064 which was later that century given to the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary at York. In 1086 there were twelve monks under a Prior at Rumburgh. It was never a rich priory, as you can see from the variety of materials the church was built out of. It was suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII on 12 September 1528. The church building here is all that is left of the original small priory.

In our benefice we are so fortunate as to have some very talented needlewomen. Below is an altar frontal made a couple of years ago. As you can see we have to drape everything in plastic sheets when the church isn’t being used to stop water (condensation and water penetration) and bat urine and droppings from ruining everything.

Our Jacobean pulpit with another example of our church’s embroidery

The Millenium Tapestry which hangs near the south door. All the kneelers in the church have been covered with lovely tapestries too, depicting the houses, buildings, plants, animals, organisations, families etc. associated with Rumburgh.

The nave and chancel with the lovely Rood screen between.

There was an Ash Wednesday ashing service at Rumburgh that evening but I couldn’t go as I had promised to take Mum to the service at her church at Eye. Mum’s church’s service had a communion as well so I didn’t get home until just before 10.00pm.

A much quieter day on Thursday also quite cloudy. I took E to the surgery at 9.00am for an appointment and then went home for the rest of the day. Did a little gardening and some ironing as well as other household chores. All the ladybirds in our bedroom have woken up now and only two were left wandering about on Thursday. Another quiet day on Friday spent catching up with the housework.

I made Orange Tea Bread on Saturday as we had all been asked to provide some food for a Bring and Share lunch party after church on Sunday. This is to say thank-you and good luck to Caroline our former Reader. It is quite amusing that the first thing we do as a church on the first Sunday in Lent is to have a party with lots of lovely food! R took this photo.

R and I have bought a new really good camera that we can share. We decided to go out on Saturday to try it out and so drove to Billingford, Norfolk just on the other side of the Waveney River to look at the windmill there. Some of the following photos were taken by R and some by me on my smaller camera and one by me on the new camera!

Billingford windmill

R took a lovely picture of a burdock seedhead.

We then drove to Hoxne in Suffolk to look at the village. Traditionally this was the place where Edmund, Martyr-King was captured, tortured and killed by the Vikings. Nowadays, historians think this was more likely to have taken place at Bradfield St Clare just south of Bury St Edmunds.

This is the inscription on Goldbrook Bridge, under which St Edmund was supposed to have been captured.

Goldbrook Bridge.

Hoxne village.

The Old Butchery. The window has a lovely etched glass picture of a bull.

We shopped in Harleston on the way home and had an Indian takeaway meal that evening.

Sunday morning service was at St Mary’s church at Flixton. The weather was glorious – already 14 degrees celsius on the way to church and the sun shining brightly. The service was quite well attended and the lunch afterwards was very nice with such a lot of lovely food provided. We had all clubbed together and bought Caroline an i-Pod with case, a bench for her garden, a bottle of champagne and a couple of other bottles of drink for her husband.

When R and I got home we decided to work in the garden all afternoon. We dragged some branches and other bits of plants out of the big pond. I heard frogs croaking for the first time this year and the fish had woken up and were leaping out of the water. This made me think of Porgy and Bess with the fish jumping – we don’t have cotton but R said the grass needed cutting so he tried to get the petrol push mower to start but couldn’t. Fortunately, we have a sit-on mower which he was able to start, so our grass got it’s first trim of the season.

For our evening meal I cooked a tasty low-fat meal of lemon and honey chicken with rice and green and yellow beans.

Aside

Music? Food? I’m Sure There’s a Quote There Somewhere. Play On!

06 Thu Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in music, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bach, classical music, cooking, London Youth Band, music, Panasonic, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky

I listened to my new C.D. (the one I bought second-hand at the coffee morning) the other evening while cooking. I have to listen to something while cooking as I find it calming. It would be so dull if all we human beings were the same, but I still find it amazing that some people cook to cheer themselves up or calm themselves down. If there is nothing on the radio I listen to music or the spoken word on C.D. I have an i-Pod but invariably as soon as I put it on someone comes in to the room and starts talking to me. My i-Pod is for when I am alone! If I can’t find anything to listen to I either get very grumpy or I start thinking of something – making plans or decisions etc. This is when things get a little risky! I sometimes get so caught up in my thoughts that I go off to look something up in one of my books or to ask someone a question, and then I might get distracted by something else. Before I know it I’ve left a half-prepared meal for ages and I have to rush to catch up or, even worse, something has got burnt and I have to start again. So, I listen to something that will keep me in the kitchen and stop me wandering off.
I listen to all sorts of music – I have an eclectic taste (to use an extremely hackneyed phrase). Classical, pop, rock, country, folk, world, religious, old, new – anything in fact, as long as it’s interesting/clever/tuneful/brings back memories and so on.

The new C.D. is a classical one; part of a Russian Masters series, it is of Sviatoslav Richter playing three old favourites – Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Sergey Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.1 in D flat major and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto No.1 in D minor for Harpsichord but played on the piano. All recorded in the mid 1950s . Just because a recording is old does not mean it should be cast on the scrap heap and ignored. Richter’s playing is sublime and stands the test of time.

The Tchaikovsky was played too much during the 50s and 60s and then not played at all on the radio for a very long time – people had got bored with it. It is lovely and reminds me of when I was nine years old and a member of the London Youth Band. I had just started playing the clarinet and in our series of concerts I had to play a solo with other new members in a section in the middle of the concert. The rest of the time I had to stand on a chair at the side of the stage with other young children and play the tambourine. The tambourine had long ribbons on it and we all had to shake our tambourines and beat them in absolute unison or the band master would scream at us and go purple with apoplectic rage. He was an old army bandsman and treated us young people like soldiers. Everything was regimented – we even rehearsed in the barracks at Woolwich (where that poor young army bandsman was murdered last year). The band master (like Mozart’s father) always told the audience how old we were but always said we were younger than our actual ages. As if eight or nine wasn’t good enough!

This first year I was in the band, one of our oboe players, who was also a fabulous pianist, played the first movement of the Tchaikovsky No. 1 with the band accompanying her. I was entranced. By the following year I had been promoted to the ranks and played 4th clarinet and helped to accompany her again.

One of our regular pieces was the music from the film ‘The Dambusters’ and the band master used to get the father of the girl who played the oboe/piano to shout from the back of the hall, “What about ‘The Dambusters’!” as if he was a fan totally unconnected wih the band, at every concert for many years. I’m sure nobody was fooled!

Prokofiev’s music always reminds me of a girl I used to work with in South-East London. In the early 1980s advertisers on TV and the radio had just started to use classical music a lot in their adverts. We are used to it now but then it was really exciting and new. A colleague and I were discussing this in our lunch break and we were trying to name all the pieces we recognised. An electrical goods company had just brought out a new music centre (this dates it for certain!) and they were using Prokofiev’s ‘Dance of the Knights’ from his ballet ‘Romeo and Juliet’. My colleague started singing the tune and I joined in and then we both said Prokofiev together. “Nah!”, said the girl, “Panasonic”. Which proves just how effective classical music can be in advertising.