Being Thankful for Small (and Great) Mercies.

29 Sat Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, cooking, Rural Diary, trees, Uncategorized

Tags

Mothering Sunday, simnel cake, Thankfulness, The Woodland Trust magazine

I have a lot to be thankful for. Today especially, I am grateful for

R’s safe return from a five day working trip away from home.
The fact that E has started to look forward with hope instead of with fear.
Mum having a lift to her church this Sunday so that I can go to mine with R.

Mum got a phone call the other day from a friend at church who asked if she was going to provide a Simnel Cake as usual on Mothering Sunday. A Simnel Cake can be made either for Easter or Mothering Sunday (which is this Sunday coming). It is a fruit cake with not only a marzipan top but a layer of marzipan baked in the middle. The top is decorated with eleven marzipan balls representing the eleven faithful apostles. Mum said she would be providing it if she could have a lift to church and, of course, she will be getting her lift. Hooray! I am very grateful for this as I wanted to invite Mum to lunch and if I had to take her to church I would not have the time to cook lunch for her as well. I am doubly grateful for this as not only will Mum’s church be holding the Mothering Sunday service but there will be a Baptism and a First Communion too! I am mighty glad to get out of that! I can now go to a service in my own benefice and see all my friends, be a wife and mother and sideline the daughter bit for an hour or two and get home in time to cook a decent lunch for the family.

I belong to The Woodland Trust – a charitable organisation which is trying to conserve our rapidly depleting woodland. It also works to educate people about trees and woodland and among other things, is trying to find ways of combatting all the diseases attacking our native trees. I received its quarterly magazine today and was looking through it while R and I were drinking a cup of tea when he got home. I was disappointed to see that, like most organisations, it has decided to ‘dumb down’ its magazine. It is now aimed at the weekend environmentalist – the better-off, liberal, middle-class urban dweller wanting something to do on holiday. Lots of pictures and lots of bite-size snippets of information instead of informed articles written by and for reasonably intelligent people.

There was an article about a writer and environmentalist who has spent a whole year climbing trees across Europe. He has tried to climb one tree a day and often persuaded other people, often complete strangers to join him. There was a short interview with Elton John who has planted many trees on his estate near Windsor. There was an article about geocaching – ‘a global phenomenon’ that The Woodland Trust has decided to join in with. It’s a game of hide and seek using GPS technology where items are hidden in remote spots and people scamper about moors, mountains and woodlands trying to find little prizes in cache boxes. I read out the instructions to R and we had a laugh when we found we had to ‘winkle out the trove’ from among roots and branches. R said it sounded like a cue for a Rambling Sid Rumpole song. People of a certain age from Britain will probably remember Rambling Sid and his ‘folk songs’ and if you don’t, Radio 4 Extra repeats all the ‘Round the Horne’ programmes regularly which featured him.

I will end my post with a photo of the misty sunset yesterday evening.

The line under the sun is an electricity cable and the sun appears to be balanced on it.

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.

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

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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.

March

04 Tue Mar 2014

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

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bacon onion potato sauté, blackthorn, cattle, chickens, Coffee morning, common reeds, cooking, ditching, Dog's Mercury, electric fence, farmyard, good food, greylags, Italian alders, ivy, lesser celandine, Lords and Ladies, marble galls, narcissi, nature, phone box library, photography, primroses, quiz night, rookery, Rumburgh Church, sheep, snowdrops, St James South Elmham, St Margaret South Elmham, St Michaels South Elmham, stinging nettle, the Beck, trees

A wet start to the month. R and I went off in the rain to the benefice coffee morning at the Rector’s house. We could find nothing to bring with us this time and, as usual, I had not done any baking, so we just took ourselves and a little money. We bought raffle tickets, a classical music c.d., a jar of the Rector’s home-made lenten three-fruit marmalade (i.e. without whisky) and a jar of plum jam. After indulging in a bit of chit-chat and getting the local gossip (no raffle prizes this time!) we left to go shopping in Halesworth. Boring groceries shop in the Co-Op and then, while R read the paper in the car, I walked in to town to see if I could find some flowers for the church. I eventually found what I was looking for in the third place I visited – some really pretty multi-headed narcissi, some in yellow and some in a creamy-white. The individual flowers very tiny and delicate; I bought two bunches of each colour.

The rain was easing off a little by the time we got to Rumburgh church but the path to the church was very puddly and muddy. The snowdrops were still looking good and the primroses were just starting to come out. The churchyard will be a mass of wild flowers very soon. We found a suitable vase in the cupboard and just put the poor flowers in water. I cannot attempt anything more than this and even this made the flowers look as if ashamed to be where they were. They all huddled in the middle of the vase and faced inwards and no matter what I did they twisted back and hid their faces. I eventually gave up, put the vase on a ledge and checked that the other flowers in the church were all o.k.

I went out to feed the birds later that afternoon after the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. Something, probably a squirrel, had pulled the top off one of my fat block feeders and had removed and taken away a block that I had only put in the day before. I mended the feeder, replaced the block with a new one and wired up the top to prevent it being pulled apart so easily again. We shall see! I took a couple of photos of the geese and some of next door’s ****** chickens in the garden again.

I discussed with E what she would like for her evening meal and we decided on one of her current favourites – fried bacon, potatoes and onions. I added some diced eating apple as I thought that might go well with it. E was of a different opinion!

R and I set off for the quiz at St James at 7.00pm. We had become quite reluctant to leave our nice warm home and get into my very cold, damp car. It was just 1 degree celsius outside and it took the whole journey to de-mist the windscreen. I drove most of the way bending forward and peering through the only clear bit at the bottom. Fortunately, we met no-one on the journey but the real danger is in the deep ditches at the sides of the road.

The quiz was great fun and the six of us on our team all know each other and get on well. We eventually came second which was very pleasing. R and I also won two prizes in the raffle. The food provided by the village hall committee (I suppose) and cooked by two ladies from the village was really good. A pork casserole or a vegetable bake with a baked potato and a little pot of butter for the first course and then a choice of four or five (I can’t remember how many) desserts with cream or custard for the second course. This was followed by tea or coffee with a chocolate mint – all for £8.00 per person. There was thick frost on the cars when we left just after 11.00pm.

A lovely bright morning and hardly any wind the next day. We went to church at St Michael’s. This is a very small church in the middle of fields and has only recently had electricity put in – only a couple of sockets though. There is no electric light, I think, and no heating except for an enormous very old gas heater at the back of the church. If they have evening services they have oil lamps which makes it look so lovely. The lane is very narrow and there aren’t many places to park. R squashed up as close as he could to the electric fence and had great difficulty in getting out of the car. The fence might not have been switched on as there weren’t any animals in the field – we weren’t going to take any chances though!

By the time we had had lunch and washed up the sun had disappeared and the wind had got up again. R and I went out for a walk in the lanes near our house.

There is still a lot of standing water about. This water is as the base of a hedge on St Margaret’s common.