An Update

06 Thu Nov 2014

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

Tags

anxiety, crop spraying, family, fero cactus, germination of crop, hospital, illness, pyracantha pruning, soup and smoothie maker, sugar beet harvest, unhappiness

Our ‘Fish-hook’ Fero cactus developed flower buds for the first time ever. It was so late in the season that the flowers never opened but we were pleased nevertheless.

I thought I would tell you a little of what has been going on with us.

This smoothie and soup maker is a new acquisition of my husband’s. He has been enjoying experimenting with different ingredients and then sampling the results.

My husband has an appointment with his specialist next Friday when we hope he will find out a little more about his condition. (He has a tumour on his pituitary gland which is probably benign).

‘The pituitary gland is a small ductless gland at the base of the brain which secretes hormones essential for growth and other bodily functions.’ The Concise Oxford Dictionary

He had a blood test yesterday in preparation for this appointment. My sister (who knows about these things as she works in the medical profession) tells us that to remove the tumour the surgeon will go up R’s nose as the gland is just behind where the eyebrows meet. It is often done during day surgery with no need to stay in hospital.

005Pyracantha at side of house (640x480)

I haven’t had much time for gardening lately but this pyracantha at the side of the house had grown so much since its last trim in May that I had to find the time to deal with it.

This is the result of two days of work with loppers and a step-ladder. I will have to get rid of the honeysuckle growing through the right-hand plant as it is pulling the whole thing away from the wall and I am frightened that high winds or heavy snow will cause the plant to lean too far forward and break.

Alice is still applying for jobs but with no luck so far. She has a part-time job at the university library filling shelves which doesn’t give her very much money and she is finding it very boring. She thinks she will finish writing her PhD in a couple of weeks time which will be wonderful as she has been at it for nearly four years. She may be able to spend more time looking for work when she doesn’t have to write so much. The drama group she belongs to has just performed ‘Antigone’ by Sophocles and Alice was in charge of the curtains and also performed other stage managerial duties. I didn’t go to see the play as I have too many calls on my time at home at the present. The next play is an adaptation of ‘Emma’ by Jane Austen and Alice has been cast as Emma. I would love to be able to go to see her in that but it may not be possible.

Most of the sugar beet has been harvested from the fields near us. This is very early in the season as usually, it is done during the wet and cold of late autumn and early winter and the lanes are then a sea of mud. So far we have had a fairly clean harvest.

My younger daughter E, has had a hard time adapting to college life. The first few weeks went very well but she suddenly had a return of her anxiety which really shocked her as she thought that she was in control of it. She has missed quite a few classes in all of the subjects she is taking as the panic attacks affected everything she did. There were days when she thought that she would be able to get into college and we would drive there only to find she was unable to get out of the car. The anxiety paralyses her and she cannot think logically. We would drive away and try again later. Some days we would make the journey three times. However, the staff at the college have been absolutely marvellous and have gone out of their way to help and encourage her. Last week was half-term and she was able to do a little catch-up work but spent most of the time feeling very depressed and frightened. This week however, she has suddenly found her feet again and has been in every day and is doing very well. We are praying, keeping our fingers crossed and touching wood. We have spoken to our GP who has enabled E and me to attend a four session course which will be every Monday evening for the next month on Stress Management which may give us a few helpful tips and stratagems. The course covers all sorts of stress, anxiety and depression so there will be some parts that will be of only partial relevance to E’s situation. However, with all the financial cuts to mental health we are lucky to get this help so we will take advantage of it. I am not sure when we will be able to cook and eat our evening meal as the course is between 6.00 pm and 7.30 pm and it will take about three-quarters of an hour to get there and the same to get home again. When R is at home he says that he will be able to help out.

This pre-germination spray of the field behind our house was performed on 4th October

My mother recovered slowly from her stomach upset and is now back to normal. I took her to Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on Tuesday for her regular eye check-up and she is fine and doesn’t need another injection yet.

You can see the horrible-looking green spray which smells very nasty

My mother-in-law collapsed about six weeks ago and lay on her bedroom floor for some time before she was discovered. She has a panic alarm which she wears around her neck but for some reason she didn’t press it. For some time she has had great difficulty in walking but after a rather strenuous visit to the hospital that day she found she couldn’t stand at all and fell down. She was taken to hospital the following day and it was discovered she had also had a mild heart attack. She is still in hospital as more and more problems with her health have been discovered. My husband has visited Manchester a couple of times for a few days to see her and help my brother-in-law out. It may be that R’s Mum won’t be able to go back home. She is still in the critical ward in the hospital until her health can be stabilised. She will then go into respite care for a month and will be assessed to see whether she could cope in her home or not. If she does go home she will have to have much more help than she had before. If it is found that she isn’t able to go home she will have to go into a nursing home and her house will have to be sold to pay for that. This is a very worrying time for R and his brother. Mum-in-law has her 89th birthday on Sunday.

This is the same field on the 15th October

The crop germinated quite quickly because of the warm and damp weather we had

At the same time as my poor mother-in-law was first in hospital my brother found that his 33-year marriage was at an end. He is absolutely shocked and very unhappy that all the effort he put into caring for his wife and their two children (who are now grown up) and making a nice home was all to no avail. His wife no longer wishes to be married to him as she has found someone else. They are now having to sell their house and everything they have has to be split between them – pensions, cars, furniture – everything. It is all proving to be too much for my brother to cope with. He has been to stay with me a couple of times so that he can see our mother and have a little comfort too. I have spoken to him tonight and he tells me that he has been signed off work for two weeks with depression and has been given anti-depressants by his doctor. He is looking for another job away from where he lives where he may be able to get a cheaper house or flat to live in. Both my sister and I have been through a divorce because our husbands no longer wanted to be with us so we know what he is going through. I am now happily married but my sister has not been able to find anyone else.

This is the field on the 31st October with a few pheasants.

So you see, life has not been a bed of roses for us for a while now. We hope that nothing else happens to add to our load of worries.

Wild Flowers in my Garden

02 Sun Nov 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Insects, plants, Rural Diary, trees

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

berries, fruits, Late summer, Suffolk, wild flowers

This post will include wild flowers I saw and photographed during August and September. Because of other duties, I haven’t taken many photographs since the beginning of September. There were plenty of flowers about (and still are because of the unseasonably warm weather we have been experiencing) but most of them stayed unphotographed. I have also included some berries, seeds and fruits as many of them were ripening fast during August.

The Water Mint (Mentha aquatica) is very popular with all the insects

Water mint growing in our ditch

Two types of hoverfly on the mint flowers.

There are a few flies on these mint flower spikes too but they are well camouflaged. I like the little fly on the right zooming off somewhere.

Peppermint (Mentha x piperata) is is a hybrid between Spear Mint/Garden Mint (Mentha Spicata) and Water Mint.

The next plant is I think, Cat’s-ear (Hypochaeris radicata) but there are a couple of features that make me feel unsure.

Cat’s-ear

The leaves at the bottom of the photo look too spiky to be Cat’s-ear. Perhaps the leaves belong to a different plant? Why do I never remember to take pictures of the whole plant?!

Cat’s-ear

The next photo is a crop of the one above and shows a couple of insects on the seed-head that I had no idea were there when I took the photo.

There is (what I think is) a mature Green Shield Bug (Palomena prasina) on the right and down on the left is a little green and black insect – a Green Shield Bug nymph, 4th instar.

The main reason I have been in doubt is the colour of the outer florets. They are such a dark orange-red that I thought at first it might be Beaked Hawk’s-beard but I’m sure it isn’t that.

Cat’s-ear

Cat’s-ear

And this is a cropped photo showing the red outer florets more clearly

What makes me think that it is Cat’s-ear is the presence of the scale-like bracts on the stem.

This next plant is called Fat-hen (Chenopodium album). It is a very common annual plant of arable land.

Fat-hen

Fat-hen is a wild spinach and its use in Britain as a food has been traced back to the Bronze Age.

Fat-hen

It can grow up to a metre in height.

This is such a tiny-flowered forget-me-not.

The flowers are only about 2 or 3 mm across.

It is called Changing Forget-me-not (Mysotis discolor)

The flowers start off a yellowish colour but soon change to blue.

A Silver Birch (Betula pendula) scale which had landed on a clover leaf.

A scale is a sort of ‘spacer’ between the miniscule seeds of the birch when they are in the catkin.

Scentless Mayweed (Tripleurospermum inodorum) continued to flower.

Dogwood berries had formed and were beginning to ripen.

There were plenty of grasses to photograph.

: Tufted Hair-grass

: Tufted Hair-grass

: Tufted Hair-grass

Tufted Hair-grass (Deschampsia cespitosa) grows to about 1.5 metres in height and I think it a really beautiful grass – lovely enough to have in the flower border. It is a clump-forming perennial and quite easy to keep under control.

Carpets of Bird’s-foot Trefoil on the un-ploughed strip of land round the field behind our house.

Sun Spurge (Euphorbia helioscopia)

The Sun Spurge has sweet-scented, kidney-shaped lobes on its petal-less flowers which attract insect pollinators. When the Sun Spurge’s seed capsule is ripe it bursts open with an audible crack and the seeds are fired off in all directions. There are three seeds in separate compartments and they have a fleshy appendage that contains an oil that ants find irresistible. They collect the seeds and carry them off even further. Ants usually only eat the oily part and leave the rest of the seed to germinate.

The Euphorbia genus was named after a man called Euphorbus, physician to King Juba of Mauritania in the 1st century AD, who is said to have used the plant medicinally in North Africa. The species name ‘helioscopia’ derives from two Greek words which together mean ‘look at the sun’. This probably refers to the flat-topped head of flowers which spreads out to be fully exposed to the sun.

I found a few Stinging Nettles (Urtica dioica) with pink flowers.

Stinging Nettle

Stinging Nettle

Parsley Water-dropwort (Oenanthe lachenalii) just coming into flower

I found this growing in our ditch at the front of the house. This isn’t poisonous but it looks quite similar to Hemlock so it is best left alone. It can be distinguished from Hemlock by its long narrow leaflets and greyish colour. Hemlock (Conium maculatum) has wedge-shaped leaves and is a deeper green; it has a foetid smell and purple-blotched stem.

We also have a lot of St John’s-wort growing in the same ditch. I think it might be Square-stalked St John’s-wort (Hypericum tetrapterum).

Square-stalked St John’s-wort

Square-stalked St John’s-wort

This St John’s-wort has a winged square stem. I don’t think that is a good explanation but a photo of a cross-section of the stem would show the corners drawn out into thin flaps.

I didn’t find this rather stunted Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) until most of its flowers had disappeared.

This is Spiked Water-milfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum) in our pond

I have cropped the photo above as this shows the red fruits a little more clearly. Not a good image, I know.

The spikes of this milfoil rise above the water and in mid-summer have tiny red flowers on them – the lower flowers female and the upper male. The feathery leaves are below the surface and are in whorls.

This is a native plant and is not invasive here but I read that it is causing real problems in Canada and the States. We have similar problems with Parrots Feather (Myriophyllum aquaticum) from South America. There are such dangers in introducing wildlife from other countries.

This is Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) growing in a ditch on my route to my mother’s house

I found the fuzzy, creamy-white sprays of flowers very difficult to photograph. They are very sweet-smelling – like almond blossom. The plant belongs to the rose family.

Meadowsweet

Meadowsweet. The leaves have three to five pairs of oval leaflets with smaller leaflets between

Meadowsweet

Rosehips (Rosa canina) in our hedge

Spindle berries (Euonymus europaeus) maturing in our hedge

Elderberries (Sambucus nigra) in our garden

New catkins forming on the Hazel trees (Corylus avellana) in early September

Finally, some photographs of Wild Hop (Humulus lupulus) growing in the hedge in my mother’s garden.

Hop vine

Hop fruits

Hop fruits

This year, a local brewery asked people to donate the hops growing in their hedges so they could make a special wild hop beer. Mum didn’t donate hers as she doesn’t have that many and we didn’t hear about this until after the event. My husband comes out in a nasty rash if he touches hop leaves. Fortunately for him he gets no rash when he drinks beer.

Hop leaves

Thank-you for reading this post!

Wild Flowers in my Garden

09 Thu Oct 2014

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

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Bittersweet, Black Horehound, cat's-ear, Common Field-speedwell, Common Mallow, Common Spotted-orchid, Dog-rose, dogwood, Elder, fern, Field Forget-me-not, Field Penny-cress, Field Rose, Fox-and-cubs, Lesser Stitchwort, Midland Hawthorn, Oxeye Daisy, Rough Chervil, scentless mayweed, Selfheal, Smooth Sow-thistle, Smooth Tare, Soft Rush, Suffolk, summer, Water Mint, weeds, White Clover, wild flowers

I will be publishing a short series of posts this autumn in which I will show you some of the wild flowers I have seen in my garden this summer. The photographs will be ones I haven’t used before.

Many of you will wonder why we have so many weeds in our garden. Well, er, I like weeds/wild flowers! We have decided that the part of the garden around the big pond should be a wild garden and this is the place where I have found most of my plants to photograph. We do try to control the worst of the brambles and nettles and my husband mows and hacks his way through it all regularly. When we have time we will manage the area a little better.

These hawthorn flowers from our hedge have a definite pink tinge to them. I believe this is a Midland Hawthorn (Crataegus laevigata).

As any gardener knows, weeds grow anywhere and everywhere and some of the plants in these posts I will have found in the lawn or in a flowerbed. We have a country garden and it is surrounded by arable fields and common land. Weed seeds get blown into our garden on the wind. We have a hedge round most of our land made up of hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, ash, elder and dog-rose among others. We also have ditches almost all the way round our land – our moat to protect us from flooding. We are visited by many birds and wild animals and all these creatures may have contributed to the flora by bringing seeds in on their coats or feathers or in their droppings. We have had quite a damp summer following on from a mild and wet winter and the plants, bushes and trees have grown and grown! This year, we have found many more different types of plant than usual, as well.

This post will be featuring flowers from early summer – mid May until the end of June.

Smooth Sow-thistle (Sonchus oleraceus)

The leaves of this plant have been an important dietary supplement for many hundreds of years; they can be boiled like spinach or even taken raw in winter salads. The plant is thought to be strength-giving and Pliny the Elder says that a dish of smooth sow-thistles was eaten by the legendary Greek hero Theseus before he slew the Minotaur. The leaves are thought to revive and strengthen animals when they are overcome by heat and its local names of ‘rabbit’s meat’, ‘swine thistle’, ‘dog’s thistle’, ‘hare’s lettuce’ denote this.

I thought I would include this fern in this post although not a flower. It is growing in the hedge at the front of the house and it is the only fern we have. By the end of May it has usually been swamped by other plants in the hedge and we don’t see it again until the next year.

Dog-rose (Rosa canina)

Dog-rose buds.

I was fortunate when I was a little girl to have a mother who didn’t give me nasty medicine like caster oil and syrup of figs. I was given ‘Halib-orange’ (which tasted of oranges but also contained fish-oil) and also rosehip syrup to which my mother sometimes added a drop or two of cod-liver oil. Rosehip syrup is rich in vitamin C and I remember it tasting absolutely glorious!

King Henry VII adopted the Tudor rose as his official emblem and the rose has continued to be a symbol of the British monarchy and of England herself.

Oxeye Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare)

I love Oxeye Daisies – also known as marguerite, moon-daisy and dog-daisy – and when roadsides are carpeted with them I know that summer has arrived. I remember lying in a field full of them when I was very young and looking through their swaying heads at a clear blue sky – a wonderful memory.

Elder flowers (Sambucus nigra)

Both the elder’s flowers and berries are edible and it is widespread on land with a high nitrogen content. Rabbits do not damage it and it benefits from their droppings so is often to be found near warrens.

Field Penny-cress (Thlaspi arvense)

Field Penny-cress (Thlaspi arvense)

This plant got its name from the circular shape of its fruit which were thought to resemble a penny. When crushed the plant has a strong, unpleasant smell and is avoided by herb-eating animals. The plant was introduced many, many years ago. Despite efforts to exterminate it the Field Penny-cress still does very well on agricultural land.

Rough Chervil (Chaerophyllum temulum)

Rough Chervil (Chaerophyllum temulum)

This is another poisonous plant belonging to the parsley family. The word temulum derives from the latin word for vertigo. If ingested the effect on human beings is that of drunkenness; staggering incapability and shaking. Most unpleasant.

Selfheal (Prunella vulgaris)

This plant loves our garden. It is all over the lawn and when we take our eyes off it for a day or two we find it has rushed onto the flowerbeds and made itself at home there. I read that it likes growing in grassy places (yes, our lawn) and woodland rides, on calcareous and neutral soils. (I do find a lot of chalk in the soil here). It spreads by putting out runners that root regularly and it produces nutlet fruits as well. The bees love it and it is a very pretty purple colour.

Cat’s-ear (Hypochaeris radicata)

Bees and many other insects, love this flower too. It is called ‘Cat’s-ear’ because it was thought the little scale-like bracts on the flower stem look like cat’s ears. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get a good enough photograph of these bracts to show you.

Fox-and-cubs (Pilosella aurantiaca)

Fox-and-cubs ((Pilosella aurantiaca)

Looking at the second photo you can see why it is called Fox-and-cubs. These photos were not taken in my garden but in the churchyard of St Mary’s in Halesworth but I haven’t found an opportunity better than this for posting these pictures. This is an introduced plant and has spread quite happily out of people’s gardens and into the countryside.

Dogwood flowers (Cornus sanguinea)

This is another plant that prefers calcareous soil. The stems in winter glow with a rich red colour, the birds love the black berries and the leaves turn a wonderful maroon-red in the autumn.

Bittersweet or Woody Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara) which grows all over our garden. This plant was growing in the ditch at the front of the house.

When the flowers first open the petals are spreading or slightly curved. The older the flower, the more the petals fold themselves back against the stalk. The berries are green at first, then yellow and finally a bright shiny red. The berries are poisonous and can cause sickness. The species name ‘dulcamara’ is derived from two Latin words meaning sweet and bitter. The toxic alkaloid solanin in the stem, leaves and berries causes them to taste bitter at first and then sweet.

Field Rose (Rosa arvensis)

Though called Field Rose it is usually found in woodland or hedgerows. This grows prolifically in the narrow strip of woodland on the opposite side of the lane in front of our house.

Smooth Tare (Vicia tetrasperma)

It is very easy to miss this little plant. It is very slender and scrambles about in grass and in hedgerows. I found it in the grass round our big pond. The flowers are borne singly or in pairs and are 4-8 mm long. Another member of the Pea family.

Field Forget-me-not (Myosotis arvensis)

A probably legendary tale from medieval Germany tells of a knight walking with his lady by a river. The knight bent to pick her a bunch of flowers but the weight of his armour caused him to fall in. As he drowned he threw the flowers to his lady crying: ‘Vergisz mein nicht!’ – ‘forget-me-not’. Since then this flower has been associated with true love. I wonder why the knight was wearing armour when not fighting or jousting? In 1802, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a poem based on the story of the knight called ‘The Keepsake’. ‘That blue and bright-eyed flowerlet of the brook/Hope’s gentle gem, the sweet Forget-me-not!’.

Scentless Mayweed (Tripleurospermum inodorum)

Common Spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii)

This orchid grows very well in our garden. The leaves are shiny and green with dark spots on them.

Lesser Stitchwort (Stellaria graminea)

Lesser Stitchwort (Stellaria graminea)

This plant grows mainly on acid soils – I found it in our lawn.

White Clover (Trifolium repens)

We have White and Red Clover in our garden. I have posted photographs of the red before but not the more common white. This is another plant with creeping stems and we have it in our lawn. We tolerate it because the bees love it and it keeps the lawn looking green during a drought.

Common Field-speedwell (Veronica persica)

This plant is probably not a native but was introduced at some time in the distant past from Asia. Its flowers are solitary on a long stalk and the lower petal is usually white.

061Water mint with water lilies (640x480)

Water Mint (Mentha aquatica) growing amongst water lilies

This is the commonest mint of all the species growing in the British Isles and has a very strong mint smell.

The next couple of plants I found on the same day as I found the Fox-and-cubs plant in Halesworth.

Black Horehound ((Ballota nigra)

Black Horehound (Ballota nigra)

There is a little alleyway that leads to the supermarket in Halesworth and on one side of it is some waste ground and that is where I found this plant. Black Horehound smells awful if it is bruised and this has earned it a second name of ‘Stinking Roger’. Poor old Roger! It is quite an attractive plant to look at and its smell is its defence mechanism – to stop it being eaten by cattle. It looks a little like Red Dead-nettle but is larger and coarser. A third name for the plant is Madwort as it was used in the treatment of bites from mad dogs. ‘A dressing prepared from the plant’s leaves, mixed with salt, was said to have an anti-spasmodic effect on the patient’ – to quote from the Reader’s Digest Field Guide to the Wild Flowers of Britain. It could also be used to treat coughs and colds but it was very powerful. Nicholas Culpeper wrote that ‘it ought only to be administered to gross, phlegmatic people, not to thin, plethoric persons’.

Common Mallow (Malva sylvestris)

This was also on the waste ground though it can be seen on most road verges all through the summer. The flowers are very pretty and the plant has long been used for food and medicine. According to my Field Guide young mallow shoots were being eaten as a vegetable as early as the 8th century BC. Cicero the orator complained that they gave him indigestion, the poet Martial used Mallow to get rid of hang-overs after orgies and the naturalist Pliny mixed the sap with water to give him day-long relief from aches and pains. In the Middle Ages it was used as an anti-aphrodisiac, promoting calm, sober conduct. Mallow leaves have been used to draw out wasp stings and the sap, which is quite viscous was made into poultices and soothing ointment. The fruits of the Mallow are round flat capsules and some of the names for Mallow refer to them – ‘billy buttons’, ‘pancake plant’ and ‘cheese flower’.

Soft Rushes (Juncus effusus) in the ditch at the front of the house

Soft Rush (Juncus effusus) with flowers

These grow mainly on acid soils and on over-grazed land. They live in our ditches and sometimes spread into the lawn. The stems are a pretty pale yellow-green and are shiny and smooth. The flowers are olive-green in colour. The name ‘rush’ comes from a Germanic word meaning ‘to bind’ or ‘to plait’. The spongy white pith in the stems used to be scraped out and made into wicks for candles. I remember on wet camping holidays when young (and there were many of those) splitting rushes with my fingernail and trying to remove the pith in one piece without breaking it. This was in the days before Nintendos – simple pleasures!

More Norwich Knowledge

19 Fri Sep 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, plants, Rural Diary, walking

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

'The Revelations of Divine Love', All Hallows Convent, All Hallows House, anchorage, bailey, bomb damage, Castle Gardens, Cell, chickory, Dame Julian, EDP Newspaper Group, Father Raybould, fortified bridge, Julian, Julian Centre, keep, Lady Julian, lady's bedstraw, moat, motte, Norwich Castle, Norwich Museum, St Julian's Church, Whiffler Theatre, wild flowers

Because I am taking E to college each day my routines have had to change to suit her time-table. Up til now I have taken Mum shopping on a Wednesday but on Wednesdays E has a two hour Psychology class and that is all. No time to take Mum shopping, so we have changed to Tuesdays when E is at college til 5 pm. Eventually, we hope that E will be able to spend the rest of Wednesday at college – with friends and working in the library – but as yet she doesn’t have much work to do and wants to come home again fairly quickly. It is not worth my while doing anything other than stay on in Norwich after dropping her off at college – I would hardly get home before having to set off again.

Last Wednesday I had yet more college equipment to get for her and then a visit to the Body Shop was in order to purchase shower gel and other lusciously-scented products. After doing my shopping I still had over an hour to go before I needed to meet E so decided to have another walk-about.

Norwich Castle is an enormous and imposing building. It is built on a large mound or motte and looks so clean and undamaged it could have been built yesterday.

In fact, it was one of the first castles to be built after the Norman Conquest in 1066.

At least 98 Saxon homes were demolished from about 1067 onwards so that the earthworks could be dug within which they built a wooden fort (the Bailey). The fort was surrounded by deep defensive dry ditches. Once the land had settled they began building the stone keep in 1094 during the reign of William ‘Rufus’ II and, following his death in 1100, his brother Henry I completed the building in 1121. It was built as a Palace rather than a fortification but no Norman King ever lived in it. The only time Henry I is known to have stayed in it was at Christmas 1121. The keep is constructed out of limestone imported from Caen in France. Originally, the ground floors were faced in flint which would have been such a contrast to the almost white upper floors.

The grass mound has been planted with wild flowers – the blue ones here are chickory. The strange blue-topped structure on the right is the lift (non-Norman!) that transports to the top, those not able or wanting to ascend the slope by foot.

More wild flowers – the yellow ones are Lady’s Bedstraw

Wild Carrot and Bladder Campion grow there amongst many others.

The keep was used as the County Gaol from the 14th century onwards. A new gaol designed by Sir John Soane was constructed in and around the keep in 1792-93 but this was soon found to be too small and outdated. The outside block of Soane’s gaol was demolished between 1822-27 and re-designed by William Wilkins. When the County Gaol was moved to Mousehold Heath near Norwich in 1883, work began to convert the castle into a museum which it still is to this day. All the gaol building was demolished leaving the original keep.

I found this on the wall near the bottom of the lift shaft. Who can tell me where this quote comes from?

I walked through the Castle Gardens which are in the bottom of the dry moat.

This bridge is the original Norman fortified bridge over the moat but it has been refaced and has a 19th century inner brick arch.

The Whiffler Theatre

This is a small, simple open-air theatre in the Castle Gardens and was given to the people of Norwich by the Eastern Daily Press Newspaper Group. Next to the performing platform is a small thatched building that is used as dressing rooms. If you look at the first photo of the bridge, the dressing room building can be seen beyond the bridge on the left. There is a Whiffler Road in Norwich as well, but I cannot find out anywhere if the road and theatre are named after a specific person. The word ‘whiffler’ has a number of meanings according to the dictionary.

1. One who whiffles or frequently changes his opinion or course. One who uses shifts and evasions in argument, hence a trifler.

2. One who plays on a whiffle; a fifer or piper.

3. The Goldeneye duck is also known as the Whiffler probably because of the whistling sound its wings make in flight.

4. An officer who went before a procession to clear the way by blowing a horn. Any person who marched at the head of a procession. A harbinger. In the 16th century the whiffler was armed with a javelin, battle-axe, sword or staff. An early form of steward involved in crowd control.

Shakespeare’s Henry V: ‘…the deep-mouthed sea, which like a mighty whiffler ‘fore the King seems to prepare his way.’

The ‘Whiffler’ pub in Norwich is named after the ceremonial character so perhaps the road and theatre are too.

012All Hallows & Julian Centre (640x480)

All Hallows and Julian Centre

I left the Castle grounds and walked down Rouen Road to St Julian’s Alley, on the corner of which is the Julian Centre where books, cards and other merchandise associated with Dame Julian are sold. There is also a reference library which keeps the main books and articles published about her and also a Christian lending library. All Hallows House, also on the corner of the road is a small guest house belonging to All Hallows Convent, Ditchingham which is fairly near to where I live. I went to Ditchingham for a day retreat a number of years ago and it was such a peaceful day. All Hallows House in Norwich is somewhere else to stay for a retreat, as well as a place of study or just somewhere to stay to be near St Julian’s church.

St Julian’s church

The first time I came here was with A, my eldest daughter and at the time they were preparing for something in the church and had had all the pews removed. A nun was in the church and welcomed us in saying how much she liked the large space left once the seating had been taken out. She said it made her want to dance and she then proceeded to dance round the church. I thought she was wonderful!

St Julian’s church

To explain who Dame Julian was I will quote from the information leaflet I picked up from the church.

‘Julian of Norwich was the first woman to write a book in English. She wrote it while she was an ‘anchoress’ (a hermit) living in a small room attached to St Julian’s church.

It was quite normal for people to live like this in Julian’s day. Some were monks and nuns, but many were just ordinary men and women who took vows to live a solitary life of prayer and contemplation. They lived in a room beside the church and many people came to them for comfort and advice.

On 8th May 1373, when she was thirty years old, Julian suffered a severe illness from which she almost died. During that illness she received a series of visions of the Passion of Christ and the love of God. When she recovered, she wrote down what she had been taught – perhaps having to learn to read and write in order to do so.

Her book, ‘The Revelations of Divine Love’, took her over 20 years to complete and is today regarded as a spiritual classic throughout the world. Her clear thinking and deep insight speak directly to today’s troubled world.

Her perception that there is no wrath in God, but that this is a projection of our own wrath upon him, is centuries ahead of her time. And her understanding that God’s love is like that of a tender loving mother, as well as that of a father, is also one we can respond to today.’

The doorway into Julian’s cell from the church

The church is not what it seems. During the Reformation the cell was totally destroyed by reformers who wanted to get rid of anything that reminded them of Papism – the Roman Catholic faith that England’s leaders had given up. The church fell into disrepair during the 19th century and was on the verge of being pulled down. The parishioners began to put money into a restoration fund in 1845 which saved the fabric but the money ran out quickly. More work was done on the church in 1871 and 1901. In 1942 the church was badly damaged in an air raid during World War II and again there was talk of pulling it down. There are four other churches within less than quarter of a mile from St Julian’s and after the War the whole area was redeveloped. It was awareness of the importance of Julian’s writing that led the rector, Father Raybould, with the support of the Community of All Hallows, to encourage the community and other interested bodies to get on with the restoration of the church as a place of prayer and pilgrimage. The architect has done such a good job in creating this little church and re-cycling a number of features from the old church and others damaged at the same time. The recreation of Julian’s cell is such a wonderful result of the terrible war damage.

The Norman doorway into the cell came from the church of St Michael at Thorn which stood nearby in Ber Street and was destroyed at the same time as St Julian’s. There was no door here when the Cell was used as an anchorage.

A dish of hazelnuts with the quote from Julian’s writing. In her vision, she is shown a little tiny round thing, the size of a hazelnut and is told that it represents all that has been made. She thought it was so small that it would be destroyed easily but she was told that it never would be because it was loved.

I have read Julian’s book a few times and each time I read it I understand it more, I love it more and I marvel more at this woman, who lived so long ago, being able to write and think so profoundly and able to speak so clearly to me today. The best translation I have found so far is that done by Father John-Julian, an Episcopal priest and monk. According to the blurb on the back of my copy, he has been a parish priest in Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Connecticut, was the founding Dean of the Seminary of the Streets in New York and has taught at the University of Rhode Island and Hampshire College. In 1985 he founded the Wisconsin-based contemplative, semi-enclosed monastic Order of Julian of Norwich. He has read and studied Julian of Norwich each day for over a quarter of a century. After much research he believes that Dame Julian was Julian Erpingham, the elder sister of Sir Thomas Erpingham, friend of the King, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and who fought at Agincourt. This Julian married a Roger Hauteyn and was widowed in 1373 (the same year as the ‘Revelations’) when her husband was killed, presumably in a duel. She re-married in 1376 a Sir John Phelip of Dennington in Suffolk. They had three children, the last of which was born the same year that her second husband died in 1389. John-Julian believes that if this was the Dame Julian of the ‘Revelations’, she wrote the book before she became an anchorite and in about 1393 she fostered out her youngest child, dictated the Long Version of the book and then entered her anchorhold. It is possible.

The cell, photographed from the doorway

The cell had been used by solitaries before Julian and also by others after her. When she lived there, there would have been a window onto the street so that she could counsel people, a window into the church and a window or door into an adjacent room where a servant would live. The servant would remove rubbish etc and bring food from the market and do any other tasks for Dame Julian.

The shrine in the cell

The wooden platform marks the original floor-level and the stone memorial above it used to be on the outside wall of the church before the Cell was rebuilt. The window above that is in the place where Julian’s window into the church would have been. She would hear Mass through the window and receive Holy Communion there. She would have been able to see the Sacrament (the consecrated Bread) hanging in a Pyx (a special vessel/container) before the High Altar. There are two pieces of flintwork near the ground which formed part of the early foundations, one of which can be seen in this photo.

This glass is in a window opposite the shrine and is a memorial to Father Raybould

This is the High Altar in the Church

The High Altar Reredos (the ornamental screen covering the wall behind the Altar) was made in Oberammergau, Germany and dates from 1931 and was a gift. It survived the bombing.

The font is the finest thing in the church and one of the great architectural treasures of the City of Norwich. It used to belong to All Saints Church and when it was declared redundant in 1977 the font was brought to St Julian’s as both churches had been pastorally linked at various times.

The church is dedicated to Saint Julian bishop of Le Mans. Lady Julian has never been declared a ‘saint’ although she is now included in the Church Calender of 1980. Many people think that Lady Julian took her name from the building where she had her anchorage when she entered her Cell.

Dunwich Flora

12 Fri Sep 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Insects, plants, Rural Diary

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

asters, Bird's-foot Trefoil, boat winches, common green grasshopper, common restharrow, dock, Dunwich beach, fish-and-chip café, Going to college, hare's-foot clover, harrowing, hop trefoil, humming-bird hawkmoth, parsley water-dropwort, prickly sow-thistle, sea campion, sea mayweed, shingle, yellow horned poppy

Monday was a strange and busy day. I was up much earlier than of late – 6.20 am to be precise so that I could wake E at 6.30. It was her first day at City College Norwich and to get there on time we needed to leave home at 7.30. R was travelling to Scotland later in the day and we wouldn’t be seeing him until Thursday. He went into work for a few hours and then drove to Norwich airport to get a flight to Edinburgh where he got a hire car so he could drive to his hotel in Dunbar. E had three hours of English and then I would be collecting her again at 12 midday. We got to the college through fairly heavy rush-hour traffic with twenty minutes to spare before her lesson started. I dropped her off and then returned back home to continue with the washing which I had already started. Home at 9.15, rushed about a bit, back in the car at 11.15 and was outside the college again just before midday. E was already outside as her tutor had let them out a little early. Thankfully, she had enjoyed herself and had met up with the Irish girl she had met on her ‘taster day’ last week. They had joined up with another couple of girls and had got on very well in their twenty minute break. We stopped off in Bungay on the way home so that I could buy birdseed for my mother and some art equipment for E. This resulted in my purse being quite a few pounds lighter by the time we got back in the car. This college business is very expensive! After lunch I realised that I needed some groceries and also had to collect my medication so got back in the car. It was a lovely afternoon and after I had finished in town and as I was in need of a little quiet reflection time, I drove to Dunwich beach adding another eighteen or so miles to my driving tally for the day. The light was perfect, the breeze light and the air warm and balmy. I walked on the beach for a while looking at the sea. My small point-and-shoot camera doesn’t do justice to the colour of the sea which was true aqua-marine and much greener than in the photo. After wandering about on the shingle for a while I then decided to go a little further inland and look at the plants and flowers. The shingle rises up from the waters edge and then flattens out for a couple of yards. This is good to walk along when it isn’t too windy as it provides a good view seaward and landward. Beyond this ridge it then descends quite sharply to a lower sheltered area of sand and gravel which then becomes marshland and then woodland. As the shingle gets further from the sea it supports some hardy plants like Sea-kale (Crambe maritima) and Yellow Horned-poppy (Glaucium flavum). I was too late to be able to photograph the poppy flowers but the clumps of leaves were everywhere.

Leaves of Yellow Horned-poppy (Glaucium flavum)

All parts of Horned-poppy are poisonous and if they are eaten can affect the brain. One of my plant reference books quotes from old records a strange story from 1698 concerning the Horned-poppy. ‘A man made himself a pie of horned poppy roots under the impression that they were the roots of sea holly. After eating the pie he became delirious and fancied that his white porcelain chamber pot was solid gold. He broke the pot into bits in the belief that he owned a great treasure’.

Once down off the shingle bank there were many plants to look at.

Prickly Sow-thistle (Sonchus asper)

A bee on Prickly Sow-thistle

Sea Campion (Silene uniflora)

Not a brilliant photo I know, but it shows clearly the similarity between it and Bladder Campion (Silene vulgaris) with the swollen calyx and also shows the grey-green, fleshy almost waxy leaves.

Probably a male Common Green Grasshopper (Omocestus viridulus)

As I walked, grasshoppers were leaping out of the way; there were so many of them. I tried to photograph one but the shot was not successful. I was wishing I had brought our better camera with me.

Sea Mayweed (Tripleurospermum maritimum)

Common Restharrow (Ononis repens)

Common Restharrow

This is a very pretty pea flower though, as its name suggests, it wasn’t popular with ploughmen as it has deep roots and matted stems that root as it trails along the ground. It also taints milk if eaten by cattle. The leaves when crushed smell a bit like goats do – not nice! Children in the north of Britain in the past dug up the roots of Restharrow and chewed them like liquorice – another name for this plant is wild liquorice. The leaves are a little sticky to the touch and have an attractive crimped edge to them. As an aside, while I am typing this (Thursday lunchtime) the field at the back of our house is being harrowed. I don’t think the large machines of today are much hindered by plants anymore. The weather today is gloomy and misty, as you can see.

014Bird's-foot Trefoil with Dock seed-head (640x480)

Common Bird’s-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) with Dock seed-head (Rumex obustifolius)

Hare’s-foot Clover (Trifolium arvense)

I love this little plant! The flowers are so soft and furry and tinged with pink.

021Hare's-foot Clover with Hop Trefoil (640x480)

Here it is again, growing with Hop Trefoil (Trifolium campestre)

018Michaelmas Daisies or Sea Asters (640x459)

These are either naturalised Michaelmas Daisies (Aster sp.) or Sea Asters (Aster tripolium). I cannot identify them properly.

Parsley Water-Dropwort (Oenanthe lachenalii)

The next series of photographs are terrible but with only my small camera with me I couldn’t do any better. They are of a Humming-bird Hawkmoth (Macroglossum stellatarum) which flies very fast and to the naked eye usually looks like a blur anyway.

Humming-bird Hawkmoth with Sea Campion

Humming-bird Hawkmoth with Sea Campion

Humming-bird Hawkmoth with Sea Campion

I decided it was time to return home and just took two more pictures, this time of the car-park.

029Hoist sheds on Dunwich Beach (640x480)

These little wooden shacks contain winching gear to enable the fishermen to pull their boats up the steep shingle beach

This is a fish-and-chip café that is so popular that in the summer, coach parties of visitors come to savour its delights

I am finishing this post off on Friday evening. E has managed to attend college every day this week and though it has not all been at all easy for her she has kept going and has enjoyed a lot of it. I am exhausted from all the driving I have done and my feet and ankles are very painful. It has been worth it and I am so pleased with my daughter and very proud of her.

Could Be Worse

04 Thu Sep 2014

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

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

Alpine Pasque Flower, anxiety, black-headed gulls, college, cowslip, fungi, horse chestnut, illness, job seeking, Knopper gall, muck spreading, oak, pleated inkcap, seagulls, shaggy inkcap, snowy waxcap, unpredictable weather, viburnum bodnantense

This has been a very strange summer. The weather, for one thing, has been very unpredictable. British weather is always unpredictable but this year it has outdone itself, I think. Torrential rain, gale-force winds, mini tornadoes ( they are called willies in East Anglia!). Lots of humid, stormy days in July and the coldest August for many years. The plants in my garden have got very confused. It became quite cool and wet at the end of June and the beginning of July (just in time for our holiday) so my Viburnum Bodnantense thought Autumn had arrived and started to flower.

Viburnum Bodnantense is supposed to flower from Autumn through to Spring.

My Alpine Pasque Flower thought Spring had come back and began flowering again.

Alpine Pasque Flower flowering for a second time this year

We found them blooming when we got home from our holiday on the 9th of July. The poor things then got a bit of a shock as the temperature rose from about 15 degrees C to 28 degrees with high humidity. August temperatures dipped again and last week I found cowslips in flower in the garden.

A cowslip in flower at the end of August. Cowslips usually flower in April and May.

This week the temperature has risen at last from 12 degrees C and grass frost at night ( in August!) to a pleasant 20 degrees today.

I have found a few fungi recently.

Pleated Inkcap

I photographed a better specimen in May

Pleated Inkcap

which is when I saw this one which is ( I think ) a Snowy Waxcap.

Snowy Waxcap

Coming home from church on Sunday we saw this

Shaggy Inkcap

The oak tree in our garden is covered in galls as usual.

003Acorns attacked by galls again (640x452)

This is a Knopper Gall on the acorns photographed on 26th July

The same gall photographed on 5th August

As you can see, it had grown quite a lot in ten days. They are now turning a darker colour.

Our Horse Chestnut is suffering from the fungus infection that causes blotches on the leaves.

007Diseased leaves of Horse Chestnut (640x427)

Blotches caused by the fungus Guignadia aesculi accidentally introduced into Britain from North America in the 1930s

Muck spreading and ploughing was delayed for a few weeks but was eventually done in the field behind our house last week.

Muck spreading. Mmmmn lovely!

Ploughing

Muck spreading and ploughing. The local farmer is very considerate and doesn’t leave stinky pig-muck on the fields for long as you see.

007Muck spreading and ploughing (640x433)

Skillful and speedy tractor work

The seagulls love following the plough and then stay around for a day or so feasting on all the grubs and worms.

A mixed flock of seagulls

These gulls are Black-headed Gulls with their winter plumage ( no black heads only black smudges on the side of their heads)

Another reason I think this has been a strange summer is the anxiety and worry we have all had has caused the time to pass by in a kind of haze.

My elder daughter has been trying to finish her PhD and find work and now has a large overdraft with the bank. She has been able to do some proof-reading recently which has helped a little.

My mother was disappointed to find she had another bleed behind her left eye when she went for her check-up at the hospital. She has started another course of injections. She has been unwell with a bad upset stomach this last week and when I saw her today she had lost a lot of weight and had become very frail and vague. She only told me about the upset stomach when I rang her yesterday – she hadn’t wanted to worry me!

My younger daughter, after two years out of education because of chronic anxiety has had the courage to apply for a place at college to do some GCSE exams. She has been accepted and yesterday she went there for a ‘taster day’ – a practise run-through and a chance to meet her tutors and get time-tables etc. She came home exhausted and tearful after spending seven-and-a-half hours in college – the longest time away from home and/or family for years. Her term starts next Monday and she is so very nervous. I will be driving her into college and then picking her up again when she finishes which will mean nearly 100 miles a day for me. Eventually we hope that she may be able to get the bus into Norwich but she probably won’t be able to manage it for some time. We are all holding our breath and hoping that she doesn’t lose her nerve.

My husband has had a problem with his throat since April. He has had a recurring painful ulcer at the back of his throat that comes up when he eats. He has pains in his neck too. He has found that taking anti-histamine seems to control the ulcer. He has visited his doctor three times and the first two times was told it probably wasn’t anything to worry about and to come back in a month. The third time the doctor referred him to the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist at the hospital. He eventually got an appointment to see the specialist on the 5th August. The specialist didn’t know what was causing the problem so arranged for R to have an MRI scan which took place on 18th August. R got a letter from the hospital last week asking him to see the specialist again yesterday. R has been getting more and more anxious as the summer has progressed, as is only natural, and the long delays in between appointments have been difficult to cope with. The specialist began by saying that she couldn’t find anything in the scan to account for the problems R has been experiencing, however she had found something else which will need dealing with before any more investigation into the throat business is done. There is a growth on his pituitary gland at the base of his brain and this will have to be operated on soon before he becomes really unwell. He will have to take some time off work and won’t be able to drive for some time before and after the operation. The specialist is referring my poor husband to another specialist who will contact R in about a month. R is very relieved it isn’t cancer but is very nervous about having a brain operation.

If my posts have been sporadic, if I have written a load of rubbish or made a rather stupid comment on your blogs it is because of all of the above. I can’t think straight and I can’t concentrate on anything. My arthritis is playing-up in my hands especially and I am so far behind with everything it is shocking! However, I am a strong person and with God’s help I will be able to support all the members of my family and all will be well.

Peak District Holiday 1st to 9th July. Day 3

28 Thu Aug 2014

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

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Back Forest, bilberries, Cedar, Danebridge, drystone walls, enchanter's nightshade, eyebright, ferns, fir cones, foxglove, Gradbach, grasses, Hanging Stone, hart's-tongue fern, heath bedstraw, heather, JW Lees beer, landslip, Lud's Church, marsh thistle, moss, mouse-ear hawkweed, pink purslane, River Dane, sheep, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, spear thistle, stiles, The Roaches, The Ship Inn, tormentil, walking, Welsh poppy, Wincle, Wincle Brewery, wood sorrel

After a gentle day in Buxton (see Days 1 and 2) and another good night’s sleep we felt ready for a little exercise. We decided to go on a circular walk in Back Forest alongside the River Dane to Danebridge and then back. We had done this walk before, a few years ago, and had gone in a clockwise direction. This time we went anti-clockwise and it is amazing how different everything looks coming at it from the opposite direction.

We drove a few miles from where we were staying to the Peak National Park car park in Gradbach. The day was bright and breezy with not too much strong sunshine – ideal walking weather. The car park was full – about ten cars – which disappointed us, but once we had got past Gradbach Mill and into the forest we hardly saw a soul. There is a short walk down the hill to the mill from the car park. Last year the Mill had still been in use as a Youth Hostel but this year it had been taken over by Newcastle under Lyme University and a lot of renovation work was being carried out. It is in the process of being made into a Field Study Centre and there were groups of students setting off on walks and school children on field trips having noisy picnics all over the place. We followed a path away from the mill and down to the river going over and through a couple of stiles on the way. One of the stiles was a squeeze stile and from a distance this looks an easier option than having to clamber over a wall or gate using wooden or stone cross bars. Up close one can see that the gap is very narrow, in fact no more than 25cm/9.8″ wide to stop livestock escaping from fields either side of the wall. There are stone pillars on each side of the gap to protect the structure of the wall. The dry-stone walls are at least 4.5′ tall and as I am 5’4″ tall and not exactly skinny they are very difficult for me to manage. I have to put my arms in the air, breathe in and force myself through inch by inch with R standing watching and smirking. Anyone larger than me would not be able to get through at all. R is nearly a foot taller than me at 6’3″ and takes longer strides so, though we walk the same distance, I do about two paces to his one. I also wander about taking photos and lag behind and have to trot to catch up with him.

We crossed the river by a narrow bridge and started to climb up into the forest leaving the river some way below.

Back Forest Wood looking down from the path towards the River Dane.

Back Forest Wood

Ferns and Wood Sorrel leaves

We walked through the woods for about three-quarters of a mile eventually descending back down towards the river again.

River Dane

Dane is a Celtic river-name meaning ‘trickling stream’.

Bilberries

Mosses

River Dane

Walking further on we saw that there had been a landslip which may have been caused by all the rain last winter.

A new pool caused by the landslip

Tree roots on the path

We then left the wood and started walking along a grassy path through a valley.

Tormentil – potentilla erecta

In wet weather or at night, when the petals close up, the tormentil flower has the ability to pollinate itself.

Eyebright – euphrasia nemorosa

This bright little flower was thought to be good for poor eyesight and an extract from eyebright and the herb golden seal is still used as an eye lotion. The 17th century botanist William Cole recorded in his book ‘Adam in Eden’ that eyebright was the herb used by the linnet (a little finch) to clear its eyesight. My source book for this information says ‘Since short-sighted linnets are not easy to identify, few could argue with Cole’s reasoning’. It is a semi-parasitic plant, only growing where its roots can attach themselves to other plants like clover and plantain.

Marsh Thistle with Buttercups

We then followed the path alongside a drystone wall.

033Foxgloves and dry-stone wall (480x640)

Lots of Foxgloves were growing by the wall

Heath Bedstraw was growing in the grass

and so was Mouse-ear Hawkweed

036Mouse-ear Hawkweed with flies (640x480)

which was popular with the flies

We passed by a farmhouse with some sheep.

Just a little further on over the fields the views were very good.

Rolling countryside

We then re-entered woodland.

I loved these tree trunks so had to include this photo though it is terribly out of focus

By this time we were approaching Danebridge and it was lunchtime. We climbed over a stile and joined the lane that led to the village.

This was the slab of stone we stepped onto when we got down from the stile. I wonder where it came from and what it had been in a former life.

I immediately noticed a little pink flower at the side of the road. The photo doesn’t show how pink it was.

Pink Purslane – Claytonia sibirica

This is a plant introduced from North America and is widely naturalised.

We walked down to the river thinking we would eat our sandwiches next to it but we couldn’t see anywhere suitable to sit.

Strange rock strata at the edge of the river

This shows it a little more clearly

Enchanter’s Nightshade

I like this plant’s name. It belongs to the same family as the Willowherbs.

Mathias De l’Obel, a 16th century Flemish botanist, in trying to identify a magical plant that Discorides (an early Greek physician) had named after the mythical sorceress Circe, eventually chose this plant. Enchanter’s Nightshade’s botanical name is Circaea lutetiana – lutetia is the Roman name for Paris, which is where De l’Obel and other botanists worked.The Anglo-Saxons had used this plant as a protection against spells cast by elves. Their name for it was aelfthone. This is the only Willowherb that doesn’t disperse its fruit with the help of the wind. Instead, it has hooks on its fruit that catch onto fur or feathers like burs. It is pollinated mainly by small flies. I find it fascinating that plants can adapt to their surroundings like this.

Hart’s-tongue fern

055Yellow poppy, hart's tongue etc (480x640)

A yellow Welsh poppy has joined other plants growing out of this drystone wall

We stood on the bridge at Danebridge.

River Dane

From the bridge we could see the buildings of a local micro-brewery.

Wincle brewery

Wincle is a village just up the hill from Danebridge and a woman walking her dog informed us that there was a pub up the hill just beyond the brewery. The word ‘pub’ worked as a clarion call to arms and R was up that hill before I or anyone else could say Jack Robinson. As we powered up the hill I just had time to admire this door set into a wall.

058Door in dry-stone retaining wall (640x480)

I love doors like this. I imagine such a lovely garden beyond this one with stone steps on a winding path up to the house.

We found the pub as we neared the top of the hill.

The Ship Inn

The Ship Inn sign

It seemed so strange for a pub, many miles from the sea or even a navigable river, to be called ‘The Ship’. There was a little information displayed in the pub and I have also looked on-line to find out more about this. There is a ‘History of Wincle’ site which has been very helpful. Sir Philip Brocklehurst of Swythamley Hall (a couple of miles away) sailed with the explorer Shackleton on one of his expeditions to the Antarctic from 1907-9. The pub sign depicts the Nimrod in Antarctic ice ( not the more famous Endeavour of the 1914 expedition). Shackleton was also Sir Philip’s best man when he married Gwladys Murray in 1913.

Some say The Ship is named after another vessel, ‘The Swythamley’, which was owned by a friend of the squire and sank off the Cape of Good Hope in 1862. As the pub is also said to date back to the 17th century it is possible that the name is linked with ‘shippen’, a local word for a sheep shelter. Or the name could be linked with a much earlier boat. In fact, so far no-one seems to know for sure why it has this name!

A flintlock displayed on the wall of the pub.

There are stories about royalist rebels visiting the pub in the 17th century and the gun belonging to one of them was displayed on the wall until fairly recently as well as a framed article from a Manchester newspaper of the day. Both these items went missing at some point. The flintlock now on display was acquired fairly recently and, if I remember correctly, it was discovered that it was made at the same time and by the same gunsmith as the original gun.

We sat outside the pub and sampled their beer. We asked if they sold the locally brewed beer but was told they didn’t so we had some JW Lees beer instead, which was very good.

I only had a few sips of my beer and had to give the rest, reluctantly, to R. I am not supposed to drink alcohol as it reacts badly with the medication I am on and anyway, I try not to drink much of anything on walks because of the lack of convenient ‘conveniences’. I have a horror of being ‘caught short’ as the saying goes, and being discovered by walkers, with a dog…

After a pleasant rest we continued on our way. We went back down the hill to the bridge and found the path we needed which climbed up through more woodland very steeply at times. I remember that for most of the walk we were listening to wonderful birdsong. At the top of the path we came out of the wood onto fields again. Here we rested again and ate our sandwiches.

Fir cones on a tree at the edge of the wood

View over a stile

This is one of the many stiles we climbed over that day. We followed a track by a wall belonging to Hangingstone Farm and then saw the Hanging Stone itself.

The Hanging Rock

We didn’t have the energy to climb up to the rock to read the inscriptions there. One plaque is dedicated to Courtney Brocklehurst, the brother of the aforementioned Philip, who was killed in the 2nd World War, and the other is to a pet hunting dog of an earlier Brocklehurst. This dog was very well loved and when he died was buried under the Hanging Stone. The dog’s name was Burke, because he was such a good hunting dog. In 1828, Burke and Hare were accused of killing sixteen people and then selling the corpses to Dr Robert Knox who dissected them during his popular anatomy lectures.

A rather lovely Spear Thistle

A carpet of Tormentil

A carpet of Heath Bedstraw

I liked the delicate grass heads with the heavy blocks of the drystone wall behind

We were now walking over more open moorland.

The Heather, or Ling as some call it, was beginning to flower

Little pink-purple bells

A good-sized Cedar tree

The more open terrain here meant we could now see the edge of the Roaches, a gritstone escarpment which has spectacular rock formations. The name comes from the French ‘les Roches’.

The Roaches

A gentler view.

The fields are all separated by stone walls

We then started descending slowly towards Back Forest again.

The walls are wonderfully constructed. Bilberry bushes are growing against this one.

In the woods again.

We diverted a little way off the path back to Gradbach to see Lud’s Church again. This is a natural rift which is about 200 yards in length and varies in width from 12 feet to 50 feet wide and is about 59 feet deep. We didn’t go far along it as we were both getting very tired. We will go again some time, walk its length and photograph it.

It is a very atmospheric place; mossy,cool and quiet.

The sides of the ravine are covered in ferns and other damp-loving plants.

During the 15th century, according to local legend, Lollards (followers of John Wycliffe, an early church reformer) used to worship here in secret during the time of their persecution.

Many researchers have identified this place as the Green Chapel in the 14th Century alliterative poem ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. The author describes this district well. Gawain rides off searching for the Green Chapel ….

‘Then he gave the spur to Gringolet and galloped down the path,

Thrust through a thicket there by a bank,

And rode down the rough slope right into the ravine.

Then he searched about, but it seemed savage and wild,

And no sign did he see of any sort of building;

But on both sides banks, beetling and steep,

And great crooked crags, cruelly jagged;

The bristling barbs of rock seemed to brush the sky.’

Translation by Brian Stone.

Another legend is that a hunter was killed here and that he still roams about the cleft covered from head to toe in moss and leaves. He is known locally as the Green Man one of many ‘green men’ to be found in Britain.

We joined our path again and soon reached the bridge over the River Dane and then Gradbach mill.

Cloud Chasing

12 Tue Aug 2014

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

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Bertha, black bryony, blue flax, bread-making, clouds, clover, fields, fleabane, gates, grasses, great black slug, greenbottle, hen and chicks, Kestrel potatoes, marsh ragwort, phacelia, Rain, red bartsia, René Magritte, rice, the Beck, thunder, tub-thumping priest, walking, wild radish, willow, wind

I had hoped to be able to stay at home on Saturday as the weather was so nice. However, when I took a loaf out of our breadmaker and saw that, for the second time in a row, the bread hadn’t risen very much I realised that one of two things had happened. I knew that I hadn’t made a mistake when measuring out the ingredients or when setting the programme. The problem was either a faulty batch of yeast or, even worse, a faulty breadmaker. I went into Halesworth and bought a very nice looking loaf from the health food/delicatessen shop as well as some new yeast. I had been experimenting with a different brand-name dried yeast and thought that that may have been the problem so I bought some of the old tried-and-tested yeast. While in town I also got some more vegetables and a couple of newspapers – The Saturday Times so that R could do the crossword (most of the rest of the newspaper usually goes straight into the re-cycling bin) and a Beccles and Bungay Journal. This had a very nice account of our Requiem Eucharist last Sunday with a photograph and also a double-page centre-spread featuring Dolly and her memories of living in a village which is doubly thankful, in that all its people going off to war in both the Great and the Second World War came back safely. As I drove home I noticed such wonderful clouds in the sky! The wind was picking up already so I decided to trot back down the lane and photograph them before checking round the garden to make sure all was well battened down and tied up before the high winds that had been forecast arrived. One of my favourite artists is René Magritte who painted clouds like these.

La grande famille Series 1 Lithography by René Magritte

I also saw that one of next-door’s chickens had had some chicks and was taking them for a walk on the grass verge of the lane.

There are six chicks there somewhere!

R was mowing the grass when I got home and he also made sure everything was ready for the storm so I didn’t have to. What a kind man! We had some very heavy rain and thunder over-night and while we were in church on Sunday morning the rain came on again with more thunder. The Rector is currently having a well-deserved, two-week break from us so the service was taken by a retired clergyman who lives in our benefice and is a great friend of ours. The bible readings for the day were very apt – the earthquake, wind and fire from which God was absent and then the quiet whisper that was God, and the story of the disciples being tossed about in the boat on the lake and Jesus walking on water to join them and calming the storm. I was waiting for a stormy sermon and got one though not quite the one I expected. In fact, we all got a lecture about the current terrible situation in Gaza. We were told that a lot of what is going on there was our (the British) fault and that we cannot wash our hands of it. The priest even struck the edge of the pulpit with his hand! Twice! Our Rector might grumble and nag but I cannot remember him ever beating up the pulpit during a sermon! I think we have been lucky and haven’t had such bad weather as others around the country. The rain didn’t last that long really and by mid afternoon the sun was coming out. It was, and still is very blustery but the wind hasn’t been as damaging as we thought it would be. We have lost a few apples and pears from our trees and some of the plants look a little sorry for themselves but on the whole, nothing to worry about. Once we saw that the rain had stopped, R and I decided to go out for a walk. We chose one of our walks across the fields.

Evidence of recent rainfall

Before we had walked more than a few steps along the path we saw such a mass of fleabane!

Pulicaria dysenterica – Common Fleabane

‘Pulicaria’ refers to the plant’s power against fleas (pulex = Latin for flea) and ‘dysenterica’ recalls a time when fleabane was used as a medicine against dysentery. When dried and burned, the leaves of fleabane were said to give off a vapour which drove fleas away so the plant was highly prized when houses were plagued with them. The plants were used in an unburned state as an insecticide too. Culpeper, the 17th century herbalist, didn’t think much of the flower itself – ‘an ill-looking weed’, ‘the flowers are a dirty yellow’, but he commended its effectiveness against insects. ‘The smell is supposed delightful to insects and the juice destructive to them, for they never leave it til the season of their deaths’. I believe I have photographed this gate before. It is in an even worse state than the last time we were here.

Something has been eating this clover in a crimping style.

R and I were quite surprised to see that the normally fallow field was full of plants and flowers. We haven’t been this way for some weeks.

Wild flower seeds appear to have been sown here – not all native.

The purple flower, Phacelia tanacetifolia or scorpion weed, is often grown as a green compost but is dug in before it flowers. It is also grown as a butterfly and insect magnet as the flowers are full of nectar. It is not a native plant. I spotted all sorts of plants that I recognised, for example…

Blue flax

I think this may be wild radish

It also appeared as if a trial crop had been planted here. We did not recognise it at all. After some research I have decided that it may be rice. The kind of rice – arborio – that is grown in northern Italy.

Is this rice?

I think it looks very much like it. Can anyone confirm this for me, please? Near to the hedge we found some red bartsia but my photo is very poor as you will see. I also found some ragwort which I think may be marsh ragwort. We walked past another field of dried peas and continued to admire the enormous clouds on the horizon. We were now approaching the Beck and we could hear all the ditches and little streams that join it gurgling and bubbling. We saw this Great Black Slug in the damp grass.

The Beck was flowing very fast

This willow has galls on it and one of its leaves is very distorted

We decided to walk a little further to the top of the hill and look at the view from there.

Greenbottle flies develop a coppery tinge with age

One of our favourite views

The road junction at the top of the hill

After all the humid weather recently it was lovely at the top of the hill with the strong wind blowing. It looked as if we might have some more rain so we headed back down the hill. On the way I noticed some shiny Black Bryony leaves in the hedgerow. Another view of a field, a gate and some clouds. The wind and rain had made patterns with the dried grasses. We got home and I started preparing the evening meal. I used some of our home-grown Kestrel potatoes which are very tasty indeed.

Purple patterned potatoes

In fact, the clouds passed us by without shedding a drop of rain. The skies cleared by nightfall and we were able to see the enormous full moon as it rose and then a couple of shooting stars as well. A beautiful end to the weekend.

A Suffolk Garden in July – Insects Part 1

08 Fri Aug 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Insects, plants, Rural Diary

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

azure damselfly, blackfly aphid, blue-tailed damselfly, brown hawker, burnet moth, buttercup, comma butterfly, Essex skipper, feverfew, greenbottle, helicopter, ichneumon wasp, insects, July, meadow brown butterfly, migrant hawker, oedemea nobilis, peacock butterfly, Red Lily Beetle grub, rhagonycha fulva, Ringlet butterfly, robber fly' bindweed, ruddy darter, sawfly, small skipper, Small Tortoiseshell, small wolf spider, speckled wood butterfly, spotted crane fly, Suffolk, white butterfly

A Speckled Wood butterfly

I realise that we are now a week into August but better late than never. There were so many different insects about last month that I will have to make more than one post to cover them. I have also included some photos of insects that I saw during June most of which were still about in July. I will list the insects in the order in which I saw them or was able to photograph them. I am not including the dragonfly, damselfly and butterfly photos that I have already posted but I may include different photos of the same type of insect.

The Speckled Wood shown above had a little bit of its wing missing but was quite a bright, new-looking insect. The next photo is of something none of us want in our gardens.

A Red Lily Beetle grub – yeuch!

These nasties chomp their way through lilies and fritillaries and do it very quickly too. They cover themselves in their own excrement.

A male Oedemera nobilis – only the males have the swollen hind-legs. They feed on pollen and this one is eyeing up his next meal

The next two photos are of the same unidentified insect and the photos aren’t that clear either. Ichneumon wasp or sawfly?

Note the extremely long ovipositor!

A Small Wolf Spider carrying its eggs in a silk ball

I realise that spiders aren’t insects but I’m still including this one here nevertheless. Because these spiders do not make webs and live a nomadic life, the female has to carry her eggs around with her. Some wolf spiders even carry their spiderlings about with them too. When the spiderlings are due to hatch, the female spins a large ‘nursery web’ in the vegetation and puts the egg sac there. Wolf spiders run down their prey like their namesakes.

Greenbottle

Azure Damselfly

Here are some more little insects that gardeners could do without. This photo also shows how good feverfew is at attracting them.

Blackfly aphids on Feverfew

Spotted Cranefly

Unidentified insect (sawfly?) on a buttercup

Tortoiseshell butterfly sipping nectar

A Meadow Brown butterfly on a very windy day

A Ringlet butterfly on another windy day

A Ruddy Darter dragonfly

Rhagonycha fulva I thought at first that this was a Cardinal Beetle but they have different antennae and are much redder.

A Burnet Moth caught in a spider’s web

A Blue-tailed Damselfly

009Bindweed flower with unidentified fly and pollen beetle

An unidentified fly (robber fly?) on a bindweed flower

A military helicopter It looks like an insect!

Another photo of a Ruddy darter

A Migrant Hawker dragonfly

Peacock butterfly on lobelia

Small or Essex Skipper on Common Bird’s-foot-trefoil

The Small and the Essex Skipper butterflies are very similar. The difference is that the Essex Skipper is greyer underneath and its antennal tip is black underneath. I don’t think I will ever be able to tell the difference.

Comma butterfly

Comma butterfly

Spot the dragonfly! I think this is a Brown Hawker

An unidentified white Butterfly. I am having a lot of trouble identifying the white buttterflies

There will be more insects in the next post.

High Summer Walk 2

06 Wed Aug 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Insects, plants, Rural Diary, trees, walking, weather

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Bird's-foot Trefoil, bramble, bulrush, cardinal beetle, cat's-ear, common knapweed, cuckoo bee, dewberry, greater plantain, hazelnuts, hedge bedstraw, hemp-agrimony, Hoverfly, meadow brown butterfly, poppy, robin's pincushion, rowan, small white butterfly, spear thistle, speckled wood butterfly, straw baling, the Beck, the Washes

Before I continue my walk, I’ll update you on the local harvest scene. Yesterday, all the farms here were extremely busy working on the fields because rain was forecast for today. I was listening to combine harvesters working well into the small hours. I think the last tractor to roar past our house with its laden trailer of grain was at about 2.00 a.m. The rain duly came just a few hours later and this morning was very wet. On my way to collect Mum for our weekly shopping trip I had to slow the car to a crawl with the wipers going very fast as I couldn’t see the road because of the torrents. There were some very deep puddles and water was bubbling up from the drains in the villages we passed through. I was about to say that this afternoon has been dry and bright when I heard that familiar pitter-patter of rain on the leaves outside and had to rush outside and close the garden shed.

Straw baling yesterday.

The tractor pulls a baling machine up and down the field which sucks up the straw and packs it into bales which emerge from the back of the machine and are then tossed onto the field.

The finished job

Last week I took a couple of photos of a field at the other end of our lane. The farmer there was using a different type of baler.

I noticed that the field on the other side of the lane had had its first plough

This morning, before I went out, the field at the back looked like this – and when I got home, it looked like this – So, some progress had been made despite the wet weather.

Back to my walk …

The Hedge Bedstraw is still in flower.

Bedstraw and Common Knapweed

The Washes were showing signs that we had had a lot of rain recently. The road here often floods as it is next to the Beck and in a little valley. The Beck was flowing quite nicely but was very overgrown and difficult to see.

Reflections in the Beck

Common Poppy

A ‘Robin’s Pincushion’ – a gall on wild rose plants

The hazelnuts in the hedgerow are ripening

Greater Plantain

People with lawns do not like either the Greater or the Hoary Plantain as they are very persistent and can survive crushing and tearing. New growth comes from the base of the plant. Birds love the seeds and when caged birds as pets were more popular, people used to gather the dried seed-heads for them. Another name for this plantain is Rat’s Tail. I tried many times, unsuccessfully, to photograph this male Meadow Brown butterfly but the camera was having none of it and kept focusing on the rose leaf. So, I have gone with it because of the little red ball on the leaf. Is this another type of gall or is it the very first stage of a Robin’s Pincushion? I was looking at all the brambles in the hedge and noticed these – They are dewberries – a relative of the bramble/blackberry. The flowers are larger and the fruits too, which have a bloom to them. The leaves have three leaflets.

Here is bramble with a visiting bee

Rowan or Mountain Ash berries – a sign of the approach of autumn

A Spear Thistle with a Cuckoo Bee (L) and a Hoverfly (R)

This is the Great Reedmace or as it is now known, the Bulrush. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted ‘Moses in the Bulrushes’ and showed the baby in amongst a clump of Reedmaces. Since then the Reedmace has been known as the Bulrush. The brown sausage-like part of the flower is female and the narrow spire at the top is male. In the Lesser Bulrush there is a gap between the female and male parts of the flower.

I think this is Greater Bird’s-foot-trefoil. The flower stalks were very long.

Two white butterflies – I think they are both Small Whites but as they were both battered and faded I can’t be sure

A Speckled Wood butterfly

Cat’s-ear and Agrimony Hemp-agrimony. This is a member of the daisy family – Agrimony is a member of the rose family. Early herbalists wrongly classed this plant with true Agrimony. The leaves of this plant look like cannabis leaves hence the ‘hemp’. Cardinal Beetle and a saw-fly visiting the Hemp-agrimony I was going to return to the Hemp-agrimony a few days later to look at it again once the flowers had all come out. Unfortunately, the common was mown the next day and all the flowers had gone. The following photos are of a large clump of them that I see on my way to my mother’s house. They are tall plants – about 4-5 feet tall – and I think they look beautiful. The walk I took was only about a mile in length – I was pleasantly surprised to find so many things to look at in such a small area.