My life in rural Suffolk. The wildlife around my home, the weather that affects what I do, my family and the people I meet.

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.

Norwich Knowledge

06 Sat Sep 2014

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

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

Augustine Steward house, beguinage, Blackfriar's Hall, Briton's Arms, Christian Resource Centre, City College, Edith Cavell, Edith Cavell Monument, Elm Hill, elm trees, Erpingham Gateway, Forget-Me-Not Café, Fye Bridge, hair appointments, Norwich, Norwich Cathedral, Norwich Hippodrome, Paston family, Princes Street, Quayside, River Wensum, St Andrew's Hall, St Giles, St Giles car-park, St Michael at Plea, Stranger's Club, timber-framed buildings, Tombland, Tombland Alley, walking

Norwich is a very beautiful city and we always look forward to visiting it. (Norwich is pronounced ‘Norridge’ or, if you are a local, ‘Narge’). For the next few months I will be going there every day of the week so perhaps the shine may wear off a little, though I don’t think it likely.

On Tuesday E and I had to be at City College Norwich at 8.30 in the morning so that E could meet her mentor before her ‘taster day’ began at 9.00 am. I had a hair appointment at 9.45, my second one with my new hairdresser. When my local hairdresser went on maternity leave and I found the replacement hairdresser wasn’t to my liking I decided to look for a new one in Norwich where I would be spending some time each day. I rather like the young woman who now does my hair. ‘Oh Clare!’, she said the last time I saw her, ‘Don’t start colouring your hair again. Your shade of grey is really lovely!’. There aren’t many women who wouldn’t fall for that one.

So, after leaving E at the college I drove to the city centre and parked my car in my usual car-park at St Giles. This is rather an ugly multi-storey car-park built in the 1960’s so is quite difficult to park in if you have a modern car – it’s very narrow and full of pillars. The car-park is on the site of the Norwich Hippodrome, an extremely ornate theatre built in 1903 and demolished in 1964. Apparently many inter-war stars performed there – Charlie Chaplin, Marie Lloyd, Gracie Fields, George Formby and even Archibald Leach (Cary Grant) made his acting debut there at the age of twelve. After the Second World War it continued to be popular for a while with acts like Laurel and Hardy visiting in 1954.

I had about an hour to kill before my appointment and, as the morning was bright and sunny I decided to have a short walk and visit some of my favourite places.

I walked up past my hairdressers in London Street to the junction at the top of the hill. On the corner of Redwell Street and Queen Street is the redundant church of St Michael at Plea.

001St Michael's at Pleas church (2) (458x640)

St Michael at Plea church

The church ceased to be a place of worship in 1973 and opened in 2008 as a Christian Resource Centre. Before that it had been used as an antiques market. We call in quite often as we buy things for our church here – candles, communion wafers etc – and it is a good place for Easter and Christmas gifts. The bookshop is very good and stocks new and second-hand books. There is also a really nice café in what was the chancel, with extremely tasty and cheap food, all supplied by volunteers. The café is called the Forget-Me-Not Café after the wording on the clock on the tower.

001St Michael's at Pleas church (406x640)

The Forget-Me-Not clock

The battlements and spirelets were put on the top of the tower during a 19th Century restoration. The tower had been lowered for safety reasons some time before that. I think it had been much taller with bells.

001St Michael's at Pleas church (3) (433x640)

The rather truncated tower with its pretty pinnacles

The porch is probably early 16th Century and rather strangely gives access to the base of the tower rather than the Nave. Most of the church’s furniture and valuable decorations were removed when it was made redundant but it still has a beautiful memorial in it, some medieval glass high in the east window and some carved angels in the roof.

I then went down Elm Hill, one of the most lovely streets in the country.

Elm Hill. Blackfriars Hall is on the corner of the street on the right of the photo.

Elm Hill is a cobbled street full of timber-framed buildings and virtually unaltered since the 16th Century. There have been people living in this area since at least 1200. (Probably before that time, as it is close to the river and to Tombland, the site of the Anglo-Saxon market.) It is called Elm Hill after the elm trees that used to grow there next to the Briton’s Arms, all of them killed by Dutch Elm disease. This was a wealthy street in medieval times where many merchants lived. By the 20th Century it had seen better days and there were plans to sweep it all away. Fortunately, the authorities thought better of this idea and now most of the buildings have been restored and look wonderful.

Briton’s Arms, now a restaurant and coffee house.

The Briton’s Arms was built in 1347 and became an ale house in 1760. It is three storeys high and was the only house on Elm Hill to survive a fire in 1507. It stands in the corner of the old churchyard of St Peter Hungate and the only reason it survived the fire was because it stood apart from the rest of the houses. The fire destroyed 300 houses and shops. There are two rooms per storey of the Briton’s Arms and each floor is reached by a side staircase. The top floor is jettied out on three sides and it also has an attic – a rarity in Medieval buildings. It is perhaps one of the oldest inhabited attics in England. It began life as a beguinage associated with St Peter’s church. A beguinage was the home of a group of single women who devoted their lives to prayer and community work, like a nunnery. However, unlike a nunnery which accepted the daughters of wealthy parents, beguines were usually from poor backgrounds. They earned a little money from spinning and begging for alms and did charity work in the city but their main work was regular worship in the church next door which was reached through a stone arched door in the rear wall of the building. Beguinages were common in Europe but there are no known other examples elsewhere in Britain.

Looking further down Elm Hill from outside the Briton’s Arms.

I cropped the photo above to make it easier for you to see the pink house on the left.

The house just in front of the man in the photo is the Strangers’ Club built on the site of the Paston’s House which was destroyed by the fire. The Club is said to be haunted by a man who died in the fire of 1507. Queen Elizabeth I stayed here and watched a pageant in her honour from one of the upstairs windows.

The Pastons rose from peasantry to aristocracy in two generations. They also left a record of private correspondence (The Paston Letters) which is the first example of such correspondence to survive in Britain. To quote my on-line source ‘The letters show first hand testimony of the social benefits of the plague brought to the peasantry, the chaotic effects of the War of the Roses on the general populace and the individual impact that the Black Death could have on a family’. I have a copy of the letters and they are a really good read especially the letters from Margaret Paston to her two sons and theirs to her. Her husband had managed to be bequeathed Caister Castle by John Fastolf who was a knight during the Hundred Years War, became a loyal servant of Henry V and fought in the Battle of Agincourt. He was also the knight that Shakespeare based his John Falstaff on.

Quayside from Fye Bridge

At the bottom of Elm Hill I turned left along Wensum Street and crossed halfway over Fye Bridge so I could look at the River Wensum. Wensum comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for ‘winding’ – wandsum or wendsum. The river winds in two large loops through the city and is a tributary of the River Yare despite being the larger of the two rivers. It is chalk-fed and the whole river is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Area of Conservation. Fye Bridge is built over the oldest river crossing in Norwich and is the gate to the North of the city known as Norwich Over the Water. The bridge is also the site of a former ducking stool.

The River Wensum

007Norwich Cathedral from Erpingham Gate (471x640)

Norwich Cathedral seen from the Erpingham Gate

I didn’t cross right over the bridge but returned to Wensum Street and walked along it to Tombland and stood by the Erpingham Gate so I could look at the Cathedral. Though it doesn’t look it from this angle the cathedral is immensely long (407 feet) and the top of its spire is 315 feet from the ground. The construction of it was begun in 1096 and finished in about 1145. The Cathedral was also a Benedictine Priory. The Erpingham Gateway was built in 1420 by Sir Thomas Erpingham who was the commander of Henry V’s archers at the Battle of Agincourt.

Just to the right of the Erpingham Gateway is the Edith Cavell Memorial.

Edith Cavell is buried near the east end of the Cathedral. She was born in 1865 and grew up in Swardeston, south of Norwich and was a vicar’s daughter. She became a Matron of an English teaching hospital and was also an influential pioneer of modern nursing in Belgium. She was in England visiting her mother when World War I broke out but returned to Belgium as she felt it was her duty so to do. Her hospital became a Red Cross hospital and so wounded soldiers from all nations were treated there. She was a devout Christian and this motivated her to help all those in need, both German and Allied soldiers. When a group of wounded British soldiers arrived who had been cut off from their comrades she decided to help them despite knowing that that she was putting at risk the neutrality of the Red Cross and endangering others working with her. She then joined a Belgian underground movement and helped more than 200 Allied soldiers to escape to neutral territory. The network was betrayed, she was arrested, tried by a court martial, found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. Her execution was carried out at dawn by a firing squad on 12th October 1915. She was still wearing her nurses uniform. On the eve of her execution she said, “I am thankful to have had these ten weeks of quiet to get ready. Now I have had them and have been kindly treated here. I expected my sentence and I believe it was just. Standing as I do in view of God and Eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.”

008Medieval buildings and Tombland Alley (640x480)

Augustine Steward house

Opposite the Erpingham Gateway in Tombland is this rather lop-sided medieval building. This is Augustine Steward house which was built in 1530 by Augustine Steward, a cloth merchant. A merchant’s mark can be found in the passage next to the house. A merchants mark is a symbolic sign or design used by artisans, merchants and townspeople to identify themselves and authenticate their goods. The alleyway next to the house is called Tombland Alley and in the alley is the burial ground for the adjacent church of St George. The high-walled churchyard contains mainly victims killed by the plague. The name ‘Tombland’ has nothing to do with tombs but comes from an Old Scandinavian word for ‘open space’. It was the area used for the Anglo-Saxon market and the administrative centre of Norwich before the Norman Invasion.

010Medieval buildings in Tombland (2) (480x640)

Another ancient building and the best antiquarian bookshop in Norwich.

This is a 15th Century timber-framed building also in Tombland. I like the way the gable-end of this house leans outwards.

010Medieval buildings in Tombland (483x640)

It isn’t as easy to see how much it leans out in a photo as it is in real life.

Princes Street

I turned off Tombland into Princes Street. Again, this street is cobbled and is full of a mix of beautifully restored 16th and 17th Century buildings with some modern offices and homes.

St Andrew’s Hall

Princes Street becomes Hall Plain after passing the top end of Elm Hill. St Andrew’s Hall is in Hall Plain. It and Blackfriar’s Hall at the top of Elm Hill are part of the most complete medieval friary complex surviving in this country. In 1538 during the reign of Henry VIII they passed into civic hands. The roof beams for Blackfriars and the hammerbeams in St Andrew’s roof were the gift of the Paston family together with superb 15th Century doors bearing the Arms of the Pastons and Mautbys in the South Porch. The nave of St Andrew’s Hall was repaired and renamed The New Hall and has been used for civic ceremonies ever since. The first recorded event was the mayor’s feast for Henry Fuller in 1544. The Hall has been used for many things – Guild meetings, an assize court, a corn exchange and a corn hall.The Earl of Warwick stabled his horses here when he came to crush Kett’s Rebellion in 1549. Sir Thomas Browne, the physician and polymath, was knighted here in 1671 by Charles II. The Norfolk and Norwich Festival was started here in 1824 and still continues. The largest regional Beer Festival in Great Britain was started here in 1978. I believe the Blackfriar’s Hall is used as a museum and art gallery. The old east and west ranges of cloisters have also had many uses – granaries to store corn for Poor Relief, places of worship for Presbyterians and Baptists, a mint where £259,000 of coins were produced in 1695, the City Workhouse, schools and colleges. They are now part of the Norfolk Institute of Art and Design.

I was now in time for my hair appointment and when that was finished I made my way home via Bungay where I bought some bird seed for my mother.

May I thank everyone for their kind thoughts and wishes. My husband is in good heart though not looking forward to brain surgery. My mother seems a little better too. We will see how E gets on on Monday and the rest of next week. I will keep you informed when I can. God Bless you all.

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.

A Suffolk Garden in July – Insects Part 2

17 Sun Aug 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Insects, Rural Diary

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Black-tailed Skimmer, Broad-bodied Chaser, comma, common blue damselfly, common darter, emperor dragonfly, Four-spotted Chaser, gatekeeper, greenbottle, House Spider, insects, Large Skipper, large white butterfly, leopard slug, meadow brown, micro moth, red admiral, robber fly, Roesel's bush-cricket, ruddy darter, small white butterfly, Suffolk

At last, I am now ready to finish showing you all the insects I saw last month. As with Part 1 of this post, all the insects shown here were photographed in my garden unless otherwise stated.

For most of the month the garden was full of these dragonflies –

Ruddy Darter

Female Meadow Brown butterflies are brighter than the males which often have no orange on them at all. There were plenty of Meadow Brown butterflies but I never managed to get a clear photo of one with its wings open. This photo will have to do.

Meadow Brown

With its wings closed, the Gatekeeper butterfly can be confused with the Meadow Brown.

Male Gatekeeper on Scabious flower

The main difference between the two butterflies is the Gatekeeper has two white spots in the eye on the fore-wing but the Meadow Brown has only one. The underside of the Gatekeeper’s hind-wing is slightly more patterned.

Gatekeeper on Scabious flower

The Gatekeeper is more orange than the Meadow Brown. The male Gatekeeper has a central patch of dark scent scales that is lacking in the female. Gatekeepers are very territorial and patrol their home patch, a gateway or stretch of hedgerow, seeing off any rivals.

Male Gatekeeper on Common Nettle

A Red Admiral butterfly is, like the Meadow Brown, difficult to photograph with its wings open.

Red Admiral on Buddleia

Red Admiral on Buddleia

Red Admiral on Buddleia

At this time of year the garden is always full of Small and Large White butterflies. Fortunately for us, we don’t often grow brassicas and my lovely blue Chicory, which the caterpillars of both white butterflies found tasty, died a while ago.

I think this is a Male Small White butterfly

008White butterfly on buddleja (640x427)

I think this is a male Large White butterfly

I often have difficulty telling the difference between the two whites. The black patch on the Large White extends from the wing-tip to at least halfway along the outer edge of the wing but on the Small White it is less dense and doesn’t extend as far. The female Large White has two black spots on the upper and underside of the forewing. The male Large White has two black spots on the underside of the forewing only and none on the upperside. The female Small White has two black spots on the upperside only of the forewing but the male only has one spot which is often faint or even missing. This is what confuses me! I’m glad that they aren’t confused.

There were still plenty of Skipper butterflies during the second half of the month.

Large Skipper on Buddleia

I think this may be a photo of a female as I don’t think I can see any scent glands.

A Comma butterfly

These are so named because of a white comma-shaped mark on the underside of its wing.

Dragonflies continued to fly around the garden.

Broad-bodied Chaser

036Possibly immature m. Black-tailed skimmer (640x427)

This may be an immature male Black-tailed Skimmer

A female Common Blue Damselfly

Not a very good photo, but I haven’t been able to get any other pictures of females.

A Four-spotted Chaser

A male Emperor Dragonfly

As you can see from the poor photo, I had great difficulty in getting a picture of this dragonfly. The male is very large and powerful and this was the only time I saw it at rest. I had to lean far out over the edge of the pond and I was frightened I would over-balance and fall in the water. It hardly ever left the pond unlike other dragonflies that search for prey along the hedge and up into the trees.

Female Emperor Dragonfly laying eggs

Female Emperor Dragonfly laying eggs

Female Emperor Dragonfly laying eggs

The female is larger than the male and is mainly green and brown. The male has a glorious bright blue abdomen.

A male Common Darter

These dragonflies are a paler red than the Ruddy Darter and the abdomen isn’t as constricted near the front. The females are a yellowish brown. In both sexes the legs are brown or black with a yellow stripe down the outside.

I have not been able to take many photos of moths this year.

Unidentified micro moth

A Robber Fly (not sure which one) with a victim in its grasp

Greenbottle on unripe blackberry

A female Roesel’s Bush-Cricket

I saw this climbing up the side of the conservatory.

And I saw this inside the garage one evening….

This House Spider was as big as my hand

The last creature in this post, like the spider, isn’t an insect and isn’t at all attractive. In fact it looks quite horrific but, before you rush off for your gun or other means of disposing of nasty things, stop!! This isn’t a garden foe it is a friend. Here it is –

A Leopard Slug

These slugs when fully grown are about 7″ long. They don’t damage healthy living plants but eat fungi, rotting plants and other slugs, especially those ones that do so much damage. They have to stay damp to breathe so live in dark, damp places especially piles of rotting logs. They can live for several years. Like other slugs and snails they are hermaphrodites but need to mate with another individual. To mate they climb a tree or other structure and then hang entwined from a branch on a thick strand of mucus. Both slugs then lay eggs in damp places. A dark horse among slugs, then. Who would have thought it!

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.

Gallery

Storm Clouds

12 Tue Aug 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary, Uncategorized, weather

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Bertha, clouds, storm, Suffolk

This gallery contains 16 photos.

Norwich Market

09 Sat Aug 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Asante campaign, gutter clearing, hurricane'Bertha', market, multi-coloured tilts, Norwich, Norwich Market, parcel delivery, shopping, Sir Garnet Wolesley

I spent yesterday at home and managed to do quite a bit of gardening. Well, not exactly proper gardening by which I mean weeding, digging, planting, pruning and the like; more like housework outside – sweeping and tidying, moving pots about and generally clearing spaces. It was well overdue and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I was at home all day because I was waiting for a delivery that needed signing for – a new battery for our caravan. A delivery company had tried to deliver it on Wednesday while I was out with Mum and had left a note to say as much. The note asked me to contact them on-line and re-arrange a delivery time, but if they didn’t hear from me they would call again the following working day. The website was strange and I couldn’t find anywhere on it where I could arrange a new delivery time so resigned myself to spending an enforced day at home. I thought of it with pleasure!

It still hadn’t arrived by the time R got home from two days away in Gloucestershire. He looked at the site and found that the battery would be delivered today, Friday. I had hoped to go to Norwich to collect some knitting wool for Mum – she is knitting a pullover – and buy a birthday present for someone. I also had to have my monthly blood test at the surgery. I resigned myself to spending yet another day at home. I thought of it with slight annoyance. I also thought how difficult re-arranging deliveries is now for people like my mother and mother-in-law, who do not have computers. There was no telephone number for these people to contact the company so they would wait in all next day and wonder where their parcel was.

R spent some time yesterday evening trying to clear clumps of moss and lots of ash tree keys out of the gutters. Our ladder isn’t quite tall enough to reach the gutters so the job was very difficult for him especially as he doesn’t have a head for heights. We are preparing for bad weather which is forecast for Sunday. The tail-end of hurricane Bertha is coming our way and it is as well for the gutters to work properly when it arrives.

I was pleased to see a delivery van arrive this morning just before 8.00 a.m. It reversed into the driveway and stopped outside the front door. I waited for the man to get out, but I waited in vain. The man waited in van. I went to the door and stood outside hoping that would get him moving. He wound down the window and said, “Sorry, love! I can’t deliver your parcel til eight-o-five – it’s against regulations. I’ll knock on the door in a while”, and then wound up the window again. Sure enough, at 8.05 a.m. a knock came at the door and I was able to sign for my parcel. The driver told me that each delivery has an allocated time for it. The new rules meant that instead of one hundred deliveries a day he now had seventy-five but he couldn’t get the work done any quicker. He said he wasn’t complaining.

I wasn’t complaining either. I went off to Halesworth surgery and had my blood test and a good chat with the phlebotomist who is a friend. I also met another friend from church outside the surgery and had a talk with him. Home again, home again jig-a-jig-jig and found that E was happy to come to Norwich with me.

Our first port of call was Jarrolds, a large independent department store in the city. It has quite a good toy department on the top floor which is where I wanted to go, and it also has a good art and book department where E might have wanted to browse. However, she was quite content looking at all the toys available now and trying to find ones she used to have. We then went to Waterstones, the bookshop. This is a favourite shop and gave E the opportunity to say which books she wanted and for me to ask her how much money she had brought with her and would that cover the price?

We dragged ourselves away from there after an hour and went to a coffee shop for lunch. We walked back up the hill to the car-park passing the wool shop on the way where I collected Mum’s wool and E admired the shop-lady’s little dog, a black poodle, asleep in a chair. We left Norwich eventually, once we had extricated ourselves from a long traffic-jam caused by road-works and then drove to Beccles where we did some supermarket shopping and arrived back home just before R got in from work.

I expect you are wondering where Norwich Market comes into all this. Well, most of our day was spent very close to the market.

It is one of England’s oldest continuing markets having been on the same site since the 11th century. Like most fairs and markets in the Middle Ages, it was held under license from the King, as the right to trade and receive revenues was part of the Royal prerogative. However, in 1341 King Edward III visited Norwich for a jousting tournament just as the building of the defensive city walls had been completed “for the honour of the King”. In gratitude, the King granted the franchise of the market to the city’s rulers in perpetuity. The franchise still survives to this day. I expect the person who thought to tell the King the defensive walls were built for him was feeling very pleased with himself after that! What a clever bit of crawling that was!

The market with its multi-coloured tilts is a tourist attraction now as well as part of the city landscape and a place where many people earn their livings. All sorts of things can be bought in the market with its 187 stalls. It is open from Monday to Saturday.

The market was fully refurbished in 2005. It looks similar to the way it did before the modernisation. It lost quite a bit of its quaintness but it is a much more comfortable and a healthier place to work than before.

This is ‘The Sir Garnet’ pub. Or to give it its full name – ‘The Sir Garnet Wolseley’. It is one of the public houses in the Market Place and started trading as a public house in about 1861. It was originally called ‘The Baron of Beef’, possibly because the premises was once a butcher’s shop but in 1874 it adopted the name ‘The Sir Garnet Wolseley’ in honour of Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley. That same year he had received accolades for the brilliantly executed Asante Campaign. This Asante campaign was the third of four conflicts between the Asante Empire in Akan, the interior of the Gold Coast now Ghana, and the British Empire in the 19th century. General Garnet Wolseley with 2500 British troops and several thousand West Indian and African troops was sent against the Asante. The war was covered by war correspondents including Henry Morton Stanley (explorer and journalist (“Dr Livingstone, I presume”)) and G. A. Henty (novelist and special correspondent). The war started when the British ended slavery on the Gold Coast in 1806 causing the (British) African Company of Merchants to go bankrupt as they owned slave forts all along the coast. The Asante economy was also affected as it was dependent on the slave trade too. The wars then developed into the usual power struggle between the Asante Empire, the Dutch, who supported the Asante and the British Empire. The Asante, impressively, withstood the British in some of these wars but in the end the Asante Empire became a British Protectorate in 1901. Sir Garnet Wolseley’s reputation for efficiency led to the late 19th century English phrase “everything’s all Sir Garnet”, meaning, all is in order. This phrase was one that my grandfather used and until we came to Norwich and saw this pub we had no idea that Sir Garnet was a real person or why my grandfather used the expression. And now we know!

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.