Trinity Sunday and Father’s Day

17 Tue Jun 2014

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

Tags

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

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

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

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

The old village stocks which are kept in the porch.

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

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

The 15th century font.

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

The Easter Sepulchre.

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

Panels from the base of the former rood screen.

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

The 19th century altar

: Beautiful needlework

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

The tiny narrow rood loft stairs.

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

A corn dolly cross behind the pulpit

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

Hedge Mustard

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

Tutsan

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

Common Knapweed or Hardheads

Common Knapweed

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

Yarrow

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

Meadow Vetchling

Bedstraw

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

Greater Knapweed

Greater Knapweed with visiting mosquito

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

Hedge Bindweed

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

St Margaret’s village sign

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

Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon

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

A hoverfly on hogweed

Acanthus

An acanthus plant by someone’s garden fence.

Cypress with cones

Not a very clear photo I’m afraid.

Lastly, a few photos of some Pyramidal Orchids.

Miscellany Part 2

15 Sun Jun 2014

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

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

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

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

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

he replaced the septic tank electric box cover…..

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

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

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

The ruts nicely filled-in at last.

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

The small pond in desperate need of improvement

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

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

Wild flowers in Rumburgh churchyard

Ox-eye daisies in Rumburgh churchyard

A beautiful flower arrangement on the altar

The old coffin bier in the church

Memorial stone in the aisle

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

A view across the fields

The path at the edge of the field

Hedge Woundwort

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

An, as yet, unidentified micro moth

St Peter’s church

Water tower at St Michaels

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

A Lesser Tortoiseshell butterfly

We saw this butterfly sunning itself on the path.

We also saw the crops ripening…..

Barley.

Wheat

We saw other grasses too

And a beautiful Guelder Rose.

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

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

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

Water, Water Everywhere.

28 Wed May 2014

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

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Bell Inn, bird feeding, Broads, Chandlery, dogwood, Fritton, Fritton Decoy, Great Yarmouth, grey squirrel, Haddiscoe, pill box, Rain, St Olaves, Toft Monks, Waveney, windmill, Yare, yellow iris

We have had a very wet day indeed today. This is our pond this afternoon with rain-drops stippling its surface. I spent most of the morning away from home visiting the surgery then shopping in Halesworth and then in Bungay. This afternoon was spent doing household chores and then getting soaked to the skin in the garden. I have planted some runner beans for my mother. She said she wanted ten plants so I planted ten in pots a week ago and nine have come up. This afternoon I planted three more which will give her a couple of spares in case she gets slug damage after planting out. I then went round the garden checking on the bird feeders. I have been cleaning and disinfecting all the feeders during the past week; waiting until each one empties and then bringing it in. In that way I don’t have too many to do in one go and the birds still have food to eat outside. I have twelve feeders around the garden as well as a couple of bird tables and a ground feeder. The birds are very hungry and the food is disappearing extremely fast. The feeders have to be heavy-duty ones as our garden is quite exposed and the wind is strong enough to blow them down very often. The rooks also cause damage by swinging on the feeders and shaking the seed out for their friends waiting below. In this rainy weather they cover the feeders with thick mud off their feet too. Squirrels are a real nuisance and can pull a feeder apart very quickly. I always use metal, never plastic, feeders now and try to make it difficult for the squirrel by putting extra wire round the lids and attaching them more securely. I always regret this when I have to re-fill the feeders and especially when I have to take them apart for cleaning as it takes so long to do. I also saw a mouse in one of my squirrel-proof feeders the other day. When I went out this afternoon I found two of my peanut feeders had been taken apart and all the peanuts eaten. One part of one of the feeders is missing so I’m glad I ordered a new one at the weekend.

A blurred picture of my squirrel visitor. Wind and rain didn’t help with the clarity of the photo.

I managed to take a couple more photos before going indoors to change out of my wet clothes.

Another name for the yellow flag iris is the Sword Flag as its leaves are shaped like a sword and are also sharp enough to cut you.

The Dogwood is about to flower. New stems are dark red and many people cut dogwood back hard just to get the bright coloured stems in early spring. The dogwood’s leaves change to a rich claret in the autumn and are one of the first trees to change colour. The berries are a shiny black and are very bitter. It is called ‘Dog’ wood because ‘dags’ used to be made from its wood. Dags are butcher’s skewers.

Last week E not only had to go to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on Friday but she also had to go to the Northgate Hospital in Great Yarmouth on Wednesday. As R was off work all week he kindly offered to drive us there. It was one of those grey, fairly still days – not cold but not particularly warm either. The route we take goes through a couple of villages with Viking names – Toft Monks (Toft = curtilage or homestead in old Scandinavian. It was known as Toft when the Domesday Book was written, only getting the Monks bit when the village was taken into the possession of the Norman Abbey of Préaux in the 12thC) – Haddiscoe (wood of a man called Haddr or Haddi). We then go over a very high bridge spanning not only the River Waveney but also a canal cut from here to Reedham a village on the River Yare a little to the north. This is the start of the Norfolk Broads, a large area of marshy reedbeds intersected by canals, rivers and broads (lakes). A half mile further on is another little bridge which only allows one lane of traffic over it. This is at St Olaves, named after the priory that was here.

We then drove through Fritton which has a Country Park with leisure activities – boating, fishing, walking. Also a horse and donkey sanctuary called Redwings. It was a popular place to visit by wild fowlers – people who enjoyed shooting ducks and other water birds. The pub is called the Decoy and the water here, which is a tributary to the Waveney, is called the Fritton Decoy.

We got to Great Yarmouth and E saw her specialist. We then went home. Because I wasn’t driving I was able to look about me as we drove along. Great Yarmouth is not a pretty town. It has a beach, a dock area and associated industries but it is also very run-down and there is high unemployment and poverty here. We saw an apologetic bus. A very rare creature.

One thing I did notice while we were queuing at traffic lights before crossing over the bridge over Breydon Water was this building below.

It was enormous with a thatched roof and an attractive weather-vane. I don’t know what it is/was and need to find out somehow. There is a blue plaque next to those great doors that will give a clue. The iron railings on the bridge are quite nice too.

We decided to stop at St Olaves to look at the Fritton Decoy and the buildings there.

A windmill at the side of the water.

The Chandlery sells everything you might need on your boat while travelling on the Broads or down any of the rivers and out to sea. You can also hire boats and equipment here.

The ancient Bell Inn with its beautiful brickwork on the opposite side of the road to the Chandlery.

The garden at the back of the inn.

A view of the Fritton Decoy and the boats moored there.

The building in this yard is a Pill Box and is another relic from the Second World War. This one has had a shed built on the top of it at some stage. Pill boxes are dug-in guard posts with loopholes through which to fire weapons. They were called Pill Boxes because they looked like old-fashioned pill boxes! According to the website I checked everything against they had a ‘trenchfiring step to protect against small arms fire and grenades and were raised to improve the field of fire’. Well, there you are; now you know. About 28,000 pill boxes and other hardened field fortifications were constructed in 1940 as part of British anti-invasion preparations of World War 2 and about 6,500 still survive. There is one on the edge of the field in Mill Lane near us. It is still known as the Searchlight because of the searchlight that was used there during the war. East Anglia was full of airfields during the war – RAF and USAF – so there was always the danger of bombing raids. The airfield runways are still marked out in the middle of farms and common land.

I’ll end this post with a view over the marshes at St Olaves.

A Hotch Potch.

16 Fri May 2014

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Allium, Alpine Pasque Flower, Ant hill, aquilegia, Balm of Gilead, Bee, blackberry, Bramley Apple blossom, Cacti, Cedar of Lebanon, chaffinch, Christmas Cactus, Clematis, Common Sedge, Common Vetch, Cotoneaster, Damson, GERANIUM, Goat Willow seeds, Great Tit, hare, Hawthorn, Holly, House Spider, Japanese Maple, Jay, Knautica, moon, Muntjac, pheasant, Shrub rose Canary Bird, Spindle, stock dove, sunset, thrift, Thyme-leaved Speedwell, Tufted Duck, vegetable garden, Viburnum, White-Shouldered House Moth, winter-flowering honeysuckle, Zebra Spider

Last evening while I was admiring the pink sunset…..

….E was admiring the rising of the moon. She called to me to come and see it as it was so large and orange. I joined her at her bedroom window and we watched it slowly slide up the sky behind the trees. I went into my room hoping to see it more clearly from there and saw below me on the drive, the hare again! Typically, I had the wrong camera with me, it was too dark and the hare wouldn’t stay and be photographed.

This is the only photo I managed to get.

I went outside into the twilight with little bats flying about the garden and crossed the road and looked at the moon through the hedge. It wasn’t orange any more but it was still beautiful.

The visit from the hare and the rising moon reminded me that hares are supposed to be magical and people today still take care not to hurt a hare. One of Mum’s neighbours was new to the area a few years ago and asked another neighbour how he could get rid of the rabbits and hares which were damaging the trees and plants in his garden. He was told that the rabbits could be shot but ‘we don’t shoot hares in Suffolk’. In Anglo Saxon mythology, Ostara the goddess of the moon, fertility and Spring was often depicted with hare’s ears or a hare’s head. Eostre (where we get the word Easter from) was the Celtic version of Ostara and was the goddess associated with the moon, death, redemption and resurrection during the turning of Winter into Spring. Eostre was a shape-shifter too and took the shape of a hare at each full moon. Well, well, well! (I looked all that up using Google!).

Yesterday was a busy one with my usual shopping with Mum and then going to Halesworth to hand in my prescription at the surgery and post a couple of letters. I got home just after 2.00pm and had some lunch. The afternoon was spent dusting, vacuuming and doing more mending. R got home just as I was finishing. He had had a fraught day at work so after we had had our cup of tea he went into the garden and planted out his peas and beans. A soothing task which took him over an hour and was all done except the watering-in by the time I had cooked the evening meal.

This morning I went out to admire his handiwork.

Putting the anti-rabbit/deer/hare/pigeon etc barriers up had taken most of the time yesterday. We hope they work! You can see the potatoes coming up in the bed behind the peas and beans. While I was down at the vegetable patch I had a look at the pond and saw a strange looking duck. I tried taking its photo with my small camera but wasn’t able to get a clear picture. I fetched our newer, better camera and tried again.

I think this is a female tufted duck who visited to sample the fish in our pond. I had to crop the photos as I still couldn’t get near enough to the duck. The pond, as you see, is covered in the fluffy seeds of Goat Willow. The seeds aren’t only on the pond but are everywhere, floating in the air, covering the grass, coming into the house.

This is a spider’s web I noticed yesterday on the outside of one of our windows. It is covered with fluffy willow seeds. Despite my brushing the web away very often the spider insists on making its web just there all the time.

The rest of this post will be a strange selection of photos that I took today and some others that I haven’t been able to put in any of my recent posts.

This is a late entry in the apple blossom awards. We thought the Bramley Apple wasn’t going to flower this year, but we were wrong!

The Cedar of Lebanon has new leaves growing that look like old-fashioned shaving brushes.

All the hollies have new leaves too.

The Japanese Maple has the most beautiful cherry-red seeds.

It has beautiful leaves too that glow in the sunshine.

I got home yesterday and saw a Jay in the garden. I had great difficulty taking these photos from inside the car.

This is one of my Christmas Cacti and it is flowering again for the third time in six months. It first flowered in November, then in February and now in May. I think it is very confused!

R’s cacti are all coming in to flower too.

Mammalaria

Mammalaria flower

Peanut cactus flower.

I don’t know what this one is called.

The little white Alliums in the garden are very popular with the bees. They are under the laburnum trees which are also full of bees and the noise they make is astounding. I think they sound like cars in a grand prix race – the pitch is almost exactly the same – it’s like listening to a race about a mile away.

The new shoots on the Viburnum Bodnantense are crimson.

Tiny damsons.

Willow seeds.

Bee on the cotoneaster horizontalis.

Geranium Phaeum in R’s flowerbed.

Flowers on the Spindle tree.

The Hawthorn hedge at the bottom of the garden near the old summerhouse.

A White-shouldered House Moth

R took these photos of a muntjac deer.

A chaffinch

One of my herbs – cedronella canariensis (Balm of Gilead).

Alpine Pasque Flower

A Great Tit

A Stock Dove.

A female Pheasant.

A Zebra Spider. These spiders are only about 4mm long. They are jumping spiders and can leap a distance of about 4cm.

A baby House Spider.

The tiny flowers of Thyme-Leaved Speedwell.

Aquilegia flower

Thrift flower

The wonderfully scented Clematis Montana ‘Rubens’

Shrub rose ‘Canary Bird’

Blackberry flowers

Knautica Macedonica

Aquilegia flower

Reflections in the pond

Common sedge

Common Vetch

An ant hill

Male Holly flower buds. We don’t have any female holly bushes so no berries!

Heart-shaped berries of the Winter-flowering Honeysuckle

These lovely berries don’t last long as the blackbirds find them irresistible.

A Good Day

15 Thu May 2014

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

barley, Common Whitebeam, Early Purple Spotted Orchid, English Oak, field maple, Lady's Smock, Lesser Whitethroat, Oak-apples, orange-tip butterfly, Red Clover, Red Horse Chestnut, Red May, St Michaels church, St Peter's church, stag-headed, the Beck, Turtle Doves, Willow Warbler, Wych Elm

I had a very good day yesterday. The weather was much better than it had been for a week and I was nearly back to normal after my cold. I hung some washing out on the line in the garden and then set off for Bungay where I had to get some shopping. Just as I was nearing Flixton I noticed some birds at the side of the road, mainly woodpigeons but among them were a pair of Turtle Doves. I was so pleased to see them I nearly shouted out loud! Turtle Doves are becoming so rare, not only because of the reduction of places to nest in this country but also because of the dangers they face during migration – being shot for sport for example – and the lack of suitable places to spend the winter because of deforestation in Africa. Even if we get no Turtle Doves in our garden this year I am happy that there are at least one pair in this area! Their song epitomises high summer for me – a lovely drowsy, purring noise. We used to get them every year and they stayed around until the end of August. In recent years we have had a Turtle Dove sing for a day or so and then go off elsewhere in search of a mate. Last year they didn’t turn up at all. Many people believed that was because of the terrible spring we had had. Turtle Doves had arrived in this country and then we had the late snow and frost which killed some birds and others just turned round and went back to France.

I went to my usual car park in the centre of town and noticed all the trees planted around the car park had come into flower. They are all Red May trees – Red Hawthorns – and look so pretty with their deep pink flowers.

Red Mays are not as popular here as where I grew up in Kent. My father thought they were wonderful and planted one in one of the houses we had when I was a girl. As I walked about the town I remembered having seen another red-blossomed tree recently and thought I would go and have a closer look at it later in the day.

I found the opportunity to go for a quick walk in the early afternoon. The day had warmed up considerably but there were still a few black clouds around. As I walked down to the end of our lane and out into the next I listened to a Willow Warbler singing in the top branches of a group of trees nearby. The Willow Warbler is another bird whose song I couldn’t do without – it has a sweet song of descending notes in a minor key. Weep, weep, weep, weep it says and makes my heart swell and I find I am near to tears at the beauty of it. It is another bird whose numbers are reducing drastically. Again, we used to hear them all summer long but not any more. I hope this one finds a mate and stays to sing for me. I stood under the Field Maple tree it was singing in and eventually saw it in the top canopy. It sang and then busily flitted from twig to twig in search of food and then sang again. I tried to photograph it but wasn’t quick enough.

This is the result. Can you see it? No, neither can I.

On the corner of our lane where it meets the other lane is a wide area of common land and a couple of ornamental trees have been planted there. One is a Sweet Chestnut which is only just coming into leaf and the other is a Whitebeam, a native tree but not one that usually grows in this part of the country.

Common Whitebeam tree

Common Whitebeam blossom

Common Whitebeam blossom

The grass of this patch of common land was covered in Lady’s Smock flowers and a female Orange Tip butterfly was feeding from them.

The red-blossomed tree that I had remembered seeing is a Red Horse Chestnut and it had been planted only a couple of hundred yards down this other lane. To get to it I had to cross yet another wide area of common land and in doing so I was surprised to see an Early Purple Spotted Orchid in the grass. This one was a little past its best but I rather liked the colour combination of the petals.

There was more Bugle or Ajuga flowers and some Red Clover.

Red Clover

I love the pale markings on Red Clover leaves. I am also fascinated by the grass in the photo which is just about to flower. It looks like a row of tiny balls are packed into the grass stem or a lot of minuscule snails.

The Red Horse Chestnut is a fairly young tree so I was able to photograph the flowers easily.

A Red Horse Chestnut is a hybrid between a Horse Chestnut and a Red Buckeye. On the way back to the road I found another Early Purple Spotted Orchid.

Our lane is looking very nice at the moment.

On my way back home I heard another summer bird but this was one I hadn’t heard before. It’s song was a little like a part of a Chaffinch’s or a Yellowhammer’s song but without the end flourish. It also had a few little sweet quiet notes to start off the song and they sounded very much like a Warbler. When I got back I listened to a few of my bird recordings and found I had been listening to a Lesser Whitethroat.

I managed to get all my washing dried outside which was really good and took some more photos of the garden while I fed the birds. I had started on a great heap of mending by the time R came home from work. He didn’t seem to want his evening meal straight away so I suggested a walk across the fields.

This is one of many ancient oaks we saw on our walk. Once they get to about seven or eight hundred years old they start to die back a little. A little like us humans: when we get to a certain age we start to shrink a bit too. When they get dead branches sticking out of the top of the canopy they are described as being ‘stag-headed’.

A young Horse Chestnut.

View over the fields.

A field of ripening barley.

A Sycamore tree with flowers.

The Beck

Bridge over the Beck.

Views across the fields on the other side of the Beck.

The lane going up the hill from St Peter’s Washes.

Another ancient oak tree. I think this one’s trunk must be about twelve feet in circumference – it must easily be about a thousand years old. I must try to bring a tape measure with me next time we walk this way and see if I can get through the hedge and measure it.

I love standing under trees and looking up through the branches. Trees are the most magnificent awe-inspiring things.

We looked down across the fields in the direction from which we’d come and then down the lane. Many people think that East Anglia has no hills and no hedges. This proves that we do have both though the hills aren’t very steep or high.

St Peter’s church over the field.

Fruits on an Oak Tree.

The top of the tower of St Michael’s church can just be seen above the trees.

More views across the fields from the top of the lane.

The signpost at the end of the lane.

Another view from the top.

An oak-apple with fruits

An oak-apple.

This is a picture of a Lesser Whitethroat! It is just below and just to the left of centre and has a curly leaf over its face. You’ll have to take my word for it that it really was a Lesser Whitethroat.

A Wych Elm and fruits.

Toadstools

Late sunshine.

We walked back home quite content and I cooked our evening meal.

A Wet Day

14 Wed May 2014

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

ash die-back, ash tree, calendula, clouds, collared dove, Eye, lupin, moon, Rain, Rumburgh, St Chrysostom's prayer, St Michael and All Saints and St Felix church, St Peter and St Paul's church, yellow iris

The past couple of days have been fairly busy doing mainly mundane chores. Fortunately, I am feeling much better and have regained what little energy I usually have.

View from our front door on Sunday after one of many showers

I took Mum to church again on Sunday morning. A windy day with lots of heavy showers. Her church is currently full of scaffolding and difficult to get around. Quite a few years ago they bought a new second-hand organ at a bargain price (still many thousands of pounds I believe). They took out their old one and sold it on but before they could put in the new one somebody thought it might be a good idea to make a Parish Room with a kitchen and toilets too. This could be done more easily without the organ being in place. The church is quite a wealthy one but even so, some time was spent fund-raising and then all the architects reports, and surveyors reports and moving of tombs etc took even more time. Bits of organ pipe and casing were handed out to all and sundry to look after at home as there was no-where to store the new organ in the church. All money raised was spent on the Parish Room and the church had to make do with a little electric organ. At last the Parish Room was finished and everyone was pleased with the result. Saving up for the installation of the organ was resumed and was going very well until the boiler broke down and had to be replaced. Fortunately, some very generous parishioner kindly paid for a new boiler for the church. At last, a few weeks ago the installation of the organ began and should be completed in time for the arrival of their new priest in the Autumn. When I got to church with Mum on Sunday even more scaffolding had been erected as they had decided to investigate a large damp patch that had appeared above the Rood Screen. They also have a Doom painting up there (covered with whitewash) which they want to look at to see that it isn’t deteriorating too much.

I had lunch when I got home and then spent a quiet afternoon reading, checking e-mails, feeding the birds and preparing the vegetables for our evening meal. Our church had an Evening Prayer service at 6.30pm and R and I went along at 5.45pm to get everything ready. It is fortunate that the lovely prayer of St Chrysostom is used during Morning and Evening Prayer, because if it wasn’t one might be tempted to wonder if there was much point in having the service. There were only five of us there including poor Maurice who had prepared a very thought-provoking homily and led the service so well.

‘Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee; and dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in thy Name thou wilt grant their requests…’

Monday was another showery day with a few rumbles of thunder as well. I did a lot of supermarket shopping and washing and other necessary jobs around the house. I took a few photographs in the garden in-between the showers.

The tallest tree here is a lovely Ash tree. It upsets me to think that it probably will be dead in ten years time because of Ash die-back disease

The lane in front of our house is looking particularly green at the moment.

A lupin in R’s flower-bed

Calendula/Pot Marigold in R’s flowerbed

Yellow Iris in bud by the pond

You can tell by the Collared Doves’ blurred feet that it was moving fast and I had difficulty keeping up!

The sky gradually got cloudier and more stormy-looking as the day progressed.

Living in the (fairly) flatlands of East Anglia you can always see what the weather’s going to be like before it gets to you.

This is a plane from one of the local air bases

I was glad I wasn’t flying before the storm.

I got indoors just in time.

(If anyone is wondering why there is a brick on top of the cage over the ground bird feeder, it is to try to stop squirrels lifting up the lid and eating all the bird seed.)

By dusk the rain had stopped and the moon had risen.

Fruity Tutti

10 Sat May 2014

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

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

apple trees, blackberry canes, crabapple trees, fig tree, Fruit, fruit salad, honey and lemon drink

I have been craving fruit during the past few days; that and yoghurt and ice-cream and hot tea!

This is my favourite night-time drink when I have a cold. Hot honey and lemon drink. The juice of half a lemon mixed with a good sized spoonful of honey and freshly boiled water. A little sugar sometimes but not always. R likes to add a tot of whisky with his but I don’t like whisky and prefer the drink non-alcoholic. The mug was a present from A and is just right for this drink and other herbal teas. It fits so nicely into my cupped hand!

I also made a fruit salad this evening with the first locally (well Norfolk) grown strawberries. This is so early for strawberries I was expecting them to be either sour or tasteless but they were very good. The other fruit was imported mainly from Spain – raspberries, blueberries – I can’t remember where the Galia melon was grown and the blackberries came from …… MEXICO? I do try to buy fruits and vegetables in season and locally grown but I do succumb sometimes and as I said, I really want fruit at the moment.

While I am on the subject of fruit I will show some photos of our fruit trees. These photos have been taken over the past week or two. I haven’t been out of the house today and photographing would have been difficult anyway because of the wind and regular showers of heavy rain.

This is our Concord pear tree on 23rd April and as you see the fruit was beginning to set. I tried taking a picture of the much larger fruit yesterday but I only got blurred images as it was so windy. We have found that Concord pears are best as cooking pears. If we wait until they are beginning to soften on the outside they have already started to rot in the middle. If we try to eat them while they are hard and crunchy they are quite tasteless. But, if we cook them when hard but ready to be harvested they are wonderful. My favourite is caramelised pears!

Our Saturn eating apple tree on 23rd April.

Saturn blossom. The Saturn has now lost all its blossom and the fruit is setting.

Egremont Russet eating apple tree. Note the attractive chicken wire which protects the tree from deer and rabbits. This photo also taken on 23rd April.

Egemont Russet blossom. As I mentioned in an earlier post the apples on this tree are not like true Egremont Russet apples so either we have been mis-sold or we have a tree that has been adapted to suit people that don’t like the look of traditional Russet apples. I love them with their dull, rough, RUSSET skins. They are sweet, juicy and crunchy and the skins are not tough; the flesh has a good nutty taste. One of my favourite apples.

‘Harry Baker’ crab apple tree, 23rd April. This is the tree that R has tended so carefully and it is now looking so much better and growing upwards now! You can see from a lot of these photos that the trenches made by the JCB a couple of months ago are still in evidence. We have contacted the landscaper to ask him to fill in the holes with top-soil and make good. We are waiting for him to turn up. Apparently he is on jury service.

‘Harry Baker’ blossom. The fruits are enormous and make very good crabapple jelly.

‘Evereste’ crabapple tree, 23rd April. I don’t make crabapple jelly from these fruits though I could easily. I like to leave them for the birds – blackbirds and fieldfares – who enjoy them after they have been frosted. Most of the fruits from last year were left on the tree as we didn’t get a hard enough frost this winter to make the fruits palatable for the birds. There must have been enough food for the birds this winter without them needing these apples. I had to cut them off the tree as the leaves were coming out and so we have had hardly any blossom this spring. I am glad to say that, because of this, the tree is at last beginning to grow again.

‘Evereste’ blossom.

Our weeping species crabapple. The smell of the blossom was overpowering and when I bent down and went under the tree the buzzing of the many bees enjoying the flowers was very loud. Mr and Mrs Mole have been working hard on their tunnels under the tree as you can see!

The fruits are very small on this crab tree and are eaten by birds. I have included this tree because it is so beautiful. It does have fruit but not fruit that we would want to eat!

I wanted to take another photo of our Turkey Fig tree yesterday to show the new leaves and the enlarging fruit but the wind prevented me.

This is the photo I posted in March and I will try to take a new photo as soon as I can. We have a Bramley cooking apple but it has decided not to flower this year. It is growing well so we are not worried.

This is our ‘Norfolk Biffin’ cooking apple tree. The tree is also known as a ‘Norfolk Beefing’ and is a heritage tree. The apples are very large and have a slightly spicy taste when cooked almost as if some nutmeg or cinnamon has been added. They are apparently very good as dried apples and that is how they were often used in Victorian times. We hope to get a dryer one day so we can try this out (and so that I can dry some of my herbs too). Norfolk Biffins are mentioned in Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’ in Stave Three when Scrooge is out on the streets with the Ghost of Christmas Present. He talks of them being eaten after dinner and it is true that when left long enough they do become sweet enough to be used as an eating apple.

Biffin blossom.

The greengage tree which is quite new had its first flowers this year – four of them. We may have fruit but it is hard to say as yet. The damson/bullace trees have fruit setting on them but whether I will get any before the birds, squirrels, wasps etc. get to them is anyone’s guess.

We have been harvesting our rhubarb for a while now and we are leaving it for the time being to grow more leaves.

The flowers on our blackberry canes. Last year we were able to have quite a few fruit as there were hardly any wasps about. Usually the wasps get to them and ruin them no matter how I try to protect them.

A Windy Day and a Wet Blanket

09 Fri May 2014

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

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Escallonia 'Apple Blossom', greylags, laburnum, moorhens, peas, potatoes, runner beans, tomatoes

The day began sparklingly. Green and blue so intense and raindrops scintillating in the sun and breeze. I went out into the garden quite early to open the greenhouse and have a wander about. The wind was picking up and blossom was flying from the trees. I went back indoors and collected my camera.

The greylags keep paying us flying visits. The female goes onto the island and sorts over the old nest. Poor thing ! I wonder what happened while we were away. Did the eggs hatch out and then did she lose her goslings or did they not hatch at all? Did something (an otter?) eat the eggs or were they infertile?

Amusingly, while the female was busy on the island the gander was attacked by a moorhen. Moorhen are quite feisty birds when they want to be and despite being much smaller than the gander, this one made the gander run very fast! I walked round to the far side of the big pond and could hear moorhen chicks calling but couldn’t see them in the thick reeds. Moorhens feed their chicks until they are quite big and are very caring parents until they are spooked. They then run off as fast as their silly feet allow them, leaving the chicks to fend for themselves! Why?

I had a look at R’s vegetable patch and admired the potatoes already coming up.

We are growing two types of potato – white mid-season and red lates. I like it when R grows potatoes as they store well and I don’t need to buy them from about August until Christmas or later.

The trees were whipping about in the wind so I thought I’d better take a picture of the laburnums before the wind and rain stripped them of all their flowers.

These laburnum trees were meant to look the same, as I have been hoping to make a little arch with them. But look at them! One is squat and spreading outwards and the other is reaching for the skies! I will still try to make an arch but I don’t think it will end up looking like ‘Homes and Gardens’ material. They also grew A LOT last year and I didn’t get my act together and do anything with the trees at the right time – oh dear!

Escallonia ‘Apple Blossom’. The book I have says this is a dense evergreen shrub. This one is not at all dense and I’m not sure why not. Other Escallonias we’ve had in the past have been really good shrubs – good enough for hedging with, but this loses all its leaves in the middle and a number of branches die off after a year or two. I think I will cut it hard back and see what happens. It may also need a lot of feeding as the soil it’s in is a little stony.

I went into the greenhouse.

Some of R’s runner bean plants.

And some of his peas.

His tomato seedlings are doing well too.

The heavy showers started shortly after I returned to the house and they’ve continued on and off all day. A couple of times I’ve ventured out only to have to dash back in again, usually from the furthest parts of the garden.

And if you are wondering where the wet blanket comes in – that’s me with my woolly head and deafness, my runny nose and tickly cough.

The Archdeacon’s Visitation.

08 Thu May 2014

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

aquilegia, Archdeacon's Visitation, Easter cactus, Halesworth, hare, lilac, newts, rowan, St Mary's church, woodpigeon

I am amazed at how lucky we were with the weather on Monday! Since then the weather has been ‘changeable’ as the forecasters say. Tuesday had showers in the morning but a sunny, breezy afternoon, Wednesday had light showers in the early morning, a very fine middle of the day and then heavy showers from late afternoon onwards and today, well, yuk! is all I can say. Light showers this morning, heavy showers by midday and persistent rain this afternoon and evening. What makes it worse is that I have a nasty cold in the head. I had hoped to go with R to the Archdeacon’s Visitation service at St Mary’s church in Halesworth this evening but E needed to see her doctor and the only available appointment time was 6.30pm. I drove her home afterwards and saw R driving past us in the opposite direction on his way to the service and there wasn’t enough time for me to drop E at home and join him. And anyway, I think I’m better off at home not spreading germs about.

An Archdeacon’s visitation, as far as I understand it, is when all the Churchwardens (R is a Churchwarden) in the Deanery get together for a special service once a year with all their priests and the Archdeacon. They hand in their annual reports and accounts if they haven’t already done it on-line and also their Declaration. Churchwardens are supposed to serve for six years at most, I think, and then a new one is voted in. However, it usually is a case of ‘once a Churchwarden always a Churchwarden’, as no-one wants the job. The Churchwardens are ‘sworn in’, for want of a proper phrase at this special service and take their oaths to do their duty. A few hymns are sung and this sounds lovely as only large churches are chosen for this service and they are always full. The Archdeacon has his or her say and maybe some of the priests will give a talk too. This year there will be an extra item. Our Rector and the priest in the Benefice next to ours will be licensed to each others Benefice. This will mean that they will be able to serve in each others Benefice without having to get special permission each time from the Bishop. Our Rector looks after a Benefice of eleven churches with a couple of retired priests, one Reader and two Elders to help him. The priest in the Benefice next to ours looks after three churches one of which is in a town. It will make life much easier for our Rector especially, once this is done. Our Rector is due to retire in a very few years and we don’t know if we will get another priest to replace him. We think there will be a lot of changes and not for the better and our priests are preparing the ground for us. To add insult to injury we haven’t even got a Bishop at the moment and haven’t had for some time!

I wanted to go to the service, not only to support R and our church but to go into St Mary’s church again. When I first moved to Suffolk in 1988 I lived in Halesworth and attended St Marys. I was made very welcome at the church and made a number of friends. I also met R there and he asked me out while drinking coffee after a Sunday service. We had our Marriage Blessing Service there too. R has just returned and tells me the service went well and the refreshments afterwards were very good.

I have been able to take a few photos round the garden during the past few days.

Our Rowan or Mountain Ash tree is flowering. It has grown well in the last couple of years and this is the best it’s ever looked.

Rowan blossom.

A very poor photo of the newts in our front pond.

White lilac.

White lilac blossom.

Pink and purple aquilegias.

This the best photo I have of the hare that has been visiting our garden recently. Back view only!

Woodpigeons having a bath in a puddle in our drive earlier today.

Indoors now. This is my Easter cactus which is just coming into flower. Unlike Christmas cacti these flowers shut during the afternoon and re-open next morning.

Easter cactus flowers.

A Walking Week Part 2

07 Wed May 2014

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

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

bluebells, Bugle/Ajuga, Bush Vetch, coppicing, Deer fences, Early Purple Orchid, Lords and Ladies, Pendulous Sedge, primroses, Ragged Robin, Reydon Wood, Roger Deakin, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, violets, Yellow Archangel

By Friday R had recovered from his trip to Gloucestershire, so when he got home from work I suggested that we might take our postponed bluebell-wood walk that evening. He thought that would be a great idea so we set off about 6.00pm and managed to persuade E to come with us. This was a real surprise as E once got lost in Reydon Wood and hadn’t been back since. To get to Reydon Wood we usually go via the road to Southwold, our nearest seaside town, passing by the Henham Estate which is the venue for the Latitude Festival. Henham Woods were awash with bluebells so we were hopeful that our walk would not be in vain.

When we got to the entrance to the wood there were only a couple of cars parked there and plenty of room for us.

The path to the wood.

The path is usually quite interesting in itself as it runs along next to Reydon Wood on one side and fields on the other. Between the path and the wood is a very deep ditch, probably quite ancient and dug as a boundary and/or to stop deer entering the wood and damaging the trees.

It is not easy to see the depth of the ditch with this photo.

We walked a little further until we came to the entrance. The wood is excellently maintained by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. They have started to coppice it again and have cleared away a lot of scrub. They have marked out paths through the wood and maintain the ditches. Bluebells are very sensitive plants and if their leaves are crushed they die so it is best to stick to the paths. Not only are there bluebells in this wood but many other interesting plants and trees. This wonderful habitat is also good for all sorts of animals, birds and insects too.

A bridge over a little drainage ditch.

An old coppiced tree ready for more coppicing. The word ‘copse’ for a small wood means that it was once and maybe still is a coppiced wood. There are many trees which are suitable for coppicing – hazel, ash, willow – as long as they re-shoot after their branches are cut off low they are suitable. Coppicing is similar to pollarding which is more often seen in towns where the branches are cut off near the crown of the tree. If you look to the left of the picture you will see how the paths have been marked out by laying sticks next to each other. A bio-degradable path and easily maintained too.

This is a deer fence made of brushwood. The area inside has been newly coppiced and the fence is here to stop the deer eating the new tree shoots. In Roger Deakin’s delightful book ‘Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees’ he goes coppicing with a friend and also says that some woodsmen put a heap of brushwood on each individual stump to stop deer and rabbit damage.

A couple of woodland ponds.

If anyone can tell me what the plant in the second pond is I would be very grateful. I apologise for the poor quality of the photo but I included it as I wished to show where the flowers are growing. The flowers are a little like primrose flowers and are in tiered whorls. The leaves are strap-like.