Weekend

11 Wed Feb 2015

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

Tags

Celandines, clouds, daffodils, Dog's Mercury, dogwood, farmland, Jacob sheep, lichen, Lords and Ladies, primroses, snowdrops, St Margaret's church, Suffolk, sunset, walking, Winter Heliotrope

Calves in the cow shed at our friends’ farm. The blurring is caused by the calves’ steamy breath.

On Saturday, Richard and I went to the church coffee morning held this month at our friends’ farm instead of at the Rector’s house. Our Rector had his heart surgery last week, and will be off work for some time while he recovers. We wish him a speedy return to full health. As usual we listened to all the gossip and news. I bought some delicious home-made Bakewell bars which we ate later that day and Richard won a tin of sweets in the raffle.

Saturday was cloudy and chilly but there was no frost and the birds were singing lustily. I heard the chaffinch’s spring song for the first time this year.

Sunday was a much brighter day. The church service was held at our church in Rumburgh so Richard and I got there early to get things ready. The church didn’t need much tidying as I had helped another lady to clean it thoroughly on Friday and there had been a wedding on Saturday afternoon after which Richard had tidied up again.

After lunch we went out for a walk. We decided against driving somewhere and also thought it better not to walk across the fields as everywhere is waterlogged. We took our usual circuit of a couple of miles, walking along the lanes. I have photographed this walk so many times now, so I will just show you a few of the new and/or interesting things I saw.

IMG_3982Ditch newly chased out (640x480)

A part of the ditch in our lane has recently been chased out. Regular ditch maintenance is necessary to ensure proper field drainage and to stop flooding on the roads.

This field has been newly ploughed. For years probably, it has been rough grass with heaps of old rusty farm implements alongside the hedge.

Italian Alder tree (Alnus cordata) There is a row of these trees along the roadside.

Italian Alder catkins

I found that Dog’s Mercury (Mercurialis perennis) was already starting to flower.

This plant is found in woodland often forming carpets, also under hedges and in other shady places. It has a fetid smell and is poisonous, being a member of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae). Male and female flowers are found on separate plants and are small and yellow in spikes. It is pollinated by midges.

Bright green Dog’s Mercury.

Lords-and-ladies (Arum maculatum)

Another woodland and hedgerow plant. I was surprised that these leaves were matte green – they are usually glossy. Another plant that smells of decay when in flower, the berries are poisonous and the roots have a high starch content. In Elizabethan times the roots were gathered to make starch for stiffening the high pleated linen ruffs that were then in fashion.

The white spots in the photo are midges or Winter Gnats flying in the sunshine.

IMG_3996Lichen-covered dead tree (640x480)

This dead tree at the end of a hedge and at the entrance to a field is covered in lichen. The bark of the tree has started to fall off taking the lichen with it.

Our long shadows and that of the hedge behind us can be seen on the field as I took a photo of the beautiful cloud patterns

The clouds.

The Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea) twigs were blazing in the low sunlight.

A hollow tree. In spite of its hollow trunk and all the ivy growing up it the tree, an oak I think, is still alive.

Jacob sheep. They will be having their lambs soon.

Winter Heliotrope (Petasites fragrans) growing along the roadside verge near someones house. The flowers are vanilla-scented and the plant spreads quite quickly preferring damp and shady places. It is a naturalised garden plant.

Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) in the churchyard

Primroses too! (Primula vulgaris)

IMG_4007St Margaret's church porch (640x466)

St Margaret’s church porch has an upstairs room.

White lichen on a gravestone

A daffodil bud in the sheltered churchyard.

Celandines (Ranunculus ficaria) flowering on the roadside verge. I was so surprised to see these as they don’t usually appear until March. They were everywhere I looked, though as the sun was setting they were closing up for the night. I should have got there an hour earlier.

Sunset.

We got home as the sun sank below the horizon.

This week Elinor is taking her mock GCSE exams. She has already taken Psychology and English. Maths is on Wednesday and Thursday and Art is all day on Friday. She is coping very well indeed though she is exhausted already with the strain of it all.

Richard stays away from home only one night this week; Wednesday night is spent in Gloucestershire. On Friday he goes back to the specialist to find out more about the lesion/tumour on his pituitary gland and what is to be done about it.

I am disappointed at not being able to go to Sheffield to see Alice perform in ‘Emma’ especially as she is taking the leading role. I would really have loved to see her and support her but the performances are at the same time as Elinor’s exams and Richard’s hospital visit. I also don’t have much money to spare for train travel and hotel rooms after Christmas and Elinor’s birthday in January.

My mother is fine. She went to the eye specialist on the 30th December and had to return the next day for an injection to stop a bleed in her eye. We went back last week for a check-up and fortunately all is well again. The next appointment is in mid March. My brother has filed for divorce and is in the process of selling his house. He is moving to Suffolk to be near us and Mum and especially his daughter and has got a transfer to work in the open prison in Suffolk and continue his teaching. My sister is working hard as always as a paramedic practitioner. She got her degree and will be getting her certificate at a ceremony in May. My mother-in-law is out of hospital and in a nursing home. This is a temporary arrangement as she hasn’t yet been assessed but we all know that she won’t be able to go back home. She has a weak heart, breast cancer, problems with her thyroid and has lost all her mobility. All so sad. She understands the situation and is making the best of it; such a sensible woman.

January’s End

31 Sat Jan 2015

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

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

art work, catkins, ice, January, reflections, signs of spring, snow, sunrise, sunset

The last day of the first month of the year. There are plenty of signs of spring about.

Snowdrops in the garden

Hazel catkins

Gorse at Minsmere. Though gorse is in flower through most of the year!

But there were signs of spring about in the autumn too.

Cowslip in the garden at the end of August. We had a strange summer!

We have had rain and hail and sleet and even snow this month. High winds, fog, thunder and lightening and even some sunshine!

Snowfall on Thursday afternoon.

It was quite heavy while it lasted!

The snow hasn’t lingered. By lunchtime on Friday it had all gone again. Despite the frosts, the ground is still fairly warm; especially the roads and paths. We had a wet year last year and a very mild autumn and early winter. The grass continues to grow and grow and we have no opportunity for cutting it. The garden is very, very untidy. The best days for gardening are the days we cannot get out there. Such is life!

We have had some glorious sunsets.

A fiery furnace!

Reflected glory!

We have had some exceptional sunrises too.

I admired the colour scheme here.

When I have been able to get outside there has been plenty to see, though the light has not often been good enough for photography.

Reflections (and the remnants of the ice) on the big pond

The whorl of a new thistle.

Reflection of the moon and trees in the corner pond.

I woke to snow fall this morning and we got a dusting that settled everywhere as the frost had been hard last night. The ponds were all covered in ice and snow. By the time Elinor came downstairs (at midday!) it had all (except the pond ice) gone. It is snowing again now as I type this.

Elinor has not had a very good week as she has been very anxious again. She was unable to go into college on Tuesday and Friday. She has produced some good art work though.

Richard is in Manchester this weekend visiting his mother in her nursing home and staying with his brother. He took his brother a gift of a barrel of local Adnam’s beer which last night, so I heard, was being left to settle in my brother-in-law’s cellar. I doubt whether it will be left to settle long!

I must now go outside quickly to top up the bird-feeders before it gets dark. The snow has changed to sleet unfortunately. I dislike sleet very much.

November

22 Sat Nov 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Rural Diary, weather

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

Christ the King, November, Rumburgh Church, Stir-up Sunday, Thomas Hood

It has been a typical November day today (to look at) but as it is 11 degrees Centigrade it is still unnaturally warm for the time of year. There are also still some leaves on the trees and a few flowers blooming! The downside is that we have had a lot of rain and mud is everywhere. R kindly washed my car earlier which was extremely noble of him as it has been drizzling, then raining, all day.

We went to the church this afternoon to make sure all was clean and tidy as we have a service there tomorrow. We will be celebrating Christ the King – ‘the all-embracing authority of Christ’ (Oxford Concise Dictionary of the Christian Church).

I find this service uplifting and it is good to celebrate before we enter Advent next Sunday, which is a quiet time of meditation and preparation.

This Sunday – the last before Advent – used to be known as ‘Stir-up Sunday’ which comes from the Collect prayer for the 25th Sunday after Trinity. ‘Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded’. Many thought this was the time to be’ stirring up’ their Christmas puddings, though of course, the best time to prepare a good Christmas pudding is in October. It needs to mature thoroughly!

R was reminded of the famous poem by Thomas Hood, written in 1844.

‘No sun – no moon!

No morn – no noon –

No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,

No comfortable feel in any member –

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! –

November!’

Harvest Festival

02 Thu Oct 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Rural Diary, Uncategorized, weather

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

bats, church, church decorations, Evensong, flowers, Harvest, hot-air balloon, Rumburgh, sowing

Rumburgh Church

Here is an autumn photograph of my church taken on Sunday as we were on our way to get it ready for the Harvest Evensong service. R is one of the Churchwardens and so we got there early to make sure all was tidy (no bat poo on the pews) and to turn on the lights and take the plastic covers off everything. As I have said before, our poor church is damp and has a colony of bats living in it and to protect the furniture etc. we have to cover what we can with bits of plastic sheet. No money to repair the church, no money to buy proper protective covers, not enough money for anything, unfortunately. I like bats and am very pleased that we have two resident pipistrelle bats that fly round our house every evening. However, I am not happy about the bats that live in our church because of the damage their urine and faeces do. The urine especially is so acidic it etches into all the furniture, pictures and flooring. We have to be so careful when serving refreshments after service in case food and drinks are contaminated. Bats are protected and it is virtually impossible to get them moved elsewhere.

Our benefice is made up of eleven parish churches and one redundant church which we use once or twice a year. We have one over-worked priest who has recently acquired an assistant (actually the priest in the next-door benefice who does holiday and sickness cover which is reciprocated), a couple of retired priests who step in when needed, one reader and two elders who take services without communion. All of the churches in the benefice like to have their own harvest festivals, so for weeks on end there are one or two harvest services on most Sundays. Last Sunday was the third consecutive week of harvest and our service was taken by Maurice, one of the Benefice Elders. Next Sunday and the following one there are no Harvest services but then they start up again and we have another three consecutive weeks of ‘We Plough the Fields and Scatter’ right through until the end of October.

Decorated pulpit. Our talented flower arrangers make the church look so bright and festive.

Any harvest contributions of food, fruit and vegetables at our church go to Adele House, a nursing home run by the convent at All Hallows. Other churches in the benefice send their contributions to a local food bank which provides food parcels for the needy.

Decorated Rood Screen.

The Chancel

The Font

The Altar

The Porch

The Porch. Look at the enormous beetroot!

006Bunches of wheat on pew ends (480x640)

Bunches of wheat tied to the pew ends.

One of these window sills was decorated by me.

The church just before the service started.

Maurice plays the organ so he gets plenty of exercise, walking up and down the aisle from the front of the church to the back where the organ is then back to the front again then up the steps to the pulpit.

We were very lucky to get 23 people at our Evensong service – no children sadly.

Today, I noticed that the field at the back of the house was being worked on again.

Sowing the seed. I apologise for the poor quality photo. The sun was setting and it was a little hazy too.

After the coldest August in many, many years we have had a very warm and fairly dry September. There has been mist and fog in the morning occasionally which has made driving to Norwich difficult. It is all set to change this weekend with a storm coming in off the Atlantic which will get to us in the East sometime on Saturday. When it has passed through the temperature will drop considerably, so we are told. Yesterday evening I noticed a hot-air balloon in the sky – a Virgin sponsored one. The thermals must have been just right.

E used to call them ‘hot hair balloons’.

Thank-you for visiting my blog.

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.

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.

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.

High Summer Walk Part 1

06 Wed Aug 2014

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

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

agrimony, bindweed, common knapweed, common ragwort, Gatekeeper butterfly, hoary plantain, hogweed, hop trefoil, oil-seed rape, peas, pineapple weed, ploughing, poppy, Ringlet butterfly, seagulls, silverweed, thatched barn, thrips, thunder-flies, walking

I had been shopping in Norwich with E two weeks ago and the weather had just changed for the better. We had had a lot of very humid weather, with heavy rain and thunder and lightening. We had had the usual accompaniment to humid weather of flying and swarming ants and thunder-flies. These are tiny little thrips with feathery wings; a millimetre long and thread-thin. They get everywhere – in your ears and eyes, up your nose, in your hair, crawling on your skin until you feel like screaming. They come in the house and die in heaps on every surface; they even get behind the glass in your picture frames. And then, after a storm at the weekend, we woke on the Monday to fresh air, warm sunshine and a gentle breeze. As we were driving home I had such a longing to be out of doors, walking in the fields that instead of having lunch I found the camera and my hat and went off down the lane. The verge at the side of our lane had just been cut but there were still a few flowers hanging on there.

Beautiful pink and white bindweed. The flowers are almond scented.

The harvesting had begun.

Oil-seed rape stubble.

The stubble is almost a foot high and so hard and sharp like knives; it is almost impossible to walk through.

You can see for miles from here

There is a UFO in this shot. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s…. you tell me!

Ploughing had started in one of the fields. Seagulls love to follow the plough as it turns up lots of worms and grubs. Black-headed, herring and lesser black-backed gulls.

A rather tired and tatty ringlet butterfly

This is agrimony and there has been a lot of this about this year. Apparently it has a scent reminiscent of apricots; I haven’t noticed this but then I don’t have a very good sense of smell – at least not for nice smells! The ancients found this a very versatile plant as it was held to be a remedy against snake-bite, poor sight, loss of memory and liver complaints.

Silverweed leaves. Potentilla anserina

Common Knapweed buds. These plants have been flowering for many weeks now; and for many to come if these buds are anything to go by. Also known as Hardheads.

We have had lots of hogweed too

Hoary plantain. This is an unusual plantain in that it produces a delicate scent which attracts bees and other insects. All other British plantains are wind pollinated.

A field of peas.

For many years, peas were grown everywhere in this part of Suffolk as there was a frozen food factory in Lowestoft on the coast. We were all used to the enormous pea harvesters and the smell of burnt peas wafting on the air. Then the factory was closed. Many people were made redundant and the farmers here had to find a different crop to grow and had to sell their harvesters. In recent years peas have started to be grown again. Some farmers are working together as a collective, sharing harvesters and have found other customers for their peas. This field is being left until the peas have dried. I don’t know if the plants will just be dug into the soil as a source of nitrogen or if the plants are used for animal feed or the dried peas sold to a processing factory. Perhaps someone can tell me. Red is so difficult to photograph. This photo looks as though I’ve done some careless ‘photoshopping’. You will recognise this photo from my previous post. This works better as the poppies take up more of the photo but they still don’t look ‘real’.

A snail hiding in a hogweed seedhead

A female Gatekeeper butterfly

An enormous thatched barn

This is hop trefoil. The stems are downy and the seed-heads are covered with dead petals making them look like hops.

There was a lot pink and yellow.

Pineapple Mayweed

This smells of pineapple when crushed.

This is Common Ragwort, a poisonous plant and the food plant of the Cinnabar Moth caterpillar.

I will continue this walk in Part 2.

Having a Sundowner

20 Sun Jul 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Rural Diary, Uncategorized, weather

≈ 18 Comments

I have been having such trouble this last week trying to write a post for my blog. I have plenty of photos and I’ve always lots to say as you all know but, either WordPress, or my computer, or both is causing the site to crash. I save my draft and just get to near where I left off and crash! .. it all disappears. R thought at first it was because I use a netbook to post and it doesn’t have a lot of memory space. So, I put all my photos on a memory stick and went upstairs to the old computer in the spare room and tried again and crash! He now thinks that either there is a limit to the amount of photos allowed on each post or a limit on how many gigabytes allowed ( surely not?) or I have included something that has caused problems. As the post I was trying to finish was lots of photos of wildlife in my garden interspersed with my usual waffle I am at a loss as to why. I am leaving the draft post as a draft for the time being and will see if this one causes trouble. If anyone can think why I have had these problems please let me know. I am a bit of a duffer when it comes to computers so words of one syllable, please.

This summer the weather has been quite changeable and in East Anglia where I live we haven’t been as dry as usual. I have my own personal weather gauge and according to that it has been the dampest for many years. My weather gauge is the amount of times I have been able to dry towels outside on the washing line and this year I have only managed it twice. I only ever wash towels on a Monday and I only hang them out during the afternoon but even so, during most summers I am able to dry towels outside almost every week from May until October. I often dry them outside overnight which means they don’t end up like sandpaper.

The weather this week has been hot and humid and we have had a lot of thunder and lightening and very heavy rain. A couple of nights ago the lightning flickered non-stop for an hour and a half. R tells me the weather is the fault of the ‘Spanish Plume’. Because of the noise of the rain drumming on the roof and the whirr of the fans going full blast I thought he said ‘Spanish flu’ and became quite confused for a while. I questioned him saying, ‘Spanish flu?’ and he said ‘Yes’ which made things worse. We eventually understood each other and he explained that it is a weather system – from Spain.

Despite all the dodgy weather we have had a plethora of beautiful sunsets recently so to end this post sooner rather than later and risk a crash again, these are the recent photos I have taken.

Sunset on 28th June

Sunset on 13th July

Sunset on 17th July

The strange object at the top of the photo is a honeysuckle flower which photo-bombed the sunset picture

Sunset on 18th July

Sunset on 19th July

Half way through writing this post R and I had to go off to evensong at Rumburgh church. After the service all the talk was about the amount of rain we have had in the last twenty-four hours and the thunder this afternoon which was a continuous rumble with not a pause. One gentleman said he had two soak-aways in his front garden, neither of which were working. The heavy boulder clay just under the top soil can be a trial sometimes. The Rector was having the same trouble in his garden too. One person was told we had 9ml of rain last night and someone else said we had 17ml of rain this afternoon. In all, about 2″ of rain in a day.