Pollution and Other Matters

03 Thu Apr 2014

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

Tags

amelanchier, belemnite, blackbird, Blue Tit, claypipe, Garden Warbler, ground-ivy, Jacob's Sheep, jonquils, Mistle Thrush, pollution, rhubarb, tulip, violets, woodpecker feather

The warmer weather that was forecast certainly arrived bringing with it hazy sky – and pollution. Everything outside was covered with a coating of fine yellow dust – from the Sahara Desert – and this was especially noticeable on our cars. Here in East Anglia our air isn’t as pure as we would like. As we live in the countryside many people think that the air is fresh and clean here; but they would be wrong. The prevailing wind from the south-west brings pollution from London and winds from the south-east bring pollution from the Continent – mainland Europe. The cleanest air is on winds from the north-east but that is also the coldest! East Anglia is a mainly agricultural area with plenty of agricultural vehicles and large trucks delivering feed, grain and other supplies on the narrow lanes. The farmers use herbicides and insecticides and the crops are sprayed at least two or three times a year. Because there is very little public transport we all have to drive everywhere that is too far to walk or cycle. R and I are fortunate to live in an area where the local farmers are trying to make the land better for wildlife. Wide strips of land are left fallow around each field with the hope that wild flowers will colonise them and animals and birds will find more food and shelter there.

Since coming to live in Suffolk twenty-six years ago I have developed asthma, hay-fever and other allergies that I didn’t have in south-east London and Kent. R also has hay-fever and E has asthma. This morning both R and I woke feeling quite unwell with headache, sore throat and other hay-fever symptoms. Fortunately we always have a stock of anti-histamine tablets in the house!

Yesterday, after getting home from taking Mum out, I had a letter to post so walked down the lane to the postbox. I was hoping to see the Jacob’s sheep in a field close to us as I had heard them arrive there on Monday. They always bleat a lot when they are in a new field but soon settle down and if I hadn’t heard them arrive I wouldn’t have known they were there. It was quite difficult to see the sheep and lambs as the hedge is high and thick but I managed a couple of photos.

Jacob ewes and lambs

Jacob lamb

I then took a few more pictures of the garden, fed the birds and watered the tubs of flowers. More and more birds are singing and the dawn chorus is getting louder and louder. Yesterday I woke to hear what I thought was a Garden Warbler, our second summer visitor, singing in a tree across the lane. As I was still sleepy I wasn’t sure whether it was a Garden Warbler or a Blackcap, the songs being quite similar, but having heard it again today I am sure it is a Garden Warbler. We do get both birds here in the summer but the song I heard yesterday and today was definitely the faster more garbled song of the Garden Warbler. The Song Thrush has been singing all day, every day for some time now and yesterday he was joined by the Mistle Thrush. We now have a wonderful chorus of birds in the garden – too many to mention without it becoming a long and boring list. Here is a photo of a male Blackbird and a Blue Tit on the peanut feeder.

Blackbird

Bluetit on the peanut feeder. A Chaffinch is in the tree at the back.

Today I took some more photos of the garden and also of some objects I have found in the garden. The belemnite I found in my herb garden on Monday. I remember finding lots of these when on holiday with A when she was little at Charmouth on the Dorset coast. They are fossils of squid-like creatures.

The feather I found a couple of weeks ago. No doubt from a Greater Spotted Woodpecker.

The broken old clay pipe I also found in my herb garden but about five years ago. I can’t bear to get rid of it!

The rest of the photos are of plants, flowers and trees.

White violets in the grass verge near my mother’s cottage.

Ground ivy. This is an evergreen wild plant and if the leaves are bruised they smell minty. Also known as Alehoof, the leaves used to be added to ale during brewing to clear the fermenting liquid and sharpen the flavour. Even after hops were introduced to England in the 16th century liquor flavoured with ground-ivy was still made and sold for a time. Another name for ground-ivy is gill and a drink called gill tea was made by infusing the leaves with boiling water and adding honey. This was supposed to alleviate coughs and other chest disorders and was still being sold by street vendors in London in the 19th century. Culpepper says ‘The juice dropped into the ear doth wonderfully help the noise and singing of them, and helpeth the hearing which is decayed.’

Some jonquils.

A pink tulip.

Rhubarb!

The Amelanchier is just coming into flower.

R and I discovered another goose nest in the undergrowth on the other side of the pond yesterday. Unfortunately, today the goose was no longer there and all the eggs gone. The good thing about nesting on the little island is that foxes and other predators cannot get to you so easily. The bad thing about our island is that it isn’t big enough for more than one goose nest.

Wild Flowers? or Weeds?

20 Thu Mar 2014

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

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bumble bees, chickweed, dog violet, flints, greylag, marsh marigold, narcissus, red dead-nettle, sunset, sweet violet, weeds, white dead-nettle, wildflower

Our garden is too large for us to keep every part of it neat and well manicured and I wouldn’t like it half so well if it was. I love gardening – digging, weeding, tending plants, but there is always risk, responsibility and pressure to do things properly and at the right time. The wild, untamed, untidy parts of the garden are just pure pleasure to me. I have no yearning to tidy them though I realise that some management is necessary which is why we had the work done to the big pond a few weeks ago. The ‘weeds’ I assiduously pull out of my flower beds I love to look at in the wild garden. Flowers at this time of the year are a wonderful source of nectar for insects, especially bumble bees, just out of hibernation.

The red dead-nettle, Lamium, a member of the mint family, grows all over our garden and is a very common plant in Britain and flowers for most of the year. Both it and the white dead-nettle were boiled and used as pot-herbs and as pig-swill in the past. They had many medicinal uses, most notably against the ‘King’s Evil’ – scrofula, a type of tuberculosis that caused skin eruptions. Culpepper says ‘The herb bruised and with salt and vinegar and hog’s-grease laid upon a hard tumour or swelling, or that vulgarly called the king’s-evil, do help to dissolve or discuss them’. It also ‘makes the heart merry, drives away melancholy, quickens the spirits’. If you look at the photo below carefully you will be able to see the dark anthers under the hooded upper lip and the darker purple markings on the lower notched lip.

The white dead-nettle’s flowers are bigger than the red’s. It relies on bumble bees to pollinate it’s flowers and they (the flowers) are custom made for bees. The lower lip is a landing stage for the bee and has two small lateral lobes and a notched middle lobe. The anthers are black and are under the hooded upper lip. As the bee enters the flower seeking the nectar the top of it’s abdomen brushes the stamens and gets covered in pollen which is then transferred to the style of the next flower it visits.

We don’t have as much chickweed in this garden as in other gardens we have had probably because we get so many ducks, geese and chickens passing through. They love the plant, which can also be eaten by humans as a salad vegetable. The flowers are so small that most people hardly notice them but looked at closely they are quite lovely. The botanical name is Stellaria, little star, and the name is quite apt. The styles are white and the stamens are such a pretty pink. Chickweed is a member of the pink family. It has a single line of hairs which run the whole length of the stem and if a drop of dew lands on the plant it runs down the stem by way of the hairs until it gets to a pair of leaves. Here some of the water is absorbed by the hairs and the rest carries on down the stem to the next pair of leaves and so on. This water is reserved in the plant in case of drought. It flowers almost all year round and is widespread and prolific, which is why most gardeners hate it!

This marsh-marigold plant is in our small pond and is the only decent plant in there. It flowers and flowers and looks so bright and cheerful. We have another plant in the big pond but I have never seen any flowers on that. I also discovered a very small plant in the ditch by the big pond with much smaller flowers. I posted a photo of it a few days ago. Another name for marsh-marigold is Kingcup and according to one of my flower books this is derived from the Old English ‘cop’ meaning button or stud such as kings once wore. Apparently, farmers in many parts of the British Isles, used to hang marsh-marigolds over the byres of their cattle on May Day to protect them from the evil doings of fairies and witches.

We not only have dog violet in our garden but also sweet violet which is the only violet flower to be scented. In olden times they were strewn on the floor to sweeten the air. Their scent is lost almost as soon as it is noticed and this is because the flower produces a substance called ionine as well as the scent. Ionine dulls the sense of smell so that not only does the violet’s scent disappear but any other odours too. Clever! In the verge near to my mother’s cottage are many white violets which are very pretty.

Our garden is full of flints and some of them are enormous. Trying to make new flowerbeds has taken so much time and energy as these great stones have to be levered out all the time and more and more keep appearing. I quite understand the old folk thinking that stones grew in the soil. This is our Lindt flint as we think it looks like a Lindt chocolate rabbit.

A pretty narcissus has just flowered.

The dear goose sleeping on her nest.

And lastly a few pictures of last night’s sunset.

Unphotographable

19 Wed Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in domestic animals, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized, wild animals, wild birds

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Tags

chiff-chaff, clouds, hare, house sparrow, nesting, phalaenopsis orchid, ploughing, skylark, spring, sunset, terrier, woodpecker, yellowhammer

Spring is definitely progressing quite nicely. We have had some really glorious weather recently – blue, shining days and mild, moonlit nights. Today we had some very heavy showers – the first real rain for some time. In fact, the mud on the roads has been drying out and cars have been causing dust clouds as they travel along our lanes. Most of the recent signs of Spring and many of the things I have seen in the past few days I have not been able to photograph. Either they are unphotographable like birdsong, or my camera is unable to take a decent picture of them – birds in the garden (can’t zoom in far enough) and the moon – or I am driving somewhere and can’t stop.

More and more different types of birds are singing each day and I have noticed more pairs of birds in the garden instead of either solitary birds or flocks of birds. The house sparrows have started building their nests under the eaves of our house. They sound as if they are wearing hob-nailed boots as they busily sort out the old nesting sites under the roof tiles and they clatter about in the gutter chattering and arguing. R and I look forward (I don’t think!) to the mornings when we are awoken by the sound of a happy sparrow singing at dawn -( ‘cheep!’ (two, three) ‘cheep!’ (two, three) ‘cheep!’ (two, three) ‘cheep!…..). When R and I went out for our walk last Thursday evening we listened to many birds singing including a yellowhammer. These birds are getting quite scarce now and this makes me sad. The woodpeckers are starting to drum. I heard a chiff-chaff warbler yesterday – our first summer visitor – and above my head a skylark was singing.

On Sunday evening at dusk I looked out of the kitchen window to see a large hare run along the road to the end of our drive and stop there for a minute. It then raced across our grass at the front of the house then out of sight in the direction of the big pond. On the way to Mum’s house on Sunday morning I had to slow down as a very small terrier dog was running up the lane keeping pace with a tractor ploughing the field next to the road. The little dog belonged to the ploughman who waved an apology to me as I drove very carefully and slowly past. This evening, on my way to Mum’s house again, the sky looked quite dramatic -a thick black cloud-covering which had rents in it with the pale blue evening sky showing through like silk beneath the slashes in Elizabethan clothes.

I will end this post with, first of all, some photos of my Phalaenopsis orchid which I won in a church coffee morning raffle on 5th October last year and which has been in continuous flower since then. (Apologies to friends on Facebook who have seen this already today). I will then add some photos of today’s sunset.

Wednesday 12th to Sunday 16th March

17 Mon Mar 2014

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

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Tags

alder, ambulances, brimstone butterfly, chaffinch, church, cowslip, daffodils, dog violet, Eye, fields, figs, greylags, Harleston, hazel, heartsease, Lent, mallards, moon, moorhen, nesting, pond, prayer, pussy willow, quiz night, rooks, Rumburgh, silverlace primula, sunset, tortoiseshell butterfly, trees, Wissett

Wednesday began with frost and mist. This soon cleared and the weather was then lovely for the rest of the day. I did my usual shopping trip with my mother with a detour to a free-range chicken farm at Eye where Mum buys her eggs. I had a little shopping to do for myself, so called in at Harleston on my way home. I arrived home just after 2pm for a late lunch and had time for a few household chores and a quick walk round the garden to feed the birds, tidy up a couple of things and take some photos before R came home.

A moorhen and a chaffinch at the front of the house.

The moorhen again.

A couple of photos of the daffodils that have come up round the big pond.

Some violet leaves that have struggled up through the dried mud round the pond.

And some cowslip leaves too!

Reflection of trees and cloud in the pond.

Afternoon moon.

I had decided what we should have for an evening meal and was about to start it when R offered to cook and I gladly accepted his offer. I didn’t have time to eat anything as I had to go out at 6.45pm to collect Mum and take her to Eye to attend a Lent course. The course in her area is a deanery course. A deanery is a collection of benefices and a benefice is a collection of parishes. In rural areas to have benefice and or deanery meetings or courses means that there will be more people attending and any speakers kind enough to visit will have a good audience. The only downside is that the distances to be travelled by many parishioners is very great. This year’s course is on prayer and Wednesday’s talk was on ‘Prayer with Words’. The speaker was the Precentor from the Cathedral at Bury St Edmund’s; a really pleasant man who gave an interesting talk. He introduced us to poets and poems that were new to us as well as reading from old favourites. My journey home was very difficult because of thick fog.

Thursday. I was woken just before 6.00am by the rooks! I had remembered to bring in the sunflower seed feeder but the rooks were trying to get the remains of yesterday’s seed off the bird-table and were tapping loudly on it with their enormous beaks. I have a cage round the bird-table which is supposed to prevent large birds from getting on it. However, it doesn’t stop the birds from clinging on to the edge of the table with their claws, flapping their wings for balance and pecking food through the mesh! Another lovely day. Went in to Halesworth for a haircut and to get yet more shopping (I always manage to forget something each time I go!) My usual hairdresser is on maternity leave so her Mum did my hair and we chatted about babies. Both her daughters are having their first babies in the next two weeks and they are getting a little apprehensive. On the way home I saw a tortoiseshell butterfly and an enormous brimstone butterfly.

I spent the afternoon gardening as well as having a short (for us!) conversation with my sister who was planning to visit Mum at the weekend. The geese have been very argumentative this week. The gander of the pair who have claimed the island has been spending most of his time swimming in the pond and seeing off any other goose/gander who dares to come anywhere near the pond bank. He must be exhausted as he doesn’t seem to have eaten anything either.

A couple of photos of the mallards in our front ditch.

Miniature daffodils in the grass.

Goat or Pussy Willow. Salix caprea.

When R got home he wanted to go out for a short walk across the fields. The wind had got up a little and it had got cloudy but R managed to take some decent photos while we were out.

Alder catkins and cone-like fruits from last year.

Hazel catkins.

More fog overnight.

Friday. A cooler, cloudier, breezier day. I did some more gardening and lots of ironing. The geese seemed to have resolved their differences. The resident pair came to sit near me while I gardened and whenever I looked up they gave gentle honks. I knew they were asking for food so when I had got to the end of my weeding I fetched some special goose and duck feed I have for just such an occasion (to quote Foghorn Leghorn) and cast it on the grass near by them. Of course, the gander then hissed at me while the goose ate the food. He is a very protective mate and even though I have provided the food he has to warn me off and so I do keep my distance!

Saturday. A quiet morning and another beautiful one. Still very breezy but much brighter than yesterday. Did some housework and spoke to A on the phone. We drove to Mum’s in the afternoon to see my sister F who was visiting with her eldest son and her dog Ben. We had a lovely couple of chatty hours and we then had to leave to get our evening meal before going to yet another quiz night. This one was in aid of Rumburgh village hall. I think it was the noisiest event I had been too since going to dances when I was young. The hall had just been insulated and redecorated but there were no curtains or blinds at the windows yet and I think this was the reason it was so noisy. The two farmers on our team were both a little deaf (caused by driving noisy farm machinery) and they were finding it really difficult to hear anything above the hubbub of loud chatter. Our local Member of Parliament was taking part too. He lives in Wissett, the next village along on the way to Halesworth, and is very good about taking part in local events and is a truely supportive MP. He had been out all day on the ambulances as there has been an enquiry about the time it takes for ambulances to get to emergencies. He was talking to R and one of our farmer friends and said he was very sympathetic towards the ambulance crews, as he had seen for himself the great distances they had to travel and also how many wasted journeys they had to make. R told him about my sister’s job as a paramedic in Kent and some of the problems she has to put up with too. Unfortunately we came ninth today but R won a picture of a tree in the raffle.

Sunday. There was a Morning Prayer service at Rumburgh today but I couldn’t attend as I took Mum to her church. She hasn’t got anyone to give her a lift at the moment and as she doesn’t usually see anyone at all during the week except me, and all her friends are at her church, I think it only right that I take her there. I got back home at 1.00pm and had lunch before doing some chores, putting a loaf on to bake and then back out into the garden. I fed the birds which took nearly an hour – all the feeders were empty, I have a number of them scattered about the garden and the garden is well over an acre in size. I had noticed this morning when I looked out of the window that the goose has started sitting on her nest on the island.

A dog violet in flower.

A silverlace primula.

A heartsease flower.

Figs are starting to swell on the tree.

Lots of pictures of this evening’s sunset.

The rookery in the sunset.

Meanderings and More March Flowers

11 Tue Mar 2014

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

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Tags

blackthorn, daffodils, fish, frogs, hyacinths, lesser periwinkle, Leycesteria, marsh marigold, miniature iris, nesting, oak, pond, primrose, primula, rooks, rose, spirea, tawny owl, Twilight, viola

I went outside in the twilight this evening to collect my two sunflower seed feeders and bring them indoors. I’ll tell you why later. It was very cold – approaching freezing I should think – but so beautiful. The sky above, a deep blue with stars and a gibbous moon. The western horizon a strange mixture of misty yellow, pink and grey – a typical cold, wintry sunset. The strong NW breeze that had been blowing all day had dropped and everything was almost still and quiet, except for a few blackbirds singing and some pheasants calling across the fields. The largest feeder is hanging from the silver birch tree near the big pond and as I walked down the garden towards it a tawny owl sitting in one of the trees at the end of the garden gave a couple of loud, quavering hoots. I went to look at the pond. It was shining and the surface was a little puckered by the light breeze. It looked like pewter and reflected the trees nearby. Every now and then a ‘plip’ sounded as a fish leapt and rings appeared on the surface – frogs were croaking from the reeds at the far end.

Unfortunately, it was getting too cold to stand out there for much longer and I had the evening meal to prepare so reluctantly I returned to the house.

The rooks have definitely started nesting now. They no longer fly off to their night-time communal roost towards Beccles but are staying with their nests in the rookery. At nesting time they use a different call – almost a bleating sound – and as soon as I hear it I know that spring is here. The reason I collect the sunflower seed feeders in at night is because of the rooks. They descend on the feeders ‘en masse’, just at dawn and any seed left overnight disappears very quickly. I have known them unhook the feeders and take the lid off to get at the seed more easily. The smaller feeder is hanging from a pole stuck in the grass at the front of the house. At this time of year dawn is still quite late, but by May and June with dawn at 3.30am it is not pleasant to be awoken by twenty or more squabbling rooks just outside the open bedroom window. Until I decided to bring the feeders in I was having to get out of bed and shoo them away every few minutes. They soon realised that the noise they were making attracted my attention so they started eating in (almost) silence. Their rookishness always eventually got the better of them and some little ‘whispered discussion’ invariably got out of hand and there I was at the window again. I am a very light sleeper and I began to wake up at the slightest noise outside so something had to be done.

This morning started very overcast and cold but by 10am the clouds were breaking up and the sun coming out. I had some shopping to do so drove to Bungay. Bungay is a little difficult to get around at the moment as it is having lots of new pavements put in and the centre of the town is shut off to traffic. My ankle has been painful recently and I found walking through town difficult. Added to this, I was called ‘dear’ twice within about five minutes and I really object to being called ‘dear’ by strangers. I got home again at 11.30 and put the radio on while I had a cup of tea. Lisa Stansfield was choosing her favourite ~~records~~ tracks I mean (showing my age there!) and one of the ones she chose today was by Sylvester. Listening to this took me back to my youth. My friend W will remember that I used to go out with her brother who had a mobile disco which he ran with a friend. I used to go with them to gigs and help them set up and get the dancing going if it was a bit slow. I could dance for hours without tiring! (This also reminds me of a really good spoonerism I came out with at the time, when telling a friend what I did. I intended saying that I was ‘a roadie and a groupie’ but what I actually said was ‘a rudie and a gropie’). I thought a lot about this while drinking my tea. It didn’t seem that long ago when I was dancing all night with no aches and pains and now, here I was hobbling through town carrying my shopping bag and being called ‘dear’! What would be next, I wondered? Mowing passers-by down with a mobility scooter? Elbowing my way through shoppers to the freezer cabinet in the supermarket and running over their toes with my shopping trolley while they tut-tut and raise their eyebrows to each other over my head? Hmmmm….

To cheer myself up I went out into the garden and took a few photos.

We have a blackthorn tree at the back of the house. It is now in full blossom. The blackthorn at the front of the house is still covered with small tight buds. The temperature at the front of the house is very much lower than at the back and there is often about a weeks difference in flowering times.

Blackthorn tree

Blackthorn blossom

Blackthorn

Bumblebee on blackthorn

This oak tree was given me by my father a year after we moved into this house. He had dug it up from his garden and at the time it was only about nine inches tall. I call it Dad’s oak tree. He died nearly four years ago. A wood pigeon nested in the tree last summer and the shallow nest is still there.

I think this is a marsh marigold. Please correct me someone if I’m wrong. I found it today at the top of a shady ditch near the big pond.

This is of of my newest miniature iris ‘Natascha’. I only planted the bulbs last autumn.

Early daffodils with pretty hanging heads

Early pale daffodils

Perhaps these photos of my Delft Blue hyacinths show up their lovely colours better.

Delft Blue hyacinths

Delft Blue hyacinth

New leaves on the Leycesteria or Pheasant Berry

A self seeded primula in the grass

A yellow viola

Lesser periwinkle

New leaves on R’s spirea

Deer damaged daylilies

New leaves on one of R’s roses

Primroses

A Busy Week

10 Mon Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in amphibians, churches, cooking, Gardening, Insects, music, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized, walking, wild birds

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Ash Wednesday, Billingford, birds, burdock, church, embroidery, fish, Flixton, food, frogs, Goldbrook Bridge, goldcrest, gorse, Hoxne, ladybirds, Lent, lichen, moss, Norfolk & Norwich Hospital, orange tea bread, pancakes, Porgy & Bess, pulpit, rood screen, RSPB Minsmere, Rumburgh, Shrove Tuesday, St Edmund, St Felix & St Michaels church, St Mary's, tapestry, trees, windmill

This has been such a busy week that I have only had time for two posts.

R had Monday and Tuesday off work and it was so nice to be able to spend more time with him. I always have lots of boring chores to do on Mondays so I rushed through most of them and was ready to go out with R at lunchtime. We decided to go to the RSPB reserve at Minsmere which is about nine miles away. The day was fine and not too cold. We had lunch in the café at the reserve and then walked round the woodland walk. The walk out past the Scrape to the sea seemed a little cold and windswept and we thought that as some damage had been done during the tidal surge in December we would be better off avoiding that walk. It was very pleasant to be visiting during the week instead of at the weekend. It was peaceful and quiet. We didn’t see many birds as we decided not to go into any of the hides and it wasn’t quite warm enough to stand still for long. We did sit on a seat in the sun for a while and watched a goldcrest in the branches above our heads. I tried to take a photo but it flew away and I only got a picture of the lichen-covered branch it had been sitting on.

We saw lots of gorse bushes in flower and tried to smell the flowers (to find out if they do smell of honey) without spiking our noses.

We noticed many fallen trees from all the storms we have had this winter.

I love this picture! Whoooooooooo!!!

A moss tuffet.

Tuesday began with mist and frost but both soon disappeared and the sun came out. R took E to Norwich and they spent the morning there shopping and then had lunch. I had to take Mum to the eye clinic at the Norfolk and Norwich hospital again in the afternoon. She had both eyes assessed and all seemed to be going along well. Afternoons at the hospital are very busy and the carparks are always full. A new carpark, only opened at the end of last year, was nearly full when we arrived and completely full when we left so I think they will have to find some more carparking space before long. It is quite a new building but the architects didn’t make it big enough. It was apparent within a very short space of time after completion that they would have to add to the hospital and they have been adding to it ever since. It is on the outskirts of the city and there is still a little land that can be used for building but not much more, I think. They also assumed that most people would be arriving by bus from the city centre or using the park and ride service. They were wrong there as well!

Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day. When I got home I mixed the pancake mixture and then made us a light evening meal of fish and mixed vegetables. R made the pancakes for us; he is extremely good at making them and we enjoyed them very much. R and I had two each and E had four!

Wednesday morning was bright and frosty and poor R had to go back to work. Wednesday is my day for taking Mum shopping in Diss and we managed this quite quickly for a change. The supermarket didn’t seem as full as usual and we were soon on our way back to her house. A beautiful day – everything seemed shiny; mainly blue and green. The first day for months that I have gone out without a coat. After a chat and a cup of coffee I drove to Halesworth to do my shopping and to visit the library. I also drove up to the doctor’s surgery to collect my prescription and then called in at Rumburgh church to change the colours from green to purple as it was now Lent; Ash Wednesday.

The church of St Felix and St Michael, Rumburgh.

Rumburgh began as a Priory founded in 1064 which was later that century given to the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary at York. In 1086 there were twelve monks under a Prior at Rumburgh. It was never a rich priory, as you can see from the variety of materials the church was built out of. It was suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII on 12 September 1528. The church building here is all that is left of the original small priory.

In our benefice we are so fortunate as to have some very talented needlewomen. Below is an altar frontal made a couple of years ago. As you can see we have to drape everything in plastic sheets when the church isn’t being used to stop water (condensation and water penetration) and bat urine and droppings from ruining everything.

Our Jacobean pulpit with another example of our church’s embroidery

The Millenium Tapestry which hangs near the south door. All the kneelers in the church have been covered with lovely tapestries too, depicting the houses, buildings, plants, animals, organisations, families etc. associated with Rumburgh.

The nave and chancel with the lovely Rood screen between.

There was an Ash Wednesday ashing service at Rumburgh that evening but I couldn’t go as I had promised to take Mum to the service at her church at Eye. Mum’s church’s service had a communion as well so I didn’t get home until just before 10.00pm.

A much quieter day on Thursday also quite cloudy. I took E to the surgery at 9.00am for an appointment and then went home for the rest of the day. Did a little gardening and some ironing as well as other household chores. All the ladybirds in our bedroom have woken up now and only two were left wandering about on Thursday. Another quiet day on Friday spent catching up with the housework.

I made Orange Tea Bread on Saturday as we had all been asked to provide some food for a Bring and Share lunch party after church on Sunday. This is to say thank-you and good luck to Caroline our former Reader. It is quite amusing that the first thing we do as a church on the first Sunday in Lent is to have a party with lots of lovely food! R took this photo.

R and I have bought a new really good camera that we can share. We decided to go out on Saturday to try it out and so drove to Billingford, Norfolk just on the other side of the Waveney River to look at the windmill there. Some of the following photos were taken by R and some by me on my smaller camera and one by me on the new camera!

Billingford windmill

R took a lovely picture of a burdock seedhead.

We then drove to Hoxne in Suffolk to look at the village. Traditionally this was the place where Edmund, Martyr-King was captured, tortured and killed by the Vikings. Nowadays, historians think this was more likely to have taken place at Bradfield St Clare just south of Bury St Edmunds.

This is the inscription on Goldbrook Bridge, under which St Edmund was supposed to have been captured.

Goldbrook Bridge.

Hoxne village.

The Old Butchery. The window has a lovely etched glass picture of a bull.

We shopped in Harleston on the way home and had an Indian takeaway meal that evening.

Sunday morning service was at St Mary’s church at Flixton. The weather was glorious – already 14 degrees celsius on the way to church and the sun shining brightly. The service was quite well attended and the lunch afterwards was very nice with such a lot of lovely food provided. We had all clubbed together and bought Caroline an i-Pod with case, a bench for her garden, a bottle of champagne and a couple of other bottles of drink for her husband.

When R and I got home we decided to work in the garden all afternoon. We dragged some branches and other bits of plants out of the big pond. I heard frogs croaking for the first time this year and the fish had woken up and were leaping out of the water. This made me think of Porgy and Bess with the fish jumping – we don’t have cotton but R said the grass needed cutting so he tried to get the petrol push mower to start but couldn’t. Fortunately, we have a sit-on mower which he was able to start, so our grass got it’s first trim of the season.

For our evening meal I cooked a tasty low-fat meal of lemon and honey chicken with rice and green and yellow beans.

A Week in my Garden

04 Tue Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in domestic animals, Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized, wild animals, wild birds

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

bluetit, chickens, daffodils, goose eggs, greylags, hyacinths, mallards, Muntjac deer, photography, pond, sunset

Here are just a few photos I have taken over the past week in my garden.

I looked out of one of the bedroom windows early in the morning and saw this muntjac resting under our hedge.

We have had large congregations of geese in the field behind the house.

Another picture taken from an upstairs window of two graylags and two mallards feeding under the birdtable. The birdtable is leaning a bit because of the high winds we have had and also because twenty or more rooks descend on it early in the morning and their weight causes it to list.

The greylags have started laying eggs on the island.

A couple of photos of the greylags swimming on the pond.

Some early daffodils.

And some rather stunted hyacinths.

Some miniature daffodils.

Some cuddling, sunbathing chickens. The cockerel forced himself inbetween the hens to get the warmest place. The hens didn’t seem to mind – just look at their faces!

A bluetit hiding in the hedge.

And a lovely sunset.

March

04 Tue Mar 2014

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

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the village of St Margaret South Elmham is the old phone box which they have converted into a mini library.

The rooks are busy in the rookery near the old rectory.

The geese who live at the old rectory were resting for a change!

The churchyard is full of pretty flowers.

Lots of common reeds in the ditches at the side of the lane all waving in the wind.

The tributary to the Beck at Froghall.

Some lovely silhouettes of trees on the skyline.

Blackthorn just starting to come out in the new hedge.

Marble galls.

The top of our lane.

The fields in St James have very few hedges. It is very windswept here and very cold!

Primroses at the side of the lane.

And lesser celandines.

A lot of work has been done here at the bridge to dig out the ditch again and lay new drainage pipes.

A row of Italian Alders with catkins. Not a very clear photo because of the wind and my lack of skill.

The farmyard with sheep wandering about freely and cattle in the barn feeding from their manger.

Our lane again – muddier now.

Even worse!

More primroses.

And these are ‘weeds’ in our garden. All lush green plants – the arrowhead leaves of Lords and Ladies, ivy, dog’s mercury and stinging nettles.

Spring is Nearly Here!

27 Thu Feb 2014

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

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Tags

Beccles, blackbird, blackthorn, Bungay, butterfly, Dunwich, free-range pigs, greylags, mallards, Muscovy duck, rood screen, skylark, spring weather, St Peter South Elmham

A windy,cloudy morning on Sunday. R and I decided to go to the early service of Morning Prayer at St. Peter’s church as we were going out for lunch. There were only seven of us there, including Maurice who took the service and played the organ as well. Maurice always gives interesting and thought-provoking sermons and the church is such an attractive one – it has a wonderfully carved rood screen with a rood (cross) and statues on top too. Pleasant talk afterwards with very good coffee.
I think a future post will have to be about all the lovely churches in ‘The Saints’ – the area where I live.
We (R, E and I) took my mother out for lunch at The Dove at Wortwell which is just over the border into Norfolk. An extremely enjoyable meal and everything well cooked and presented. Mum came back home with us for the afternoon and we just sat around and chatted.
Monday was a glorious day; a gentle, almost warm breeze, lots of sunshine and blue sky. Mum had an appointment for a blood test so I took her to her medical centre and waited for her outside in the car. A long wait; even though her appointment was fairly early (10.30) all the GPs and nurses were running 45 minutes late already. Dropped her back home and then drove to Beccles to shop in Tesco. I drove up to the main road at Harleston and then straight to Beccles via Bungay. Just before Bungay at Earsham, there is a free range pig farm and I saw a number of little pink piglets running about. I do like to see free range pigs – they seem to enjoy life, rolling in the mud, socialising with other pigs or going off on their own to rest in their personal ‘bijou residences’ full of straw. The farm close to my house looks after pigs but these are store pigs not free range. One farmer will care for pigs just separated from their mothers for a couple of weeks until they are a certain weight and then they are taken off to another farmer who will fatten them further and then pass them on to someone else. Or, the pigs are kept by the same farmer but moved periodically from one shed to another. Every Monday and Tuesday we have the noise of frightened pigs being loaded into lorries at the farm close by and then driven squealing past us down the lane. Other lorries full of squealing pigs are then driven past to be unloaded at the farm.
I noted that the temperature had risen to 14 degrees centigrade at midday – a spring day at the end of winter. Hung some washing out in the garden when I got back home. While struggling to get the washing line up a butterfly flew past me. I did’nt see it clearly but it was a dark one – a peacock perhaps – and it was flying strongly. By the time I had the line fastened the butterfly had gone.
Rain overnight and a cloudy and showery morning on Tuesday. Caroline, who has retired from being one of our church readers, visited this morning to give me some books and stayed for coffee. She made me laugh very much by recounting an awful accident she and her husband had had at the weekend involving an exploding bottle of home-made liquid manure!
After lunch I took E with me to Bungay to buy Mum’s bird seed. The pet shop there sells very reasonably priced seed – much cheaper than in Halesworth and Beccles. I can afford to buy in bulk (which works out cheaper in the long run) and I order it on-line but Mum on her small pension buys small quantities weekly – well, she pays for it but I go and buy it. We then drove to Halesworth to pick up my medication and went on to Dunwich where E and I walked on the beach. The sun was shining on the coast and the tide was further out than it had been when R and I walked there on Saturday. The wind was stronger and the waves higher than Saturday too. E can’t walk far so we soon turned and made our way back to the car but not before we had both got earache from the cold wind. On the way back we disturbed a bird in the grass and shingle a couple of feet in front of us. By the way it flew and the shape of it’s almost triangular wings I recognised it as a skylark. It only moved a few feet further on and walked about pecking at the ground now and then. I could clearly see it’s crest on the top of it’s head. As we continued walking forward the lark decided to take off and at our head height began to sing! We watched it getting higher and higher singing all the while.
Took Mum for her weekly shop in the supermarket in Diss today. Another lovely day – so many spring flowers in people’s gardens and the blackthorn is starting to come out in sheltered and sunny places. Got home at 2pm, had a late lunch, made a few phone calls then went out to feed the birds. Twenty geese on the field behind the house today including the two who have claimed the island as their nest site. Eggs have begun to be laid on the island. The female lays the eggs in the very early morning, covers them (not very thoroughly because I can see them!) with grass and leaves etc. and then goes off with her mate for the day. Once she has laid enough she will start to sit for about four weeks only leaving them for two very short periods during the day to feed. Her mate stays close by, wandering about disconsolately all the time she is sitting and always seems pleased when it’s her feeding time when he joins her.
The mallards seem to have reached an agreement as we now only have one male with the female in the garden.
Our neighbour who lives further along the edge of the field at the back of the house came to talk to me as I walked round the garden. He owns the muscovy ducks (both female) but one of them has gone missing. The one he still has is sitting on eggs and kept chasing the other one off if it got too close. It has now gone missing and he hopes the fox hasn’t had it. I said I hadn’t see it and he was free to look round our garden for it. They are very tame ducks; they come when called and sit at his feet. The missing one likes spending time with their chickens as well. Our neighbour, his wife and children will be very upset if the duck can’t be found, I think.
I gardened until 5.30 when it got too cold to stay out though it was still wonderfully light. As I gardened I heard a blackbird singing for the first time this year. Tentatively at first and then with more confidence – a clear flute-like song.
A cold, starlit evening though by dawn we are supposed to have wind and rain again. R is away for a couple of nights til Friday.

Friendship and Other Matters

18 Tue Feb 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Rural Diary, Uncategorized, wild birds

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

buzzards, friendship, greylags, Norwich Cathedral, ravens, skylarks, St. Peter's Hall and brewery

When we awoke yesterday our house was enveloped in thick fog and there was frost on the grass and our cars. (Like a lot of people we have a garage full of rubbish and no room for even one of our cars!) However, by 7.40 when R left for work the fog was clearing, the sun coming out and the birds singing loudly. The geese had got visitors – I counted eighteen geese on the field behind the house – and the couple of muscovy ducks which belong to one of our neighbours were having a stroll together round the big pond.

I had to take E in to Halesworth for a hair appointment at midday and afterwards I shopped in the supermarket. On the way home, in fact only a quarter of a mile from home, we saw something flapping at the side of the road and as we approached we realised it was a large bird with prey. As it took off we saw it was a buzzard. This is really exciting, as until just a very few years ago they were not to be found in this part of England. When we lived for eighteen months in Somerset near Wellington we saw them every day and I got to love their mewing call. The only other time I had seen them was when visiting the North or West Country on holiday. I then remembered having seen a couple of buzzards soaring over us as we worked in the garden on Sunday. How could I have forgotten this? Are they here to stay?

Thinking about our short residence in Somerset, reminds me that we had a couple of skylights in the roof of our house and I used to love to sit under them, looking up at the sky, watching clouds and buzzards and ravens. Yes, ravens too, with their deep croaking bark of a call.

A busy but fun day today. My dearest friend W has come to East Anglia for the week as her husband is working in the area. We met in Norwich and walked to the cathedral which we wandered round and then had coffee in the refectory. I then drove us to St Peter’s Hall, here in ‘The Saints’ and we had a lovely lunch, talking all the time. The last time we had met was at her eldest daughter’s wedding in 2012 but naturally we weren’t able to talk much then. We heard skylarks singing above the brewery next to the hall as we left to spend the afternoon at my house.

W was so supportive when my first husband left when A was thirteen weeks old. I had also just been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and could hardly walk. She used to visit every few weeks bringing food as well as her own baby (my god-daughter) who was five and a half months older than A, kept me company and cheered me up. Thank-you W. I love you.