In My Garden Again

28 Wed Sep 2016

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

Tags

bird's nest, Brown Hare, Brown Hawker dragonfly, comma butterfly, Common Fleabane, Common Hawthorn berries, cooking apples, Crabapples, Creeping Thistle, Fish-hook Cactus, garden, hogweed, Hornet, Hoverfly, leveret, mole hill, moonrise, pears, speckled wood butterfly, Suffolk, sunset, Sweet Pepper, Water Mint, Zinnia

This is another collection of things I’ve seen in my garden or near my home during the past month. The weather until a few days ago has been wonderful! Warm, sometimes very hot, mainly dry and sunny; it has been a lovely late summer.

Flower on Richard’s Fish-hook Cactus (Ferocactus wislizeni)

This cactus nearly flowered for the first time two years ago but the warm, sunny weather didn’t last long enough and the buds shrivelled. Last year was too dull and cool so no buds formed at all. This year however, one of the three buds opened and stayed open for three days.

Sweet pepper ‘Sweet Banana’

Richard is growing sweet peppers this year and this is a photo of them when they were just starting to turn red. Unfortunately, the camera focused on the leaf not the pepper.

Zinnia flower

Zinnia flower-bud

Richard bought a tray of Zinnia flowers from the garden centre. They took their time to get established but eventually they got going and have been so bright and cheerful for the past month.

Common Fleabane (Pulicaria dysenteria) has been everywhere I’ve looked this summer but this poor shot is the only photo of it I’ve taken.

For centuries, the leaves of Fleabane were hung in bunches from ceilings or dried and burnt as a fumigant to repel fleas. Richard Mabey in his ‘Flora Britannica’ says the plant is a relative of the species which supplies the insecticide ‘pyrethrum’.

Hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium) seed-heads

Speckled Wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria)

This is a woodland butterfly and its markings make it difficult to spot in dappled shade.

A Comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album) on Water Mint (Mentha aquatica)

Creeping Thistle (Cirsium arvense) with a Hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus) on the lowest flowerhead

The crabapples on our species crabapple tree look like cherries. Woodpigeons are very fond of them.

We don’t have many apples this year. This one looks very good – a cooking apple.

We have what looks like a good crop of pears but sadly many of the fruits are rotting on the tree.

Common Hawthorn berries, known as Haws. (Crataegus monogyna)

The Hawthorns are full of fruit; some people say this means we are to have a hard winter. I think it means we had good pollination in the spring.

A female Brown Hawker dragonfly (Aeshna grandis)

I took this photo in a hurry as Brown Hawkers are such restless dragonflies and only perch for a few seconds. I love their amber wings!

Another poor photo, this time of a Hornet (Vespa crabro)

We have had a Hornets’ nest under the tiles of the garage roof this summer. They are busy insects and carry on flying until well after sunset, unlike wasps who retire early. We have also got a wasps’ nest under the house roof tiles near our bedroom window. I could hear them chewing and munching away through the night when they were first constructing the nest in the early summer.

This is a mole hill that appeared in the rather dry border next to the conservatory. The hill got bigger the following day and many spring bulbs were uprooted.

We haven’t had much rain during the past month and the moles are searching for worms. The worms congregate where there is moisture i.e. in flower-beds (if they are watered) or next to paths or buildings where water runs off into the soil.

Sunset

Sunset with mist

And shortly afterwards on the same evening…..

Moonrise

Moonrise

We were pleased to welcome a new visitor to our garden; a Leveret, a young Brown Hare (Lepus europaeus)

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We first noticed it when it was very close to our kitchen window so you see part of the window frame in my photos! It then moved a little further away and was easier to photograph.

The best time of day to see hares is early morning or at dusk, as during the day they rest in grass, scrubland or in a ploughed furrow. They crouch low against the ground with their ears laid flat and are well camouflaged. If they are disturbed they are capable of running very fast – 35 mph/56kph – and run with their black-topped tail held downwards. They have large staring eyes, large black-tipped ears and powerful hind legs; they are shy and alert creatures. They typically live in open country, preferring not to live in direct contact with grazing animals and they are unlikely to be found in hayfields. They eat a wide selection of grasses and plants of open country as well as crops of cereal, clover, alfalfa, beets and potatoes. In winter a hare will dig for green plants under the snow and will eat buds and bark from bushes and trees, including fruit trees. They have suffered in areas of intensive farming and where herbicides are regularly used. Pesticides contaminate their food and may kill leverets.

In March and April hares can be seen leaping and chasing about which gives rise to the saying ‘mad, March Hares’. They often stand up on their hind legs and box each other; this may be two males vying for social dominance or, as is now thought more likely, a female (Jill) rebuffing a male (Jack). Leverets are born in the open with a full coat of fur and with their eyes open. They are born in litters of about three and the mother moves them immediately to another safe place which makes it more difficult for predators to find them. Each leveret is placed in a ‘form’ – a depression made in long grass – on its own where it lies low waiting for visits from its mother. This behaviour is very like that of deer.

While watering my green beans the other day I noticed some tiny white eggshells lying on the ground and wondered where they could have come from. Richard looked into the branches of the Laburnum tree above us and saw a tiny nest that I hadn’t been able to see – (I am quite a lot shorter than he is). It was a windy day and the pieces of shell must have been dislodged by the breeze. A week later I found the nest on the ground and here is my photograph of it.

I do not know what bird built this nest.

As you can see from the photo it is only 11 cm long and about 6 cm wide. It is made of tiny twigs, grasses, leaves and moss all woven together and is lined with sheep’s wool and white feathers.

And finally, here is my music selection for this post.

Thanks for visiting!

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.

Trinity Sunday and Father’s Day

17 Tue Jun 2014

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

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

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

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

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

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

The old village stocks which are kept in the porch.

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

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

The 15th century font.

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

The Easter Sepulchre.

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

Panels from the base of the former rood screen.

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

The 19th century altar

: Beautiful needlework

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

The tiny narrow rood loft stairs.

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

A corn dolly cross behind the pulpit

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

Hedge Mustard

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

Tutsan

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

Common Knapweed or Hardheads

Common Knapweed

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

Yarrow

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

Meadow Vetchling

Bedstraw

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

Greater Knapweed

Greater Knapweed with visiting mosquito

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

Hedge Bindweed

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

St Margaret’s village sign

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

Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon

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