A Few More Things.

24 Fri Apr 2015

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

Tags

aubretia, bluetit, daffodils, daisy, dandelion, Elder, greylags, Hawthorn, heartsease, Muntjac deer, near-species rose, nests, pussy willow, rhubarb, silver birch, snail-trail, spear thistle, spring, Suffolk, willow

In between racing about in my car to Norwich and Mum’s house, the doctor’s surgery and the hospital, shopping trips to Harleston, Halesworth, Bungay and Diss, I have been able to take my camera with me as I walk round the garden, filling all the bird feeders. I haven’t had time for any gardening for about ten days and I miss it! The weather here has continued bright and dry with frosty, misty mornings and warmish days (as long as you are out of the chilly NE wind). Today has been much warmer with a change of wind direction but according to the forecast, this will not last. Rain and cold are set to return by the end of the weekend.

Hawthorn leaves. We have two types of Hawthorn in our garden hedges, Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) and Midland Hawthorn (Crataegus laevigata). This is probably Midland Hawthorn or maybe a hybrid between the two.

A Daisy (Bellis perennis). I love its simplicity.

The Elder leaves (Sambucus nigra) are now almost fully out and have lost the pink tinge they had. They are matte mid-green leaves. Last year we had the best elder blossom I’d seen for many years.

Goat Willow or Sallow catkins (Salix caprea). Male and female catkins are on separate trees and appear before the leaves. Sallows are a food plant for many different types of moth. The catkins are known as ‘Pussy Willow’ when they first appear as they look and feel like silky cats paws.

I found a Heartsease or Wild Pansy (Viola tricolor) plant on the path round the big pond. Next to it there is also the first rosette of Spear Thistle leaves (Cirsium vulgare).

Silver Birch leaves (Betula pendula)

I love standing underneath our tree and looking up. Silver Birches eventually grow to be about 26 metres tall. I don’t think ours has quite got there yet.

This Bluetit (Parus caeruleus) sitting in the Birch tree looks a little strange. It has a black sunflower seed in its beak.

It spent some time taking the seedcase off…

…and eating the seed within.

The Greylags (Anser anser) have been amusing me a lot lately. The geese are much calmer than the ganders. The goose here is up close eating some food I put out for it. The gander is further away and hissing at me.

This one I found the other morning standing on top of the hedge.

The original goose on her nest on the island…

…was joined last weekend by another goose (nearest to us).

A third goose has made her nest on the edge of the pond. I surprised her and she surprised me when I walked round the pond yesterday. I am not sure how successful this nest will be as it is quite vulnerable to fox predation.

A Common Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

Daffodils along the ditch at the front of the house

Daffodils at the top of the ditch between us and the old School House.

Our Rhubarb (Rheum x hybridum ‘Timperley Early’) looking majestic.

A very early flowering near-species rose has buds on it. (Rosa xanthina ‘Canary Bird’)

Aubretia

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Richard pointed out this snail trail up the side of the house!

I saw this Muntjac deer doe very early the other morning. It was eating the crabapple tree! The leaf shapes on the window are meant to stop birds crashing into the glass but aren’t very successful. I usually have to pull the window-blind down to stop them!

Very blurred photo! You can see how stocky/thickset these deer are and also the white in their ears.

The does don’t have antlers but have a dark triangular patch on their foreheads.

I think I see her tongue sticking out as she chews a mouthful of leafy twig.

I had great trouble trying to focus on the deer. The camera wanted to focus on the window glass of the double-glazing or the daffodils behind the deer.

Richard on his new tractor-mower. The old one wasn’t working too well so we part-exchanged it for a newer, better model. It has a mulching facility which will be good to use in the summer.

I must share some good news I heard today. My daughter Alice has been told she has her PhD. She is now Doctor Alice! I am so proud of her.

Thank-you for visiting!

Pollution and Other Matters

03 Thu Apr 2014

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

≈ 2 Comments

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.

The Weather

27 Thu Mar 2014

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

blackberry, clouds, cowslips, gardening, primroses, rhubarb, snow, weather

The weather is a topic we British never tire of talking about. This is because it is forever changing and unpredictable. The temperature can rise or fall by as much as ten degrees centigrade in just a few hours at any time of the day; we can have warm days in winter and cold days in summer and a rain cloud is usually just about to appear over the horizon. Our lives are all affected by the weather to a lesser or greater extent. The North Atlantic Drift around our shores protects us from the bitter cold winters that other countries this far north have to endure. We are a maritime nation.

I live in north Suffolk at a latitude of about 52.5 degrees north which is further north than Winnipeg and at about the same latitude as Berlin, Warsaw and Irkutsk. We are buffeted by the strong, wet, warm Westerlies from the Atlantic but also get winds straight from the Arctic or from Siberia and, if the weather forecast is correct for this weekend, we also get nice warm winds from the south-east; from the Mediterranean. Lovely!

Yesterday began with a frost. The temperature had gone down to minus 2 degrees centigrade overnight but at dawn the sky was starting to cloud over and the frost soon disappeared. We then had a day of ‘April’ weather – lots of showers of hail, sleet and rain – and also some sunshine. Not a good day for gardening! I spent most of it with my mother taking her shopping and then to church with her for Stations of the Cross and then a Mass.

March and April can be so beautiful but the gardener must be forever vigilant and protect vulnerable plants from frost, ice and also the strengthening sun. I looked at my diaries for last winter the other day and made a note of the amount of snow we had had. The first lot of snow was on the 5th of December 2012 and temperatures didn’t get much above freezing for some days after that. A thaw on 14th December. Snow again on 13th January 2013 and snow showers continuing most days without a thaw until 26th January. A thaw on 27th January. Snow again on 2nd February and snow showers most days until a thaw on 14th February. Snow flurries from 21st to 24th February and then heavy snow from 9th to 13th March which took ages to disappear. A day of snow on 4th April. And this winter not one flake of snow here at all! Yet! The thaws and consequent ice are the real problems I find during a cold winter. This is what kills the plants and damages roads and buildings.

R and I are weather watchers and we have such a wonderful view of the wide East Anglian sky from the back of our house. I took a couple of photos of the edge of a cold front going over last Friday. The thick grey cloud overhead with a sharp edge to it to the west and clear blue sky beyond approaching on a stiff south-westerly breeze.

The following day was Saturday and a good gardening day. I had weeded round our rhubarb plant during last week, which, by the way is now ready for pulling, and I had tidied the blackberry canes next to it as well. The blackberry wanted to grow where the rhubarb is and I had a bit of a fight with it, removing unwanted canes and cutting down others. It is now nice and tidy with most of the new canes tied up and well away from the rhubarb. I also had to dig up some cowslip plants from where they wanted to grow in the lawn and put them where R and I want them to grow, on the edge of the ditch at the front of the house. R finds it difficult to mow round the flowers when they are in the lawn and even though I think they look lovely there it will make R’s job quicker and easier now they are elsewhere. We have a few different coloured cowslips in our garden and some new plants which are neither primroses nor cowslips. The bees do a good job of fertilizing all our flowers and the resultant mongrel plants are very interesting and varied. Next to the rhubarb on the opposite side to the blackberry I found a wonderful collection of different types of primula. I have dug these up and put them in a seed bed area to see how they develop.

I then spent a little time looking at and photographing the clouds. Caravans and convoys of clouds travelling across the sky. To use a well-worn simile they really are like fleets of sailing ships on the ocean. R likes to look at clouds and see pictures and objects in them: I see islands and mountain ranges in the sky.