A Few Autumn Memories

30 Thu Nov 2017

Tags

'Canary Bird' rose, autumn, autumn leaves, Cotinus, goldfinch nest, harvest festival, harvest moon, Mahonia, oriental poppy, photographs, rainbow, red admiral butterfly, Rumburgh Church, Suffolk, sunsets, viburnum bodnantense, winter-flowering honeysuckle

A mini rainbow seen on a breezy day in September.

I have a few photographs of things I’ve seen this autumn dating from the beginning of September until mid October. I thought I’d make a post of them all.

A sunset seen from our back garden – again in September.

This photograph of the harvest moon at the beginning of October was taken in Norwich by Richard.

A Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) nest in our Greengage tree.

Once some of the leaves had fallen from the tree it was easier to see the nest which, when it was occupied, prevented us from harvesting our greengages until it was almost too late. Moss, grasses, feathers and cobwebs have been used as well as green plastic garden twine. The nest has been anchored to the branches of the tree by stouter grasses.

A Red Admiral butterfly (Vanessa atalanta) sunning itself.

Our church at Rumburgh, decorated for Harvest Festival

Richard and I collected all the fruit and vegetables the next day and delivered them to a local nursing home where they were very gratefully received.

Another sunset

I love the dark purples and greys with the slash of bright yellow cutting through

Autumn colour in October

These Elder ( Sambucus nigra) leaves have lost nearly all their colour and have become almost luminous

Cherry tree leaves in our garden

Yet another sunset!

A late and rather battered oriental poppy

The almond-scented flowers of Viburnum bodnantense

Mahonia flowers smell like lily-of-the-valley.

I like to have late autumn, winter and early spring flowering plants. On milder days when the wind isn’t too strong, their scent can be so welcome. The insects, especially the bumble-bees, enjoy the flowers too!

Winter-flowering Honeysuckle

This ‘Canary Bird’ rose is one of the first to flower in early summer. It decided to flower again in October.

The Cotinus leaves were very attractive

I’m sorry but here is one more sunset! This was the colourful one caused by storm Ophelia and the smoke pollution from the forest fires in Portugal.

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My music choice today is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing ‘Herbst’ (Autumn) by Franz Schubert. Here is a link to a translation into English of the lyrics.

Thanks for visiting!

Slightly Newer News!

20 Mon Mar 2017

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, trees, walking, weather, wild flowers

≈ 56 Comments

Tags

bird-scare cannons, Christmas box, crocus, Cymbidium orchids, dandelion, Diary, Germander Speedwell, Homersfield church, mallards, miniature iris, Periwinkle, primroses, snow, snowdrops, St Mary's church Homersfield, Suffolk, sweet violets, walking, winter-flowering honeysuckle

We had a dusting of snow five weeks ago

This is the view from our spare bedroom window. We had had a few days of snow showers but nothing had settled until we woke on the Sunday morning to this. Up until a few years ago we got snow every winter, sometimes a lot of snow; but not now.

Homersfield church is dedicated to St Mary

Richard and I went to church together that Sunday.

Here he is, looking very Russian!

Homersfield church is beautifully situated on a bluff above the River Waveney with its water meadows and marshes. My favourite approach to it is up a track through woodland.

The churchyard. Beyond the trees the land drops away steeply.

Homersfield churchyard looking towards the woodland where we park our car.

p1010692woodland-beyond-the-churchyard-homersfield

The woodland with snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis)

Snowdrops

The snow had all gone by the end of the day and the beginning of the following week was mild and sunny.

Richard and I went out for a short walk down the lane. He can’t walk too far as yet so we weren’t able to do our usual circuit route but it was good to be out together.

We have been listening to bird-scaring cannons going off at intervals every day, from dawn til dusk since the middle of autumn. Wood pigeons do considerable damage to leafy crops such as oil-seed rape.

Bare trees and a see-through hedge

Further up the lane was the sheltered bank of a ditch on which I found a number of tiny plants. They had begun flowering in the milder weather we had had that week.

Primrose (Primula vulgaris) plants

Primrose. This is a ‘thrum-eyed’ primrose flower. If you look at the centre of the flower you see its long stamens, the short stigma is hidden below. A ‘pin-eyed’ primrose has a long stigma visible and its short stamens are concealed. I will see if I can find a ‘pin-eye’ flower so you can compare the two.

Germander Speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys)

Dandelion (Taraxacum agg.)

Red Dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum)

An oak tree in a hedgerow. A dead branch has broken and is dangling from the tree. You cannot see it in this photo but a single track road runs this side of the hedge.

The signpost at the end of the lane

Field view

We stood for a while and looked across the fields; we tried to walk a little further towards the village of St James but Richard soon knew he would be too tired if he went any further. We turned for home.

Our muddy lane

For many months of the year our lane is covered with a thick layer of mud. Our cars are perpetually filthy and walking is a messy business!

Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) on our pond.

I know it is spring once I start to see pairs of Mallards on our pond! We have also been visited by our Graylag geese friends and yet again we realise we have failed to clear the the willow and bramble scrub off the island they like to nest on.

I was pleased that my Cymbidium orchids flowered from Christmas until just a week ago.

They had produced seven spikes of flowers altogether, which is the best ever!

Here is a slideshow of the flowers in bloom in my garden during February.

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My music choice is ‘Laudate Dominum’ by Mozart and sung by Emma Kirkby. I have been fortunate to have heard Emma Kirkby sing on two occasions, in recitals held at the church in my mother’s village.

Thanks for visiting!

A Winter Miscellany

06 Wed Jan 2016

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Days out, family, literature, plants, Rural Diary, trees, walking

≈ 38 Comments

Tags

bare trees, birch, corsican pine oak, Harleston, hedgehog, honeysuckle, pinks, primulas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Scots Pine, St Cross South Elmham, St Georges church, The Black Arrow, Tunstall Forest, viburnum bodnantense, walking, winter-flowering honeysuckle

I had a lot of difficulty trying to think of a title to this post as it is made up of a mishmash of lots of different photos taken from the beginning of December up to New Year’s Day and at a number of locations.

A young hedgehog I saw wandering about the garden during the day at the beginning of December.

This little creature looked healthy enough, though still not quite full-grown. It seemed unbothered by my presence and was trotting about looking for and finding things to eat in the garden. The photo is a little blurred because it didn’t keep still long enough for me to take a good picture of it. Hedgehogs are normally nocturnal mammals and only emerge during the daytime if disturbed or hungry. They hibernate during the winter but emerge during mild spells of weather to feed.

The Viburnum bodnantense is in full flower and smells divine!

The Winter-flowering Honeysuckle is also flowering and its scent is beautiful.

The Primulas in Richard’s border are in flower and his Pinks are covered in flower-buds.

Not only do we have all these flowers but also miniature Iris, Grape Hyacinths and Hyacinths are in flower. On my travels I have seen Daffodils, Snowdrops and Winter Aconites. My mother’s garden has Hardy Geraniums still in flower from the autumn and also the bright red flowers of Ornamental Quince. We have had a lot of rain (though much less than in the north and north-west of the country) – the ditches are filling fast, the roads are thick with mud and have standing water on them and parts of our garden are like a quagmire. The grass hasn’t stopped growing but it is too wet for it to be cut. I spent some time a few days ago pulling out Stinging Nettle runners from under our Crabapple tree.

This seaweed-like algae has started growing out from the edge of the grass onto our driveway.

This is St George’s church at St Cross South Elmham – another of the churches in our benefice.

I had reason to call in to this church a couple of days before Christmas and while there I thought I’d take a few photos. I didn’t have much time to spare so only took a few pictures – I hope to return there again soon and finish the job.

The church is large and seems very tall especially as one approaches it from the bottom of the valley. I didn’t have time to walk round the outside of the church or visit the grave of the Canadian poet and writer, Elizabeth Smart.

Inside the church

Sunlight entering through the clear windows

A very attractive pulpit and the tiny staircase that used to climb up to the rood loft

I like the little bracket on the wall above the reading desk.

The altar with its painted reredos. The picture on the left is of St George.

The pretty pipe-organ.

The heater – a venerable one!

A watcher from up in the roof.

In this photo you can see where the face is. There are others elsewhere in the church.

This person with the jolly face, long auburn hair and white shirt is up in the roof too.

This carving round the door is in the porch.

This is part of the wooden ceiling to the porch.

This is The Beck flowing through St Cross.

The road crosses The Beck by a bridge which I looked over to watch the water racing through underneath.

The Magpie (or as it’s now known, the JD Young Hotel – so boring!) in Harleston.

We stopped off in Harleston on our way back home after taking Alice to the station on New Year’s Eve. Harleston is a town on the north side of the River Waveney and in Norfolk. The Waveney is the border between Suffolk and Norfolk.

This is another view of the town from the same spot – outside the bank where Richard was withdrawing some money. By the time I had taken this photo he had finished the transaction and had walked off, as you can see.

The Swan. Another of the inns in Harleston

The Adnam’s Shop, Harleston.

After we had finished our shopping we treated ourselves to a wander round this shop. Adnam’s is a local brewery based in Southwold. They brew many different types of beer and ale and recently have started to produce wines and spirits as well. They opened a very large store selling their beers and spirits and also cooking utensils, china and glassware in Southwold. This shop in Harleston is a much smaller version of their main store.

Tunstall Forest

On New Year’s Day, Richard, Elinor and I went for a walk in Tunstall Forest. The forest is managed by The Forestry Commission and is about 20 miles to the south of where we live.

One of my favourite books when I was a girl (and I still enjoy reading it now) was The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson. I was overjoyed to find that I was living near the Tunstall Forest of the book when I moved to Suffolk in 1988. Surprisingly, this walk was the first time I had visited the place.

The day was very dull and the ground was muddy from the quantities of rain we had had recently. It was difficult getting decent photos of the walk and there wasn’t much to see of special interest. However, the walk in the fresh air and in good company was good in itself.

The forest is predominantly Scots Pine and Corsican Pine used as a crop but since the Great Storm of 1987 when many of the trees were lost, it has been replanted with mixed woodland.

The rides through the forest are wide and sandy and I look forward to returning here in the spring and summer.

The Gorse was in flower and the bright yellow flowers were a welcome sight.

I noticed this toadstool at the edge of the path.

More fungi.

Moss

More moss

Even more moss

Another view from our walk

A fallen tree with its roots in the air.

I was surprised to see these new Oak leaves

New Honeysuckle leaves

A fine tree next to the ride.

Proof that I didn’t walk alone. Elinor in the foreground and Richard in the distance.

And now for my music choice.

Thanks for visiting!

In My Garden

14 Sat Feb 2015

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

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

Ash, birds, blackthorn, catkins, Christmas box, crocus, flying mallards, garden plants, goldfinch, hazel, hazel gall, horse chestnut, ice, iris reticulata, lichen, Mahonia, moon, pond, reflections, silver birch, song thrush, Suffolk, trees, winter-flowering honeysuckle, witch-hazel

This is a post featuring a few of the things I have noticed in our garden recently. A large part of the garden is exposed to the prevailing south-westerly wind and we find plants here are slower to grow and flower than those in other gardens near us. I have seen large carpets of Winter Aconites in other peoples gardens but there is no sign of them here at all. The beds around the house and near the hedge are more sheltered and this is where we see the first signs of spring.

Buds on the Ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior)

I like the Ash’s black, conical buds – they look a little like deer hooves. So far, we haven’t found any sign of ‘Ash die-back’ in our garden yet. This is caused by the Hymenoscyphus fraxineus fungus. East Anglia is badly affected and has lost many of its Ash trees already.

IMG_1849Horse Chestnut leaf buds (640x427)

Horse-chestnut sticky buds (Aesculus hippocastanum)

IMG_1854Buds on Blackthorn in hedge (640x427)

Little red buds on the Blackthorn in the hedge (Prunus spinosa)

While I was photographing these I looked up and found a Barn Owl was flying straight towards me. I don’t know who was more surprised, the owl or me! I tried to photograph it before it veered away from me but I couldn’t focus in time.

Lichen in the hedge

Hazel male catkins (Corylus avellana)

IMG_1848Female flowers of Hazel (640x427)

Hazel female catkins with their tiny red petals

Hazel bud

IMG_1864Catkin starting to emerge (640x427)

Hazel buds.

I wondered what these were on our hazel trees as I had never noticed them before. None of my books mentioned buds looking like this so I googled for information and discovered a photograph that looked like mine on ramblingsofanaturalist.blogspot.com. The author says that these are bud galls made by the mite Phytoptus avellanae. He also talks about unopened brown catkins which have been attacked by either the mite Phyllocoptes coryli or the Cedidomyid midge Contarinia coryli. I had also seen distorted brown catkins and had wondered about them too but had been unable to get a clear photo of them.

Reflection of sky and cloud in our big pond

Flying ducks

Our Silver Birch tree (Betula pendula) is also growing its catkins.

Thin ice on the pond. Hail has got frozen onto the ice that was already there.

The icy pond

The Witch-hazel (Hamamelis) is flowering in its large pot next to the front door and on mild days fills the porch with scent.

The Christmas Box (Sarcococca) is also scenting the garden.

IMG_3956Winter-flowering Honeysuckle (640x480)

Another scented shrub – the Winter-flowering Honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima)

This shrub Honeysuckle is a real favourite of mine. Its small flowers are powerfully scented and it flowers from mid-winter until well into spring hardly stopping except in the harshest of weathers. It is virtually evergreen and the flowers are followed by bright red heart-shaped berries loved by Blackbirds.

The Mahonia (Mahonia x media ‘Charity’) with its Lily-of-the-Valley scent has been flowering since the end of October.

The first of my miniature Iris Reticulata bloomed today

A tiny crocus has appeared in the rough grass under one of the crabapple trees.

I found some more – paler ones this time. I hope the birds don’t rip them up and the mole doesn’t dig them up.

Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis)

Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos)

Finally, here is the setting full moon seen on the morning of 4th February.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all!

A Hotch Potch.

16 Fri May 2014

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

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

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

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

This is the only photo I managed to get.

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

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

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

This morning I went out to admire his handiwork.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All the hollies have new leaves too.

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

It has beautiful leaves too that glow in the sunshine.

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

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

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

Mammalaria

Mammalaria flower

Peanut cactus flower.

I don’t know what this one is called.

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

The new shoots on the Viburnum Bodnantense are crimson.

Tiny damsons.

Willow seeds.

Bee on the cotoneaster horizontalis.

Geranium Phaeum in R’s flowerbed.

Flowers on the Spindle tree.

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

A White-shouldered House Moth

R took these photos of a muntjac deer.

A chaffinch

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

Alpine Pasque Flower

A Great Tit

A Stock Dove.

A female Pheasant.

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

A baby House Spider.

The tiny flowers of Thyme-Leaved Speedwell.

Aquilegia flower

Thrift flower

The wonderfully scented Clematis Montana ‘Rubens’

Shrub rose ‘Canary Bird’

Blackberry flowers

Knautica Macedonica

Aquilegia flower

Reflections in the pond

Common sedge

Common Vetch

An ant hill

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

Heart-shaped berries of the Winter-flowering Honeysuckle

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

More Flowers in my Garden

23 Sun Feb 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, Rural Diary

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Tags

Christmas box, crocus, daisy, grape hyacinth, iris danfordiae, iris reticulata, lichen, rosemary, Scilla sibirica, snowdrops, tete a tete narcissi, viburnum bodnantense, winter aconites, winter-flowering honeysuckle, winter-flowering jasmine

Scilla sibirica. Brilliant blue flowers like miniature bluebells, they start to flower as soon as they emerge from the ground and continue elongating until they are about 10cm/4ins tall. As you can see, mine have started to spread and the young ones are just coming up around the original group.

Winter Aconites. Eranthus hyemalis. Hooray! At last! A member of the buttercup family. I can’t get rid of creeping buttercup and these won’t spread – most confusing!

Yellow crocus in the grass under the variegated sweet chestnut tree.

Yet another picture of my miniature iris, iris reticulata – I love them. Look carefully at the bottom right of the group of flowers and you will see a bloom that has been nipped off and discarded by one of the kind animal visitors to the garden. Towards the bottom left of the photo you can see some yellow iris danfordiae just about to come out. I am really feeling quite smug about these as they are notoriously difficult to get to survive in this country. The bulbs break up after flowering into bulblets which take a few years to mature and then flower. One has to recreate the conditions where the plants originally came from – danfordiae from Turkey, reticulata from Turkey, the Caucasus, Iraq, Iran. Good drainage; baked in summer, cold in winter. As you can see, my soil is very stony in this bed and it is south facing so gets sun for most of the day in summer.

A tub containing snowdrops and tete a tete narcissi.

A rosemary flower. Rosemary grows very well in our garden. I have two large plants one of which is next to the front door in the herb garden. Rosemary under the pillow wards off bad dreams and nightmares; rosemary next to the front door keeps witches away! Rosemary for remembrance.