June Flowers and Insects

Tags

azure damselfly, Bittersweet, Black-tailed Skimmer, blue-tailed damselfly, common knapweed, Common Marsh-bedstraw, Common Sorrel, Creeping Cinquefoil, Cyperus Sedge, damselflies, dogwood, dragonflies, Elder, Four-spotted Chaser, garden, greenbottle, Hoverfly, insects, Meadow Buttercup, Oxeye Daisy, pond, Pyracantha, Suffolk, White Water Lily, wild flowers, yellow iris, Yorkshire Fog

Until this week we have had a very cool summer indeed which has meant that there have been very few insects about.  The common garden pests, greenfly and blackfly for example, seem to cope with chilly weather but the insects that eat them don’t!  Some of the flowers are continuing to flower a little late but a few are flowering at about their usual time which has made for unusual combinations.

Meadow Buttercups (Ranunculus acris) on All Saints’ Common

We have a number of ‘commons’ here in East Anglia.  A common is an area of land either owned by a group of people or one person but it can be used by the general public in certain ways such as walking your dog or playing sport.  Some commons and village greens have ‘rights of common’ where it is possible to graze livestock on the land.  If you want to use the common for anything other than walking on it or having a picnic, (for instance, if you wanted to camp there), you’d have to ask permission of the land owner.

This is another view of the common showing one of the unusual flower combinations.  This didn’t come out as well as I’d have liked.

The Common Sorrel is flowering at the same time as the buttercups and for a while it looked as though the field was alight with red flames above the yellow.

Common Sorrel (Rumex acetosa)

Common Knapweed (Centaurea nigra) is also in flower on the common.

As is Yorkshire Fog (Holcus lanatus)

The Elder (Sambucus nigra) is in flower.

The Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea) is in flower too.

Many people dislike the scent of the Elderflower; they describe it as smelling of ‘cats’.  It isn’t a pleasant smell but it is preferable to the smell of Dogwood flowers!

Bittersweet (Solanum dulcamara), also known as Woody Nightshade, is flowering in the hedgerows.

The Pyracantha in our garden is covered in blossom. This is another plant with a strange scent but the bees love it!

I discovered a new plant at the edge of our big pond the other day – a Cyperus Sedge (Carex pseudocyperus), also known as Hop Sedge.

The plant is quite large and must, I suppose, have been there last year without me seeing it.  Its leaves are strap-like, similar to Iris leaves, so I might have thought it was an Iris.  The flowers are unmistakable though.

The flowers are pendulous, like catkins.

Yellow Iris (Iris pseudacorus)

Another new plant to our garden is this Common Marsh-bedstraw (Galium palustre) growing by our corner pond.

One of my favourite flowers is this little one – Creeping Cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans). Its petals are heart-shaped and such a pretty shade of yellow. The creeping refers to its trailing stems that root at the nodes as it grows.

I love Oxeye Daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) too.

A White Water-lily (Nymphaea alba) on our big pond.

Elinor saw the Kingfisher at the pond a couple of days ago and since yesterday we have  all heard the purring of a Turtle-dove in the trees round the pond.  The temperature has risen to 25 degrees Centigrade and I think it has been too cold up til now for the Turtle-dove.

Female Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans)

Male Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans)

Male Azure Damselfly (Coenagrion puella)

I believe this is a male Four-spotted Chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata)

Greenbottle (Lucilia caesar) on Hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium)

A brightly-patterned Hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus)

Male Black-tailed Skimmer (Orthetrum cancellatum)

I hope to see some more insects now the weather has warmed up.

Thank-you for visiting!

Day of Dance 28 March 2015

Tags

Day of Dance, Folk dancing, Halesworth, Halesworth Day of Dance, Morris dancing, Suffolk

Poster for the Day of Dance

The weekend before Easter Richard and I took Elinor in to Halesworth so that she could go to the hairdressers.  We had a couple of things to buy and had arranged with Elinor that we would meet her back in the car park.  When we got to Halesworth we discovered that a Day of Dance was taking place in the town.

Oxblood Molly, a Molly dancing team were hosting their first Day of Dance in Halesworth and had invited a number of other dance teams to come along and take part.  Richard and I were delighted, as we love to watch Morris, Molly and Sword Dancing.  Elinor isn’t so keen and we got a couple of messages from her telling us about the difficulty she had in getting into the hairdresser’s salon past a large group of dancers, musicians and also a man wearing a horse’s head ( the Hobby Horse).

This is the Oxblood Molly side (or team) dancing in Halesworth Thoroughfare. All the dances were performed outside the pubs in the town.  The pub here is just out of shot on the right – The White Hart.

Molly Dancing originated in Cambridgeshire and is traditionally danced on Plough Monday, the first Monday after Epiphany when the agricultural workers went back to work after Christmas.  A decorated plough was dragged through the streets and the farm workers accompanied it with blackened faces asking for pennies to help the poor plough boys.  They disguised themselves so that their employers wouldn’t recognise them.  During harsh winters the farm-workers were often close to starvation.  The dance team went with the farm-workers; one of the dancers (all male) would be dressed as a woman, hence ‘Molly’.

This is Molly.

 

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Here is a selection of photographs of Oxblood Molly.

Danegeld Morris dancing in the yard of the White Swan pub.

There are six main styles of Morris Dance – Cotswold Morris, North West Morris, Border Morris, Longsword Dancing, Rapper and Molly Dancing.  There is another less well-known style called Ploughstots (or Vessel Cupping, or Plew-ladding!) from the East and North Ridings of Yorkshire.

Danegeld Morris dance in the North West style and wear clogs on their feet.  This style was developed during the 19th and 20th centuries and came from the mill towns that had sprung up during the Industrial Revolution.

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This side is called Pedant’s Revolt and they dance in the Border Morris style.  This is also the White Swan pub yard.  Richard filmed a few of the teams on his phone.  He only filmed short excerpts of three dances.  The video below is of Pedant’s Revolt.

Here they are again outside The White Hart.

I like the pheasant’s feathers they wear in their hats

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This is Chelmsford Morris Ladies, another North West Morris group dancing in the White Swan pub yard.  Below is another video.

Kenninghall Morris side – a Border Morris dance team relaxing after having performed outside the Swan.

They traditionally blacken their faces, though some of them had whitened their faces instead!  A couple of the Oxblood Molly side are with them here.

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This side is Bows ‘n’ Belles and they are dancing outside the White Hart.  They are another North West Morris team and their video is below.

We weren’t able to see all the groups dancing that day as we had promised to visit my mother that afternoon.  It has made us want to go to more events like this!

Thanks for visiting!

 

A Wet Weekend

Tags

azure damselfly, chaffinch, flour, guinea fowl, Pakenham Water Mill, scarlet pimpernel, Suffolk, sunset, topiary, watercress, Waveney District Council Parks and Open Spaces, white campion

This weekend marked the start of my break from driving every day to Norwich.  Hooray!!  Elinor finished her exams on Friday and we are so pleased with her and, I suspect, she is very pleased with herself.

I thought this might be a good opportunity to show you a beautiful traffic island on a roundabout on the outskirts of Halesworth. The Parks Department have been creating wonderful floral displays all over the district. This island looks like a cottage garden.

The previous weekend was very pleasant as Alice came to visit for a few days.  We went to see Elinor’s college artwork on display at a gallery in Norwich on Friday 5th June and then had a very enjoyable Italian meal before returning home.  The day had started with thunderstorms and heavy rain but the sun came out in the afternoon and we then had some gorgeous warm weather for the rest of the day.  We haven’t had much warm weather and it didn’t last.

A beautiful sunset I saw a few days ago.

We went out for another meal that Sunday for lunch to celebrate Alice gaining her PhD.  My mother came with us too – I had taken her to church that morning and we all met at the Fox and Goose restaurant in Fressingfield.  We returned home and were relaxing with some tea and coffee when my brother arrived.  He had gone over to Mum’s house expecting her to be there as he wanted to try out his new lawn-mower on her grass.  He did a little mowing and then came over to our house hoping she was with us.  She wished she had been there while he mowed, as he cut down her cowslips and bluebells that she had been carefully mowing around while they set seed and died down.  She can’t say anything to him about it as he had been so kind but she has spoken a lot on the subject to me.  If bluebell leaves are cut before they die down the bulb isn’t fed and the plant may not survive.  She quoted a part of ‘A Shropshire Lad’ to me and said she also may not have many more bluebell springs and it would be sad if hers had gone for ever.  (I will have to replace her plants if they don’t grow next year!).  My brother has recently moved into his new home in Saxmundham, not far from us.  He seems to be settling in very well.  He got a job transfer from Surrey where he used to live to Suffolk and is getting on splendidly here.  He teaches in open prisons and has already been able to put some of the men in for exams which they have passed.  It has been very nice for me to see Andrew more regularly.  There is only a year and 9 days difference in our ages and we were very close when we were young.  He left home at 17 to become a police cadet and then married at 21.  We then didn’t seem to have much in common any more and only saw each other about once a year.

A male Azure Damselfly (Coenagrion puella) I saw in my garden yesterday.

The past week was very busy with Elinor’s exams, two shopping trips for Mum and a visit to the eye clinic at Norfolk and Norwich hospital with her for a check-up and of course, my usual chores.

A Scarlet Pimpernel flower (Anagallis arvensis ssp. arvensis) in my garden yesterday.

Richard has been taking Fridays off recently, cutting his working week down to four days in preparation for his retirement at the end of August.  He came with Elinor and me when I took her in for her final exam on Friday morning and while she was in college we did a little shopping.  It was a lovely bright day and not too cold for a change.  When Elinor met us we took her to buy some converse trainers she wanted and then went to a coffee shop for a drink and a sandwich.  The afternoon was dry so I managed to get some gardening done at home.

Pakenham Water Mill with Richard walking up the lane.

Saturday was mainly rainy and cool.  Richard and I decided to go out and buy some more good flour from Pakenham Water Mill.  We have had two tours of the mill already and it was much too wet to walk in the gardens, so we settled for a cup of tea/coffee and some cake in the tea room.  The lady who runs the tea shop wasn’t expecting many people to turn up because of the foul weather, so hadn’t made any of her wonderful scones.   There were plenty of other cakes to chose from and the tea and coffee is good there.  We bought two 5kg bags of flour from the shop and took them to the car.  Before returning home we had a look at the outside of the mill and at the river on the opposite side of the lane.

A wider view of the mill showing the millers house where the tea shop is situated.

This is the river on the opposite side of the lane to the mill. You see the water that has just been through the mill powering the wheel, flowing into the river.

I think this may be Watercress (Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum). I haven’t been this close to Watercress that’s still growing before so I may be mistaken. I used to see it quite often when we lived in Somerset but I couldn’t get this close to it. This is wild Watercress and not cultivated.

This is a close-up of the flowers.

We saw this monstrous beauty in the field on the other side of the river.

Topiary crocodiles. We discovered that a business specialising in topiary had created all sorts of creatures and put them along the river bank.

More topiary.

And more. This is the Pied Piper of Hamelin .

A wet Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) singing from the top of an electricity pole.

A pair of Guinea Fowl walking quickly through the field.

A wet White Campion (Silene latifolia) next to the gate.

These were the things we saw before we went back home.

Sunday morning was a very gloomy and chilly one.  We went to Morning Prayer at St James’ church.  We had rain at midday but the afternoon gradually became dryer until at last, the sun came out at tea time.

This is an un-tarmacked lane that goes past St James church.

Thank-you for visiting!

A Visit to the Plantation Garden.

Tags

Gothic style, Henry Trevor, Norwich, ornamentation, Plantation Garden

View of the garden looking south.

At the end of September last year, Elinor and I visited the Plantation Garden in Norwich.  Elinor had missed a visit to the garden with her Art class because she hadn’t been well, so we decided we’d go there and have a look for ourselves.  It is a Grade II English Heritage registered garden nearly 3 acres in size.

View of the garden from the top of the terrace looking north.

For many years the place where the garden is was an industrial site.  Hundreds of years ago, tunnels were dug into the side of the hills to extract flints that were used to build the city.  (One of these tunnels was accidentally discovered by a bus when it fell down it in 1984!).  The chalk surrounding the flint was gradually dug out to make lime for mortar and agricultural purposes.  Eventually a deep quarry was formed.

Looking North towards the Rustic Bridge.

In 1855 the Trustees of the Preachers’ Charity who have owned the land since 1613, decided to convert its use from industrial to residential.  The man who had been running his business as a builder/bricklayer/lime burner at the quarry site was (I presume) asked to move out and Henry Trevor moved in.  Trevor was a prosperous upholsterer and cabinet maker who was also an enthusiastic gardener.  When he took out the lease for the site he said he was eager to build a fine house and garden in ‘this deep dell’.

This shows some of the decoration on the walls.

Trevor bought the decorative materials for the hard structure of his garden from Gunton Brothers, a brickworks at Costessey (pronounced Cozzey) just to the west of Norwich, who made ornamental windows, chimneys and patterned bricks and sent them all over the country.  Henry Trevor used these bricks (and other Gunton materials) most imaginatively along with material he found on the site and material acquired elsewhere such as natural and knapped flints, plain bricks, carrstone and clinker from local gas works and kilns.  The Gothic Revival style was very popular at the time (1857) and this ‘medieval’ style was Trevor’s favourite.

Top of the terrace at the southern end of the garden.

Trevor decided on the ‘Italianate’ style for the steep southern wall of the quarry.  He constructed flights of steps, balustrades and pedestals with urns on them.  He included a little rusticity and built a summerhouse on the top terrace to balance the rustic bridge at the north end of the garden.

The rustic summerhouse.

His tour de force is the Gothic fountain in the centre of the garden.

Gothic fountain.  The white moulded brick Trevor used weathers to look like stone.

Rock works were also fashionable at the time so Trevor included a 30-metre-long one in his garden.  He planned to plant the steep sides of the quarry with trees and with evergreen shrubs as an understorey.  To do this he must have created planting holes and brought in soil to fill them.  The planting is now over-mature and many of the original trees have died, but there are still some of the original 19th century plants and trees in the garden.

The Plantation Garden Preservation Trust is trying to raise funds to restore the many paths and steps all over the plot which enabled all Trevor’s guests and friends to view his garden from different levels.  He loved nothing better than having visitors and regularly opened the garden to the public.

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The garden is being restored very carefully and the planting schemes are lovely and in keeping with the history of the site.  I haven’t included many of the plants I saw there as I have concentrated on the original architecture in this post.  It is a very strange place and some of the ornamentation is a little over-fussy for my taste but it is also a beautiful garden and so peaceful and remote from the city though sited in its heart.

I obtained most of the details included in this post from information boards placed round the garden.  I am very grateful to the PGPT for supplying this information.

I have included a link here.

Thank-you for visiting!