Tags
autumn, berries, buzzard, common lizard, crane fly, family, flowers, Fruit, fruit trees, fungus, garden flowers, greater celandine, wasp nest, wild flowers
Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)
We have had some very cool nights already and lots of rain. Autumn has arrived! The nights are drawing in and when I get up just after six o’clock in the morning on Mondays and Fridays I have to wait for well over half an hour before the sun rises.
I have no news to give you about Alice – I haven’t spoken to her for about a fortnight so I assume she is busy and coping alright.
To our surprise, the day after I mentioned in this blog that it would take weeks for probate to be granted, it was granted! Richard has spent two days in Manchester with his brother sorting out all their mother’s finances. They also went to a place that Joyce was fond of and scattered her ashes. Richard was hoping to spend three days with Chris and wanted to travel up in his new car but unfortunately his windscreen was hit by a stone chipping last week which left a four inch crack and it needs replacing! The insurance company is sending someone to our house to carry out the replacement today (which is when Richard had hoped to return home). He came home yesterday instead (Thursday). He will have to go back to Manchester in a couple of weeks to finish going through all Joyce’s belongings and deciding what to do with them – a very difficult business.
Elinor has almost completed two weeks at college, is working hard and her tutors are very pleased with her. She is enjoying the course but finds the social side of college life very tricky. She is very insecure and worries all the time that she is saying or doing the wrong thing. She has also been badly affected by her grandmother’s death and funeral. She is afraid of going to sleep in case she doesn’t wake up again and she is frightened of being left alone both now and in the future.
I have been busy in the house and with my mother; Richard has had a lot to do in the garden and has also been arranging our finances now that he has retired. We have had no time for a walk recently and in fact have done very few walks together during the whole year. We hope that in the next week or so things will have calmed down and we will be able to find time to go out together.
The photographs in this post were mainly done during one afternoon this week.
This is the entrance to one of the three wasp nests we have in our garden. They took over an old mouse or vole hole.
Crane fly (Tipula paludosa)
Buzzard (Buteo buteo)
Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus)
I saw this plant just inside the stone wall that surrounds St Mary’s church in Bungay.
Greater Celandine
This plant is no relation to the Lesser Celandine we see in the springtime. It is a type of poppy, similar to the Yellow Horned-poppy I found on Dunwich beach a few weeks ago. Its orange-coloured sap has been used in Asia for burning away warts and corns since the beginning of Chinese civilisation. This caustic liquid was also used to remove soreness and cloudiness from the eyes! It uses an oil gland on its seeds to ensure they are taken a distance away. Ants feed on the oil and then carry the seed off.
Juvenile Common Lizard
For the second week running, I discovered something hiding under our wheelie-bin. Obviously, rubbish bins are the go-to shelter for small creatures.
Elinor and I admired these clouds as we neared home the other day.
We turned to our left and saw these!
The following song is dedicated to Elinor.
Thanks for visiting!
