Tags
Acorn, ash keys, Astrantia, autumn, Bantam Cock, beach, chickens, Chrysanthemum, conker, dogwood, Dunwich Heath, dwarf gorse, eating apples, Elderberries, fungi, gardening, GERANIUM, Grove snail, Hibiscus, Jake Thackray, Knopper gall, leaf colour, Linstead Magna, Linstead Parva, liverwort, Michaelmas Daisy, moorhen, Pyracantha, rough sea, Salvia, silver birch, Suffolk, sunset, Tansy, viola
We visited yet another of our local beaches on a very windy, cool afternoon recently. We only stayed on the beach for a short while because the wind was so biting; Elinor and I both got earache.
My ID guide suggests that the Grove Snail “is used to demonstrate the survival of the fittest in evolution, because Thrushes eat the snails which are least well camouflaged against their environment.”

The Heather (Calluna vulgaris) was past its best but the Dwarf Gorse (Ulex minor) was looking wonderful
In a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the bright yellow of the Perennial Sow-thistle was not common at this time of year. I will have to eat my words because most of the flowers I have seen since then have been yellow!

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) seen on the roadside between Linstead Magna and the village of Linstead Parva *(see below)

The Tansy has very aromatic leaves and the little button flowerheads are made up of disc florets only.

The genus name ‘Tanecetum’ and the name Tansy are both derived from the Greek word for immortality. The plant was believed to give eternal life to the drinker of an infusion made from it.
Tansy used to be used as a flavouring in food until fairly recently. Egg dishes especially, were enhanced by the use of finely chopped tansy leaves. Tansy was also used as an alternative to expensive imported spices such as nutmeg and cinnamon and Tansy Cake at Easter was very popular. Because of the strength of its scent, Tansy was also used as a repellent, keeping mice from corn and flies from meat.
Close to where I photographed the Tansy I found this hedge of Dogwood. It was covered in large black berries – the largest I have ever seen on a Dogwood – and most of the leaves had turned a beautiful red. Dogwood leaves are usually a much darker, duller maroon in Autumn.

What also surprised me about these Dogwood bushes was seeing flowers in bloom at the same time as the berries and the red leaves.
It isn’t easy to see them in this photo so I cropped it.

One of the flower-heads is in the centre of this picture. The couple of weeks of warm and sunny weather we have had recently had fooled the bush into thinking it was spring again.
Richard and I have been working in the garden, getting it ready for winter. I only seem able to get out there a couple of days a week but I have managed to get quite a lot done. One of my jobs has been tidying behind the garden shed and round the back of the greenhouse. Behind the shed was rank with weeds, mainly stinging nettles, which I was able to pull out fairly easily as the soil is quite damp there. I had stored lots of pots and tubs full of spring bulbs behind the greenhouse so these have come back out to be smartened up and got ready for next spring. I discovered other flowerpots that should have been emptied and cleaned ages ago.

This pot was covered with liverwort Marchantia polymorpha. It has little green cups on the leaf-like structures (thallus). Do you see the baby snail?

We have a lot of fungus all over the grass in our garden. Nothing exciting or colourful, just brown and cream-coloured toadstools. These had been nibbled by something.
Two other unidentified types of fungi.

I have had this Hibiscus for about 26 years. It was a gift from my ex-mother-in-law who brought this with her when she came to see us when Alice was a tiny girl.
I love these double flowers – the peach petals have dark crimson bases.
Three different Michaelmas Daisies

We not only had a lot of aphid damage to our apple trees in the spring and early summer but the apples on this tree are now being eaten by Moorhens! It is odd seeing water birds wobbling about in the trees gulping down our apples as fast as they can.
We are getting a little tired of next-door’s free-range chickens in our garden all day. They kick about in the flower beds and damage seedlings; they peck off flowers and generally make a mess of the paths, beds and compost heaps in the garden. We have spoken to our neighbours about it a few times but they don’t appear to have any intention of keeping their chickens on their own land. They have a constant supply of chicks too.
Linstead Magna (large/greater Linstead) is now a small collection of houses and farm buildings. The church no longer exists but I spoke to someone some years ago who remembered the church and used to attend it. For more information about this church see here.
Linstead Parva (small/lesser Linstead) is a pleasant little village with a pretty church. In spring the churchyard is covered in snowdrops and other spring flowers.
Thanks for visiting!
Sounds like your garden keeps you very busy in the Fall. Your neighbours seem to take ‘free range’ very literally for their chickens – not very fair on you!
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Thank-you! No it isn’t very fair but we have to keep in with the neighbours and put up with it..for now!
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The flowers are so very beautiful, it’s too bad that winter comes along every year to put an end to them. It’s also a shame that your neighbors chickens have made their home in your garden, I would think that a free chicken dinner from time to time would about repay you for the damage that the chickens do. 😉
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Thanks Jerry! Richard has considered catching one for the pot but they are tough old birds and I don’t think there’d be much meat on them 😉
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I found the Hibiscus very attractive in an old-fashioned way.
It seems to me you have an opportunity to prepare moorhen and/or free-range chicken dinners
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Thanks very much, Mark! My husband has been considering the possibilities of free-range chicken dinners but I think they’d be a bit tough. Those hens walk for miles each day!
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A post with lots of goodies!! The sea makes me so happy ( as I am so far away from it) lovely photos of all those flowers and fungi. Love the chrysanthemum! Hmm, now what to do with unwanted visits of neighbors…we had one with goats that kept coming into the yard until Mr. Walker threatened to organize a BBQ party ;0) ( he would never do that ..) But maybe some thorny bushes were they come into the garden? xo Johanna
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Thank-you Johanna! We have a thorny hedge all round the garden already and deep ditches full of water and sludgy mud at the bottom but they struggle through! Our driveway doesn’t have a gate at the moment so they get in there as well. One of the hens was run over a few days ago because they let them go on the road too!
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that is hard…seems the hens do not have enough food in their own yard otherwise they would not take such risks…they know life is better at your place!
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I think you’re right! 🙂
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What a lovely post, Clare. You’re flowers are so beautiful! And yes, I saw the baby snail…so cute!
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Thank-you Jill! It *was* a cute snail!
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Too bad about the earaches. I’ve never been to the ocean on a truly cold day but some summer days have seemed on the cool side. And there does always seem to be a wind.
You got a nice shot of the Marchantia polymorpha liverwort. There are some liverworts that love to grow in flower pots but I don’t know if that is one of them or not. I wish I could find liverworts without leaving home!
Pruning pyracantha is a job I don’t miss doing. Firethorn is a good name for it. I don’t think I’ve ever met another plant so thorny.
That’s another nice sunset. It almost looks like it has palm trees in it on the lower right.
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Thank-you Allen. There are advantages to not being a very tidy gardener here and one of them is the large amount of liverwort that grows in untended flowerpots! I was disappointed not to find any with those little umbrella-like structures on that produce the spores, I believe. I’ve had another look at the sunset and you are right about the ‘palm trees’! They aren’t, of course, but I can’t for the life of me think what the leaves are! I’ve been outside but can’t find them! I’m always glad when the Firethorn pruning is over. We have a good selection of pruners and long-handled loppers so I don’t have too many punctures. I always get a branch fall on my head at some stage of the proceedings.
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Maybe if you let the liverworts grow they’ll produce spores. Their spore bearing structures always remind me of tiny palm trees.
I must have palm trees on my mind.
I wonder if the palm trees in the sunset photo are sumacs. They remind me of palm trees too.
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I have seen the spore producing structures on liverworts in the garden a few times but sadly none were around when I looked the other day!
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Perhaps putting a little fence enclosure up and herding the chickens into it and demanding a ransom for freeing them would do the trick. Do you get any eggs out this rude incursion?
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What a good idea! No eggs I’m afraid. I don’t think they get many eggs next-door either, just an ever increasing number of chickens.
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Thank you for this lovely photo collection, Clare, Many of the plants are ones I do not see here – the elderberry, acorn etc. I was very interested to read about the uses of Tansy and also the origins of the word. Now I am keen to see if I can find any products in the health food shop that have Tansy in them…I could do with a dose of immortality… 😉 I rarely see liverworts here. Along with fungi, mosses and lichen, I think they are fascinating subjects of study.
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Thank-you Jane. As Tansy also contains Thujone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thujone I am wondering how many people died attempting immortality!
I have only recently started noticing the mosses and liverworts and my inspiration has been Allen from New Hampshire Garden Solutions
https://nhgardensolutions.wordpress.com/2015/10/10/fall-colors-in-new-hampshire/ He has been fascinated by them for some time along with fungi and plants. He is a mine of information.
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I would get tired of someone elses free range chickens too – only here the foxes would have them within the hour. If only I could lend you an urban fox.
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We do have foxes around here but they are very shy – not like urban ones. They also have quite a variety of things to eat. Lots of rabbits, pheasants, partridges as well as chickens.
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I thought they would be shy – not a totally bad thing but having unwanted chickens in your garden is no fun. The urban foxes seem to quite like guinea pigs and rabbits.
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I remember being woken in the night when I was about twelve years old by the sound of all of our guinea pigs being caught and killed by a fox. Horrible! I’ve never kept rabbits or guinea pigs since then.
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We used to have guinea pigs and that is also how they met their end. It is horrible. We never got any more either.
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Too heart-breaking!
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I didn’t see that snail at first myself! Love the Rooster video and song. Well done! Thank you for that!
Birds are in our apples too. It’s been a rough year for wildlife here.
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Thank-you Lavinia! I’m glad you liked Jake Thakery’s song. He was very popular in the 60’s and early 70’s. I remember listening to him on the radio with my parents when I was young. I hope you get better weather now that summer’s gone. I see that they are predicting a strong El Nino. Will that affect you?
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Yes, it will affect us. The winter is forecast to be warmer and drier than normal, which will not bode well for next year’s dry season.
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Oh dear! This isn’t good news at all!
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I love the ocean, its wonderfully relaxing, a bit like your blog as well. Maybe you can introduce your next door neighbour’s chickens to the sea hehe.
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Thanks Ste! Hehe!
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So good to see your various flowers in bloom. It’s a peculiar time of year, where the cold and wind can be bad enough to give one an earache, yet warm enough to get new flowers on the dogwood. I particularly like your 26 year old hibiscus and “the three ages of Astrantia”. Great to catch those three stages in one photo. I hope Richard is doing well, and I send the same wish for you and the girls.
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Thank-you so much Cynthia! We have lost our warm weather now and this week has been mainly rainy with very cold north-easterly winds. Thank-you for your kind wishes – Richard is fine and trying to get used to being retired. Elinor is not sleeping well but managing to get to college and is doing well there. Alice has had all the corrections to her PhD accepted and it can now be published. So all is well xx
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Ah. That all sounds so good, Clare. Life goes on. Sending you and your loved ones a big hug and wishes for more such times. Glad that Elinor is doing well in college, that Alice is about to be published and that Richard is ‘working’ at getting used to retirement.
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Thank-you dear Cynthia xx
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Lovely photos Clare. The beach is glorious but I totally understand about getting ear ache when the wind blows like that..It can really hurt! You have some wonderful plants to enjoy. The 26 year old Hibiscus is amazing! You must be a very good gardener to keep it going like that. Your pyracantha is also spectacular and that must be quite an endeavor to keep it trimmed. I couldn’t believe how your apples were disappearing – quite amazing. Always so interesting to read your posts. Well done!
Kate
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Thank-you Kate. The hibiscus stays indoors most of the time unless we have a really warm summer and then it stays in the greenhouse and might be put right outside for the day now and then. I prune and feed it and it gets repotted now and then but no special care.
The pyracantha is a beast but very satisfying to prune and keep under control.
We thought it was blackbirds that were responsible for the apple damage until I caught the moorhen in the tree and have seen it there a couple of times since.
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So sorry you got earaches from the wind on the beach. The photos are beautiful. I also enjoyed the garden photos, though for some reason several of them didn’t load the images. You always give such good commentary that I could almost imagine what they looked like.
Now that you mention it, mostly yellow flowers are left as the weather begins to cool. I never noticed that before. We have lots of mushrooms too, and a large one came up in our gravel driveway. I took a photo, but the cap was badly damaged and I decided not to post it.
Thanks so much for so loyally following my recent posts. It’s such fun to chat with you through comments.
Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.
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Thank-you Sheri – I enjoy your posts very much. I’m sorry my photos didn’t load; I can’t think why not. I’ve had a look at my post and all seems okay. I always reduce the size of all my shots so size shouldn’t be the reason.
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Perhaps it was just something with the server at that time. I’ll have to take another look when I get the chance.
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Thank-you Sheri.
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