A Few Things I’ve Seen in my Garden.

Tags

bird's nest, birds, Common Frog, cowslip, daffodils, ducks, fish, flowers, frogspawn, garden, Great Tit, ground-ivy, hazel, Hazel bud-gall, horse chestnut, lichen, Mallard, marsh marigold, moss, pond, primrose, primula, spring, Suffolk, sweet violet, tadpoles, trees, Water Mint

Two very handsome Mallard drakes (Anas platyrhynchos).

Ground-ivy (Glechoma hederacea). Many of the newer leaves are purple and the plant has a slightly unpleasant minty scent.

As I have mentioned before, when we moved to this house there were no Primroses (Primula vulgaris) in the garden at all. We now have a few plants here and there on the banks of our ditches.

The Cowslips (Primula veris) are beginning to bloom. We have always had plenty of these!

A primula hybrid that arrived unbidden about three years ago. I rather like it.

The house next door to us is the former village school.  I am not sure when it closed but a friend of ours from church used to attend it during the 1940’s.  Where our house and garden is now, there was a meadow full of wild flowers and our friend walked across it every day to collect the milk for the school from the farm next door.  These wild flowers we have in our garden are all that’s left of the hundreds that used to be here up to about 50 or 60 years ago.  I hope that we can hang on to these few and perhaps, by not using chemicals, encourage them to spread.

Sweet Violet (Viola odorata)

This is our parcels and newspaper box at the end of our drive. We noticed during the winter that it was starting to rot and needed replacing. It appears that we weren’t the only ones to notice the state the box was in. I opened it the other day to find something had made a hole in the back of it ( you can see where the light is shining through just below my thumb as I lift the lid). The next day I found this straw and moss had been put in there. Richard saw a Great Tit (Parus major) flying away from the box so I suspect this is a Great Tit’s nest. I carefully peeped into it a day or so later and found the whole box stuffed full of moss and we can also see lots of straw sticking out from where the box sides are coming away from the base. We have tied up the box and put a ‘not in use’ sign on it and we now await the happy arrival of baby Great Tits.

I knew that Tits nested in holes and I also was aware that Willow Tits excavated their own holes but I hadn’t realised that Great Tits also excavated holes to nest in.

The top of the brick gate-post at the end of our drive is covered in moss and lichen but because we haven’t had much rain recently, it isn’t looking as good as usual. Birds have been collecting the moss for their nests too.

This is a close-up of one of the lichens.

The Marsh-marigold or King Cup (Caltha palustris) is flowering in the pond.

I love its shiny yellow petals.

I took this photo of the daffodils round the pond over a week ago and I am glad I did. On Tuesday and Wednesday of last week we had very warm weather (24 degrees C on Wednesday!) and the daffodils that had come out earliest began to wilt.

Earlier this year I posted pictures of these Hazel (Corylus avellana) bud galls. I went to look at them again last week and noticed tiny flies sitting on all of the galls. I wonder if these flies had hatched out of the galls.

New Hazel leaves

Water Mint (Mentha aquatica). The new shoots are growing round and in the big pond.

Horse-chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). This photo was taken about a week ago.

This photo of our Horse-chestnut tree was taken on the same day. These leaves are higher and get more sunlight. I was pleased to see that the flower panicles (candles) were growing nicely.

I saw the frogs spawning but unfortunately didn’t have my camera with me. I took this photo of the spawn later in the day. This is the first time I have found frogspawn in our pond and was surprised at how late in the year it was. We have a windswept, exposed garden which may account for it.

There were lots of eggs and I was glad that the fish that live in the pond hadn’t come out of hibernation yet.

I took this picture a week later as the tadpoles were hatching out. The fish still hadn’t woken up!

Two days after this the tadpoles had dispersed but I had also seen the fish swimming in the pond and leaping to catch flies.  They were probably feasting on tadpoles too.

I found a dead fish on the path round the pond again – I found one last year that had been caught by the Heron who had been disturbed by one of us.  I don’t know what had caught this year’s fish as there was no stab mark on it.  It is interesting to see the workings of the food-chain.  We are part of it as we get bitten by the flies that the fish eat!

Thank-you for visiting!

Peak District Holiday 1st to 9th July. Day 4 Part 1.

Tags

Bakewell, Bakewell Bridge, Bakewell Pudding, Bakewell Pudding Shop, Black-headed Seagull, Canada Goose, Coot, Mallard, moorhen, Peak District National Park, River Wye, Trout, Tufted Duck

After our long walk the day before we decided to do a little gentle sight-seeing on our fourth day, revisiting a couple of favourite places and then going on to somewhere new.  Our first port of call was the town of Bakewell in Derbyshire which is very attractive but always very crowded.  We surprised ourselves by finding somewhere to park quite quickly and walked to the Bakewell Pudding Shop.

The Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop

Bakewell is the only market town in the whole of the Peak District National Park.  As with many places in the Peak District, mineral springs are found there and it nearly became a spa town.  The name ‘Bakewell’ comes from ‘Badeca’s Well’ and is nothing to do with baking.  A Bath House was built by the Duke of Rutland in 1697 and it still has the 16′ x 33′ bath in the cellar.  The reason it wasn’t a success as a spa was the temperature of the water which is only 11 degrees Centigrade/52 degrees Fahrenheit – a little chilly!  This is less than half the temperature of the Buxton waters.

R and I wanted to buy a pudding as we love them and hadn’t had one for a couple of years.  We also purchased some bread and a teacloth with the recipe of the pudding printed on it and then went through to their coffee shop and had a pleasant drink while sitting in a sheltered courtyard.

Rather an unprepossessing looking pudding but really very tasty.  It can be eaten hot or cold and with or without cream or custard.  It is made with puff pastry, then a layer of jam (usually raspberry) and then covered with a mixture made of ground almonds, sugar, butter, eggs and almond essence.  This is then baked until the mixture sets.  This confection was made by mistake.  During the 19th century a cook at the Rutland Arms was baking a jam tart but somehow misunderstood the recipe and the result was this pudding.  It was an instant success, though I don’t know how anyone let alone a cook can make a mistake when making a jam tart!

We then walked a little through the town and ended up at our favourite place – the riverside.  There is a wide promenade next to the River Wye and benches to sit on at intervals.  There is a very attractive bridge over the river which flows at a good pace.

Bakewell Bridge

The river is full of trout and has a couple of little weirs.  There are lots of water-birds to admire and also lots of Black-headed Seagulls too.

A beautiful speckled trout

Tufted Ducks

Canada Goose

Canada Goose

Coot and Moorhen with chicks

I was fascinated by the behaviour of both the moorhen and the coot.  These birds are not often seen together although very closely related.  I find their chicks indistinguishable and am not sure if these chicks belonged to the coot or moorhen.  Coots have a pure white forehead and bill and are usually found on open water like lakes and moorhens with red bills that have a yellow tip are found on streams and ponds.  Both birds obviously felt threatened by each other and though it isn’t clear in the photo above the coot had lowered its head and had fluffed up all its feathers until it looked enormous.  It was moving very slowly too.

A Coot nest

Mallards, Tufted Duck and a Black-headed Seagull which decided it wanted to be photographed too

After sitting by the river for a while, R and I decided we would go on to Haddon Hall which is just a few miles from Bakewell.  I will talk about that in my next post.

The Ugly-Bug Ball

Tags

Bees, Cuckoo-spit, Damselfly, fish, Froghopper, gardening, Green Hairstreak, Hornet, Hoverfly, Lily Beetle, Mimulus, moorhen, yellow iris

The first Yellow Iris is in flower.

The weather has been warm and sunny for the last four days so I have tried to make the most of it by being outside.  The tubs of spring bulbs needed tidying and getting ready for their long sleep until next year.  I bought some plants for my window boxes a couple of weeks ago and have now planted them up and fixed them under the kitchen and utility room windows at the front of the house. 

I have put this mimulus in both window boxes

  I also had a few plants that had to be planted out and a few that needed repotting.  I have got other pots of plants that have yet to flower and some more that I’m not sure what to do with, so I’ll feed them all and give them a sort out during the next few days.  I have many more pots of perennials than I would like but until I make a new flower bed or re-instate the one I abandoned after Dad died and all sorts of things went wrong, they’ll have to stay where they are.  I have enjoyed myself very much indeed and wish I could spend all day every day gardening. 

With the warm weather all sorts of  insects good and not so good have arrived.  I have killed five red Lily Beetles so far – such beautiful insects but so destructive.  They and their nasty grubs can destroy a lily plant in a couple of days and not only lilies but fritillaries too.  If they think they are under attack they drop down onto the soil under the plant, red side down and then bury themselves and can’t be found.  I creep up on them and put one hand under the leaf they are on to catch them if they jump and then squash them as quickly as possible.  They do sometimes bite but it’s the last thing they do!

I am hoping that the mild winter we had this year has meant that many more insects have survived.   I can put up with a few more troublesome insects if we have more butterflies and moths, ladybirds and hoverflies, lacewings, crickets and grasshoppers .  The bats flying round the house this evening certainly were catching lots of things to eat.  We have hornets here and they have become noticeable this week with their deep buzzing and their large yellow and brown bodies, flying ponderously about the garden.  They are different in their behaviour to wasps.  They aren’t very intelligent I think, and once in the house have no idea how to get out again.  Wasps are in your face all the time, spoiling for a fight but the hornet is more like a bee, not really interested in us and just wanting to get on with their own business.  I’m not saying they are harmless, far from it;  I wouldn’t mess with a hornet!  We had a hornet’s nest in our old shed a few years ago and as they had positioned it against the door we couldn’t get anything out of the shed until late autumn when they had all perished.  They are attracted to light and will fly towards it at night like moths.  It was so strange to see them crawling up the outside walls of the house trying to get to the outside lights or into bedroom windows.  We have had to learn to keep windows shut when we have the lights on at night.  I would like to get fly-screens fitted to the windows one day.

  Today, I saw the first Damselfly I’d seen this year.  Such a thin body, so fragile looking but so beautiful.  The male, a sliver of turquoise and the female a reddish-brown.  I tried to photograph the male but it came out blurred – I’ll try again tomorrow.

Froghopper larvae are exuding frothy ‘cuckoo-spit’ on all the plants in the garden.

Lots of different bees are flying about.  I noticed bees entering a crack between the mortar and one of our kitchen windows, there are lots of mining bee holes in the dryer flowerbeds and while I was in the conservatory watering R’s cacti today I became aware of a leafcutter bee with its orange underside carrying large pieces of leaf in through the door.  It has made a nest in the soil of one of R’s cacti and was rolling up the bits of leaf and taking them down the hole.

There are many different types of hoverfly about.

 

I noticed a little butterfly had got into the conservatory today so went to get a glass and a card as this is the best way of catching insects I know.  The butterfly was a Green Hairstreak and the first one I had ever seen.  The top of their wings is brown but the underside is a brilliant green.  The butterfly kept its wings shut so I could admire the glorious colour.  I tried to photograph it while it was in the glass but it didn’t work out well at all. 

  

On Friday morning while having a walk aound the garden I came across this on the path…

I couldn’t think how it could have come to be there.  I was also surprised to see such a big fish which had no doubt come from our pond.  Why hadn’t it been eaten?  What had caught it and left it there?  What type of fish is it?  Is it a bream?  It wasn’t until R and I were talking about it when he got home from work that we worked out how it had got there.  It has a stab wound low down on its body and R suggsted that a heron might have inflicted it.  I then remembered that when R had gone down to his vegetable plot near the big pond the night before he had disturbed a heron.

Today while walking round the pond I disturbed a moorhen and her three chicks.  The parent rushed off into the reeds as usual and left the three chicks to find their way back to her as best they could.  As I watched them, one of the chicks started to squeak and looked as though it had caught its foot in something in the water.  I thought this strange so got closer only to see the chick dragged under water and disappear.  What could have done this?  What have we got in the pond that eats baby moorhens?  I thought it might be a pike but R thinks it unlikely that a pike would live in a pond this size.  He thinks it might be a carp.  Has anyone any suggestions?

I took a few photographs of the perch (I think) in our pond today.

I’ll finish here tonight and do another post tomorrow when I’ll talk about the birds and flowers I’ve noticed this weekend.

 

 

 

A Walking Week Part One

Tags

Adrian Bell, bird-scarer cannon, Blue Tit, buttercup, comfrey, cow parsley, cows, cut-leaved crane's-bill, daisy, fairy ring, field maple, fish, Germander Speedwell, goosegrass, great yellow-cress, greater spotted woodpecker, Greater Stitchwort, greefinch, Hawthorn, Herb-Robert, Lords and Ladies, May, orange-tip butterfly, perch, pineapple weed, pond, red campion, ribwort, sheep, St Mark's fly, stinging nettle, wedding ring, wild rose

I have managed to do a little walking this week and have enjoyed it very much.  Monday and Tuesday’s walking was mainly round the shops so doesn’t count as enjoyable walking.  For some stupid reason I mistook the time of E’s hair appointment and we arrived in Halesworth an hour early on Monday.  E kindly said she was happy to wait for an hour at the hairdressers but I thought she might go mad with boredom so we did the supermarket shopping and then I got more petrol for the car.  She then went for her hair appointment and while she was there I called in at the jewellers to see if anything can be done to my wedding ring to stop it cutting into my finger.  Twenty years ago we hadn’t thought that my ring would wear away so quickly.  Apparently, we chose the wrong ring – a 9 carat D-profile ring – and should have had a round-profile ring and something of a better quality.  Well, too late now!  This is my wedding ring, bought for me by my husband and blessed at our Marriage Blessing Service.  We weren’t able to be married in church as we had both been married before, but we had a beautiful Blessing Service after our Registry Office wedding.  The jeweller said either we could buy a new ring or have my one built up which would cost the same as a new ring.  A dilemma which we are still thinking about.

Both Monday and Tuesday were mainly cloudy days and no good for drying washing outside so I decorated the inside of the house with wet clothes.  I had more shopping to do in Bungay so drove there on Tuesday afternoon and I made my purchases.  On the way home I got stuck in a traffic jam!  This is quite out of the ordinary, living where we live.  The vehicle in front of me was a supermarket delivery van and not much holds them up usually!  I couldn’t see what the problem was as these vans are quite wide, so I edged round a bit and saw….

  

The cows took their time to leave their field and amble down the road to the farmyard.  The stockman had a busy time trying to get the cows out of people’s gardens where there were lots of interesting plants and trees to eat.  I took the photos with my phone and then enlarged the pictures so the quality isn’t that good.

E asked if we could watch a DVD together during the evening which I thought would be nice but no-one thought to tell my eyes to watch too.  As soon as I sat down they became extremely heavy and so I dozed most of the way through the film to the disapproval of my daughter.  This is not the first time I have done this.

Wednesday is ‘shopping with mother’ day which went very well as Mum was on top form and we had a real laugh together.  The weather on Wednesday was lovely too – a hazy start and then lots of sunshine.  When I had had some lunch at home I decided to walk down the lane to take advantage of the bright weather and to see what was to be seen.

Lots of stinging nettles and goosegrass.  Goosegrass is a relative of coffee and quinine and has many medicinal uses.  At one time the seeds were roasted and used as a coffee substitute and apparently the young shoots are edible and can be cooked in soups as a vegetable.  All I know about it is that if I touch it, it brings me out in a rash!  The seeds are hooked and stick to hair and clothes – hence the plant’s other name of Cleavers.

Stinging Nettles are very useful, if painful plants too.  They can be used for making cloth, food and medicine.  My plant book says that the Roman belief that stinging nettles cured rheumatism still persists in Britain.  I can say that there is some truth in this as when I am stung on my hands my rheumatic joints there become less painful.  I can’t say I would care to roll about in them unclothed as some people recommend!

These are Hawthorn flowers – May blossom.  ‘Ne’er cast a clout til May be out’ – either don’t leave off your winter clothes until the end of the month of May, or, don’t leave off your winter clothes until the May blossom is on the trees.

This is the wild rose and already there are large flower buds as you can see.  This is early, as the rose usually flowers at the end of May and into June.

A fine crop of old equipment and other rubbish in this field.  At the beginning of Adrian Bell’s book ‘Corduroy’ he talks of the Suffolk farmers’ habit of leaving implements in corners of fields or yards covered in nettles until they are needed for some particular function.  They are then returned ‘to some out-of-the-way corner, to be a sleeping Gulliver for the grass again’.

These are the boys – male sheep, tups.  A bit stinky – sleeping and snoring in the sun.  Wandering about having something to eat now and then – not a care in the world.

 

Common comfrey.  In medieval times the roots of this plant were dug up in the spring and grated to produce a sludge which was packed round broken limbs.  It hardened to a consistency similar to that of Plaster of Paris.

A view over the fields.

Cut-leaved Crane’s-bill.

Great Yellow-cress.

The lane.

Herb-Robert.  In the Middle Ages they believed that a plant showed how it could be used through its colour or shape – the doctrine of signatures.  This plant turns a fiery red in autumn so they thought it should be used in the treatment of blood disorders.  It has a strange odour and in some places it is known as ‘Stinking Bob’.

Daisies.

Daisies and Germander Speedwell.

Greater Stitchwort.

A Buttercup.

Pineapple Weed.

A female orange-tip butterfly.  Note the lovely green-marbled underwing.

The signpost at the end of our lane.

A male orange-tip butterfly.  I have been trying for over a week to photograph these fast flying butterflies!

Lords and Ladies.  This is specially for Heather!  At last these strange plants are flowering here.  I have some in my garden but they are hidden by tall grass and difficult to photograph.

Cow and calves.

This is the pond at the side of the lane.  I’m not sure what the fish are – perhaps perch? – but we have the same fish in our big pond.

The pond next to the lane.

Field maple leaves and flowers.

A St Mark’s fly.  They usually appear about the same time of year as the Feast of St Mark – 25th April.

R and I went out for a walk across the fields when he returned home from his trip to Gloucestershire that evening.

Red Campion and cow-parsley growing at the end of our lane.

A Red Campion flower.

Ribwort flowers – Turkish Caps,

A ‘fairy ring’ caused by toadstools.

A bird-scarer cannon.

More stitchwort.

St Peter’s Washes.

I’ll end with some photos of birds seen in my garden during the past week.

A female Greater-Spotted Woodpecker.

A bluetit.

Male and female Greenfinches

Meanderings and More March Flowers

Tags

blackthorn, daffodils, fish, frogs, hyacinths, lesser periwinkle, Leycesteria, marsh marigold, miniature iris, nesting, oak, pond, primrose, primula, rooks, rose, spirea, tawny owl, Twilight, viola

I went outside in the twilight this evening to collect my two sunflower seed feeders and bring them indoors.  I’ll tell you why later.  It was very cold – approaching freezing I should think – but so beautiful.  The sky above, a deep blue with stars and a gibbous moon.  The western horizon a strange mixture of misty yellow, pink and grey – a typical cold, wintry sunset.  The strong NW breeze that had been blowing all day had dropped and everything was almost still and quiet, except for a few blackbirds singing and some pheasants calling across the fields.  The largest feeder is hanging from the silver birch tree near the big pond and as I walked down the garden towards it a tawny owl sitting in one of the trees at the end of the garden gave a couple of loud, quavering hoots.  I went to look at the pond.  It was shining and the surface was a little puckered by the light breeze.  It looked like pewter and reflected the trees nearby.  Every now and then a ‘plip’ sounded as a fish leapt and rings appeared on the surface –  frogs were croaking from the reeds at the far end.

Unfortunately, it was getting too cold to stand out there for much longer and I had the evening meal to prepare so reluctantly I returned to the house.

The rooks have definitely started nesting now.  They no longer fly off to their night-time communal roost towards Beccles but are staying with their nests in the rookery.  At nesting time they use a different call – almost a bleating sound – and as soon as I hear it I know that spring is here.  The reason I collect the sunflower seed feeders in at night is because of the rooks.  They descend on the feeders ‘en masse’, just at dawn and any seed left overnight disappears very quickly.  I have known them unhook the feeders and take the lid off to get at the seed more easily.  The smaller feeder is hanging from a pole stuck in the grass at the front of the house.  At this time of year dawn is still quite late, but by May and June with dawn at 3.30am it is not pleasant to be awoken by twenty or more squabbling rooks just outside the open bedroom window.  Until I decided to bring the feeders in I was having to get out of bed and shoo them away every few minutes.  They soon realised that the noise they were making attracted my attention so they started eating in (almost) silence.  Their rookishness always eventually got the better of them and some little ‘whispered discussion’ invariably got out of hand and there I was at the window again.  I am a very light sleeper and I began to wake up at the slightest noise outside so something had to be done.

This morning started very overcast and cold but by 10am the clouds were breaking up and the sun coming out.  I had some shopping to do so drove to Bungay.  Bungay is a little difficult to get around at the moment as it is having lots of new pavements put in and the centre of the town is shut off to traffic.  My ankle has been painful recently and I found walking through town difficult.  Added to this, I was called ‘dear’ twice within about five minutes and I really object to being called ‘dear’ by strangers.  I got home again at 11.30 and put the radio on while I had a cup of tea.  Lisa Stansfield was choosing her favourite records tracks I mean (showing my age there!) and one of the ones she chose today was by Sylvester.  Listening to this took me back to my youth.  My friend W will remember that I used to go out with her brother who had a mobile disco which he ran with a friend.  I used to go with them to gigs and help them set up and get the dancing going if it was a bit slow.  I could dance for hours without tiring!  (This also reminds me of a really good spoonerism I came out with at the time, when telling a friend what I did.  I intended saying that I was ‘a roadie and a groupie’ but what I actually said was ‘a rudie and a gropie’).  I thought a lot about this while drinking my tea.  It didn’t seem that long ago when I was dancing all night with no aches and pains and now, here I was hobbling through town carrying my shopping bag and being called ‘dear’!  What would be next, I wondered?  Mowing passers-by down with a mobility scooter?  Elbowing my way through shoppers to the freezer cabinet in the supermarket and running over their toes with my shopping trolley while they tut-tut and raise their eyebrows to each other over my head?  Hmmmm….

To cheer myself up I went out into the garden and took a few photos.

We have a blackthorn tree at the back of the house.  It is now in full blossom.  The blackthorn at the front of the house is still covered with small tight buds.  The temperature at the front of the house is very much lower than at the back and there is often about a weeks difference in flowering times.

Blackthorn tree

Blackthorn blossom

Blackthorn blossom

Blackthorn

Bumblebee on blackthorn

 

 

 

 

 

This oak tree was given me by my father a year after we moved into this house.  He had dug it up from his garden and at the time it was only about nine inches tall.  I call it Dad’s oak tree.  He died nearly four years ago.  A wood pigeon nested in the tree last summer and the shallow nest is still there.

 

I think this is a marsh marigold.  Please correct me someone if I’m wrong.  I found it today at the top of a shady ditch near the big pond.

 

This is of of my newest miniature iris ‘Natascha’.  I only planted the bulbs last autumn.

 

Early daffodils with pretty hanging heads

Early pale daffodils

 

 

Perhaps these photos of my Delft Blue hyacinths show up their lovely colours better.

Delft Blue hyacinths

Delft Blue hyacinth

 

 

 

New leaves on the Leycesteria or Pheasant Berry

 

A self seeded primula in the grass

 

A yellow viola

 

Lesser periwinkle

 

New leaves on R’s spirea

 

Deer damaged daylilies

 

New leaves on one of R’s roses

 

Primroses