Spring Odds and Ends – April

Tags

amelanchier, blackthorn, bullace, cuckooflower, Damson, garden, garden plants, ground-ivy, horse chestnut, Lady's Smock, lesser celandine, lichen, Mallard, marsh marigold, mining bees, montana clematis, pasque flower, Pear, pond, Suffolk, trees, wild cherry, wild flowers

Blackthorn ( Prunus spinosa) in flower

This was the view from our front door on the 1st of April.  The rather untidy Blackthorn trees growing on the verge on the other side of our hedge looked like they were snow-covered; the blossom was so plentiful.

A mining bee nest-tunnel

Just over a week after I took the photo of the Blackthorn I was finding bee nests all over the garden.  Some were plain ones like the photo above….

Mining bee Nest -burrows

…and these ones.

Mining bee nest-burrow

But this one (the burrow is in the shadow of one of the seed-pods) has been decorated with twigs, bits of wood, stone and seed-pods! I wonder if this is just by chance or if not, were these to make it easier to find or, is the bee just more of an individual, more artistic than most other bees?  I have found other nest-burrows seemingly marked with twigs and stones.

Wild Cherry ( Prunus avium)

This is one of our wild cherry trees just coming into blossom in the middle of April.  The house on the left of the photo is that of our next-door neighbours and this long thin strip of land, in-between their garden and our leylandii hedge on the right, belongs to us and is where the former owners of our house used to park their combine harvester, so we are told.  We have planted a few trees on this strip of land; you can see a couple of hollies and another cherry has decided to grow here too.

Wild cherry blossom from one of our other cherry trees.

The first Pasque Flower

The same plant a week or so later

The flowerbed on the south side of the house. As you can see, it is very stony.

Amelanchier in flower

Marsh Marigold or King-cup ( Caltha palustris) next to the pond

The same plant a week later

I have posted photos of this lichen-covered tree-trunk before

A closer look at the different lichens

Abandoned goose nest on the island

For the first time since we have lived here we had no nesting geese on the island on our pond.  They built a nest and I am sure they began laying an egg each day prior to incubation but something happened and the nest was abandoned.  The water level in the pond was very low and it would have been easy for a fox to cross the water and get to the nest.  There has always been danger from mink and otters but up til now the geese have coped with them.  A fox is different and much bigger.  This is only a guess – there may have been other reasons; I don’t know.

Cuckooflower/Lady’s Smock (Cardamine pratensis ) next to the pond

New Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum ) leaves and flower buds

We have a couple of spindly Damson or Bullace (Prunus domestica ssp. insititia ) trees growing in the scrubby area near our pond. This is a photo of the blossom and new leaves.

Pear blossom. We recently pruned and topped our pear tree as it was getting enormous. We should still get quite a lot of fruit this year, if all goes well.

Lesser Celandine ( Ficaria verna) and Ground-ivy ( Glechoma hederacea)

The Montana clematis flowered at the end of the month

A drake Mallard swimming on the pond.

I have a few more April photos I would like to share but I will save them for a separate post.

Spring Odds and Ends – March

Tags

blackthorn, blossom, Brown Hare, Bugle, cherry-plum tree, daffodils, daisy, Dog's Mercury, early dog-violet, flowers, garden, grape hyacinth, lesser celandine, leveret, March, Narcissus Rip van Winkle, Periwinkle, plants, pond, primroses, silver-laced primula, Spindle, St Mary's church Homersfield, Suffolk, Suffolk Lane, trees

Not having posted anything for over two months I have a number of photographs of things I’ve seen on my travels or in the garden.  This post will be a selection of these photos.

View from my kitchen window

This photo was taken with my phone early one March morning.  You can see the maple leaf sticker on the glass which works well at preventing birds from crashing into the window and injuring themselves.  Just outside the window is my witch-hazel which is planted in a large pot and also a Japanese flowering-cherry tree tied to canes, in a different pot.  We keep both trees up close to the front of the house to protect them from wind damage.  On the other side of our drive you can see the first of the daffodils in flower along the edge of the ditch.  What really excited me was the sight of a leveret, a young hare ( lepus europaeus), crouched in the grass.  Richard had had a sight of this young animal in the garden a couple of days before this and I was so pleased to see it for myself.

Leveret

I took this picture with my smaller camera from the utility room window and you can see how damp with dew everything was, including the leveret.  It stayed with us for a few days, hardly ever moving from its ‘form’, the nest in the grass it had made for itself.

The leveret’s form

Cherry-plum tree (Prunus cerasifera )covered in blossom

When this tree first grew I assumed it was an early-flowering blackthorn tree as they can look very similar.  However, a few years ago I happened to see some of its fruit before the birds ate it all and realised my mistake.

cherry-plum blossom

cherry-plum blossom

cherry-plum blossom

Silver-laced Primula

A year and a half ago I was trying to get rid of Common Nettle and Black Bryony in a flowerbed full of primulas and hellebores.  The only way to deal with them was to remove the plants I wanted before tackling the ones I didn’t.  I planted some of the primulas at the edge of a bed Richard grows dahlias in.  This March I was pleased to see that my treasured silver-laced primula had survived the move and two winters.  I still haven’t finished working on that weedy bed!  The Primula has a pretty silver edge to its petals.

Early Dog-violet ( Viola reichenbachiana )

We have these early violets growing in the grass round our pond.

Large pond

Large pond

Our large pond in March.  The water-level is very low due to insufficient rainfall for a year.

The front hedge and ditch

A week or two on from when the photo of the leveret was taken and the daffodils are all coming out.

I love these little Narcissus ‘Rip van Winkle’!

Grape Hyacinth (Muscari ), Bugle (Ajuga reptans ), Variegated Lesser Periwinkle(Vinca minor ) and Spindle (Euonymous ) ‘Emerald n Gold’.

This is a very narrow bed alongside the rear of the garage next to the back door.  All the flowers are blue and two of the plants have variegated yellow and green leaves.  However, just to prove that nothing goes exactly to plan, the bed also contains a red-berried Firethorn ( Pyracantha) which has creamy white flowers; this plant was here when we moved here and the birds and bees love it.

St. Mary’s church at Homersfield

We attended church here in March and I thought it looked lovely in the sunshine.

Primroses (Primula vulgaris )

That same day I walked round the garden and then out onto the verge next to the lane  beyond our hedge and found these primroses in flower.  Garden primulas are able to flower at any time of the year as long as it isn’t too hot or too cold.  Wild primroses, however, have their season and late March is the best time to see them round here.

Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa )

There is a tangle of Blackthorn on the verge and it was just coming into flower.  You can see our garden over the other side of the hedge.

Here is the Blackthorn on the verge.

It is a very untidy tree with suckers but it has blossom like snow and the fruit (sloes) in the autumn are used for flavouring gin, among other things.

Dog’s Mercury (Mercurialis perennis )

We have this rather insignificant plant growing under all our hedges and in amongst the trees near the large pond.  It is often a sign of old woodland and won’t tolerate being disturbed; it fades away.  The male and female flowers are on separate plants.

The daffodils at the end of March

Daisy (Bellis perennis )

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna )

Here is this sunshiny little flower peeping out from inbetween Common Nettles and Ground Elder in the ditch.

These were the highlights of March this year.  I hope to begin an April post as soon as I have published this one.  Whether I’ll be able to finish it and publish it in the next day or so only time will tell!

Another Catch Up Post!

Tags

plants, spring, Suffolk, walking

As you know, we have been busy with home improvements this year so haven’t had the time to go on our usual walks very often and I haven’t taken as many photos as usual.  Richard and I did manage a walk or two in April along the lanes and over the fields.

Our local farmer has taken to sheep farming in recent years and this year he coppiced many of his overgrown hedges and then waited to see what came up again.  He has selected the plants he wishes to retain in the hedges and has cut out the rest.  He has put up stock fencing next to the new slim-line hedge and all is looking very different now.

We took our usual walk across the fields just after the coppicing had been done. All the heaps of wood were burnt and you can see a smouldering heap of wood-ash in the centre of this picture.

The last time we had walked this route there had been a thick hedge just in front of the ditch in the foreground.

I was quite concerned about the loss of the hedges because they are usually full of nesting, singing birds in the spring.  However, the farmer does care about the local wildlife and had left reassuring notices next to the ex-hedges stating what he was intending to do.

A view across the open fields. This walk was taken at the beginning of April while the weather was still bright and warm.

This oak tree had been blown down in storm ‘Doris’. The green you can see is the ivy that had been growing up the tree trunk. Most healthy trees can cope with ivy growing on them and this one had seemed to be healthy.

An upright tree this time, with holes it in, probably made by woodpeckers.

Another view of the fields and that blue sky!

Red Dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum) and Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris)

The Blackthorn blossom (Prunus spinosa) was very good this spring.

This rather dull and unassuming little plant (not a clear photo, I’m afraid) has the interesting name of Sticky Mouse-ear (Cerastium glomeratum)! The leaves are the shape of a mouse’s ear and they are also sticky as you can see in the photo; the leaves are covered with grains of sand.

I found yet another Barren Strawberry plant. (Potentilla sterilis)

It is easy to tell the difference between a Wild Strawberry and a Barren Strawberry even if there are no flowers to be seen.  The leaves of the Barren Strawberry are a mid-green colour and are matt whereas the Wild Strawberry leaves are shiny and yellow-green.  The leaves of both plants are toothed but the Barren Strawberry’s terminal tooth (the one at the tip of each leaflet) is smaller and shorter than the ones next to it.  You can see this quite clearly on the photo above.  The Wild Strawberry’s terminal tooth is as long as or longer than the ones next to it.  The flowers are different too.  The Barren Strawberry flowers have large gaps between the petals and the sepals are clearly seen in the gap.  The Wild Strawberry’s petals are close together and the sepals are hidden behind them.

A Blackthorn hedge in flower

A view of St. Peter’s church tower in the distance

One of my favourite views through a gap in the hedge

Another view from our walk. The field close-by has barley or wheat growing in it; the yellow field in the distance is of oil-seed rape.

A field of Oil-seed Rape

This photo is of the bank of a ditch and shows the lumps of chalk that can be found in the clay soil here

The verge at the side of the lane was covered with Lesser Celandines (Ficaria verna)

Another view across the fields…

…and another!

Ash tree flowers ( Fraxinus excelsior)

Most of our fields are surrounded by deep ditches.

Annual Mercury (Mercurialis annua)

Most of the Mercury that grows here is the perennial Dog’s Mercury which is found in (sometimes) large swathes under hedges and in the woodland.  The Mercury in the photo above is the Annual Mercury which doesn’t grow in swathes and is branched (unlike the Dog’s Mercury).  It is not a native plant but has been here for at least 1000 years, introduced from mainland Europe.

Cowslips (Primula veris)

A pond at the side of the lane

The last of the Primroses (Primula vulgaris)

Part of St. Margaret South Elmham common

Another Blackthorn hedge

Blackthorn blossom

Another short walk we took was to view the orchids flowering along the verge near to us.

Early Purple Orchids (Orchis mascula)

Early Purple Orchids

We also saw purple Bugle (Ajuga reptans) and Dandelions (Taraxacum agg.)

Bugle

This seems to be a Cowslip/Primrose cross

An over-exposed and out-of-focus photo of Lady’s-smock/ Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis)

Richard and I also called in at our neighbour Cordelia’s Daffodil Sunday when every year she opens her beautiful garden to the public in aid of St. Margaret’s church.

Her garden is full of spring flowers

The weather was perfect for the open garden this year

The Old Rectory

Looking towards the church from the Old Rectory

More flowers

Daffodil Sunday

Daffodil Sunday

The drive up to the house

I apologise for the length of this post!

My music choice this time is ‘The Banks of Green Willow’ by George Butterworth

Thanks for visiting!

A Quiet Spring – March and April Part 2

Tags

blossom, butterfly, daffodils, flowers, fruit trees, gardening, plants, spring flowers, Suffolk, sunset

Let me take you back in time……

The daffodils this spring were marvellous!  We had a few warm days at the beginning of April that brought the flowers forward and then from Easter onwards the weather was decidedly chilly.  Very dry but chilly and with very little sunshine.

The white daffodils look just like butterflies when a breeze catches them!  Most of these flowers are scented as well.

The blossom on the fruit trees was good this spring.

Wild Cherry

Wild Cherry blossom

Weeping Crabtree

Weeping Crabtree blossom

Crabtree ‘Evereste’

‘Evereste’ blossom

Crabtree ‘Harry Baker’

‘Harry Baker’ blossom

Greengage

Greengage blossom

Damson blossom

Pear ‘Concorde’ blossom

Other trees with blossom looked wonderful this spring too.

Amelanchier

Amelanchier blossom

The Blackthorn at the end of our drive

The Pussy Willow was covered in fuzzy flowers

I took photos of some of the plants in the garden.

The Spirea in Richard’s new shrub border was very bright and beautiful.

A pretty primula had planted itself in one of the ditches that surround our garden

We have a number of orange and red cowslips that grow here and there about the garden. I have started to gather them into one place so they don’t get mowed before they set seed.

The King-cups on the bank of the pond looked cheerful.

Primroses and Anemone blanda

The clematis flowered at the end of the month and filled the garden with scent.

Clematis flowers

Last autumn I ordered some tulips and planted them in large tubs.  I was glad I did when I saw the damage the deer had wreaked on those planted in the borders!  I covered the tubs in wire mesh and left them at the back of the house to over-winter.  I had no mouse, vole or deer damage at all!

These lovely tulips look more like peonies! Because of the cool spring they were in flower for nearly a month.

This is a male Holly Blue butterfly (Celastrina argiolus). There were a number of these flying in the garden at the end of April.

A sunset seen from the back of the house

This post has taken me weeks to write because I have been so busy and tired!  I thought about abandoning it a couple of times because of its lateness but decided to post it after all and I hope you will forebear with me.

My choice of music is ‘Schmetterling’ (Butterfly) by Grieg, one of his Lyric Pieces.

Thanks for visiting!

A Quiet Spring – March and April Part 1

Tags

birds, churches, flowers, garden, insects, spring, Suffolk, sunset

We weren’t very adventurous this spring, staying close to home and taking things easy, so there wasn’t too much to blog about.

A visit to St Michael’s church on the first mild spring day in March

We admired the ‘Narnia’ lamp post by the gate.

We were unable to tell the time as the sun failed to shine.

The peaceful churchyard.

Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris ) The flowers are in the centre of the bloom and have no petals. The 5 – 8 petal-like sepals are bright shiny yellow.

Peacock butterfly (Inachis io)  It was very sluggish and was still in the grass outside the church when we came out again.

A pair of Greylags (Anser anser) took up residence in our garden as they usually do each spring

We enjoy their company.

They constructed a nest on the island in the middle of the big pond but after ten days it was abandoned.  Feathers were spread everywhere. We don’t know what happened but we suspect an otter or an American mink was to blame.

The abandoned nest.

After we lost our summerhouse in the storm earlier this year we spent some time clearing the area behind it and discovered this tree with the deformed trunk. What could have caused this?

We enjoy seeing all the birds that visit our garden including the Pied Wagtails (Motacilla alba). Not a good shot as the bird hurried into the dappled shade just as I took its picture.

A sunset seen from the back of the house.

On a visit to our church at Rumburgh we saw this Mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos) resting in the shade of a gravestone.

Primroses (Primula vulgaris) in the churchyard

I love the informality of our country churchyards and I like to see the wild flowers there. The wild flowers are just as much God’s work as any garden flower or exotic bloom.  They have a haven in our churchyards and should be safe from herbicides.

Barren Strawberry (Potentilla sterilis)

Richard on his way to church

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Meanwhile, back in my garden…..

My Pieris with its new leaves of red and its little white bell flowers

I have been growing these hyacinth bulblets on in shallow tubs and they are now ready for planting out in the garden to flower next spring.

 

Scented narcissi and pink aubretia

Elinor gave me some more aubretia, a mauve variety, as a gift on Mothering Sunday

Lathyrus and scilla

Pasque flowers. These began flowering just a couple of days after Easter Sunday.

I had a large patch of these red saxifrage but the deer scraped most of them up. I’m hoping they will spread again.

My music choice is ‘Glorious’ sung by The Pierces

Thanks for visiting!

Spring Flowers: March

Tags

Celandines, cherry-plum, daffodils, flowers, garden, gardening, lathyrus, primroses, scilla, Suffolk, violets, wild flowers

I managed to find a number of flowers to photograph in my garden this March.

We have areas in our garden that are left wild. This is one of the many violets that bloomed in March. I think this is an Early Dog Violet (Viola reichenbachiana )

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna ).  Not only are the flowers so shiny and buttercup-yellow but the leaves are interesting too. They are patterned and blotchy with different shades of green and then there is the strange black line down the centre of the leaf looking like it was drawn carelessly with a felt pen.

This is all that was left of some of my favourite tulips after a Muntjac deer came visiting. I wasn’t too happy about this.  I can see a grape hyacinth bulb that was dug up as well.

I am very fond of Scillas and this was a patch of them as they were beginning to flower.

This is a pea – Lathyrus ‘Spring Beauty’ just as it too, began to flower.

Our Cherry Plum (Prunus cerasifera ) always looks good against a blue sky. Cherry Plum are the first of the flowering trees to have blossom in the spring.

Cherry Plum blossom

Pots of ‘Tete a Tete’ miniature daffodils and just a few pale blue crocus.

Sweet Violets (Viola odorata ) growing under the Crabapple tree.

The first of the garden daffodils to flower. It isn’t easy to see in this photo but the trumpets are a darker orange colour.  I think they might be ‘Jetfire’ daffodils.

A large clump of Primroses ( Primula vulgaris) growing in the verge at the front of the house.

Primrose flower. This is a pin-eye flower, with the pinhead-like stigma in the centre of the flower and the stamens hidden below.

I showed you a ‘thrum-eyed’ primrose in an earlier post 

‘Thrum-eyed’ primrose – the long stamens are visible in the centre of the flower but the shorter stigma is invisible.

I have made a slideshow of some of the daffodils we have planted round the perimeter of the garden and round the big pond.

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My music selection is Julie Fowlis singing Lon-dubh; a beautiful rendition in Gaelic of Paul McCartney’s song ‘Blackbird’.

Thanks for visiting!

Reydon Wood

Tags

Alexanders, Barren Strawberry, Bugle, Common Dog Violet, coppice wood, cow parsley, Dryad's Saddle, early dog-violet, Early Purple Orchid, ferns, Goldilocks Buttercup, Great Diving Beetle, Greater Stitchwort, ground-ivy, Herb-Robert, Hornbeam, lesser celandine, primrose, Reydon Wood, Suffolk, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, Three-nerved Sandwort, water-violet, wild flowers, wild strawberry, Wood Anemone, Yellow Archangel, Yellow Pimpernel

We drove to Reydon Wood on Friday, in search of bluebells.

Wood Lane

We parked at the end of Wood Lane. The walk down the lane is pleasant and we get glimpses of the wood on the other side of the deep ditch on our right.

Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) is in flower everywhere.

The Romans introduced Alexanders into Britain and it is mainly found near the coast especially in the east of the country.  It was used as a medicinal herb and also as a pot herb.  The flowerheads can be steamed like broccoli.

Greater Stitchwort (Stellaria holostea) is another flower that is blooming wherever I go at present.

The Anglo Saxons and Celts believed that a stitch in the side was probably caused by elf-shot and this plant cured it!

Greater Stitchwort

Our first sighting of Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

Cow-parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) is coming into flower very early this year

There they are, on the far side of the ditch!

A beautiful Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna )

Bluebells and Greater Stitchwort

To the left of us as we walked up Wood Lane we could see a field full of bright yellow Oil-seed Rape (Brassica napus) through the hedge.

I believe this is Goldilocks Buttercup ( Ranunculus auricomus)

This is the first time I have taken notice of this buttercup.  I have probably seen it before because I find they are fairly common in woodland, but I’ve never looked at one properly, just assuming it was a Meadow or Creeping Buttercup.  The stem leaves are quite different from the other buttercups I know and I read that the flowers are usually deformed or have some or all of their petals missing.

We arrived at the entrance to the wood

This is the first time I have seen Wood Anemones ( Anemone nemorosa) here.

There were a few primroses (Primula vulgaris ) still flowering.

Common Dog Violet (Viola riviniana )

This is the most common violet we have in this country and it can be found anywhere except on very acidic soils.  The leaves are heart-shaped and the spur (at the back of the flower) is much paler than the petals.  This violet is unscented.

Early Dog Violet (Viola reichenbachiana )

Another unscented violet; the flowers of this plant are paler and smaller than the Common Dog Violet and the spur is usually as dark or even darker than the petals.  The leaves are narrower than those of the Common Dog Violet.  This isn’t a good photo but it is the best out of the three I took!

Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum)

This plant could be named after St Robert of Molesme who founded Citeaux Abbey in France and who is said to have staunched wounds and healed ulcers with Herb Robert.  It could also be named after Robert, Duke of Normandy, the son of William the Conqueror and a patron of medical botany.  He used Herb Robert to cure the plague.

The path through the wood.

Barren Strawberry (Potentilla sterilis )

The flower here is past its best so it is not easy to see that the petals have a gap between them and that the sepals are clearly seen.  The leaves (on the right of the photo) are a dull, matt green and divided into three toothed leaflets with the terminal tooth on each leaflet being smaller and shorter than the adjacent teeth.

Wild Strawberry (Fragaria vesca )

Here is a Wild Strawberry, which I found just a few feet away from the Barren Strawberry and you can see the difference between them.  The petals are close together and mainly hide the sepals.  The leaves are a bright, shiny yellow-green and the terminal tooth is as long as (sometimes longer than) the adjacent teeth.

Here is the pond in the middle of the wood. On the far side are Water Violets (Hottonia palustris )

More Water Violets – I couldn’t get a better photo of them.

Great Diving Beetle (Dytiscus marginalis )

We watched this beetle for a while as it came to the surface to gather air which it stores under its elytra or wing cases.  The beetle’s spiracles (breathing pores) are under the wing cases and allow the air stored there to enter the body.  When the air is used up the beetle returns to the surface for more.  There were many newts in the pond too.

Yellow Pimpernel (Lysimachia nemorum )

A large patch of Bugle (Ajuga reptans )

Beautiful new green leaves of Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus )

Hornbeams look a little like Beech trees but the trunks have fluted bark and the leaves are toothed.  Hornbeams are regularly coppiced and Reydon Wood is a coppice wood.

A coppice tree which will probably be harvested in the next few years. The tree is probably many hundred years old.

The area just beyond this barrier has recently been coppiced and the stools (tree stumps) will be sprouting soon. The barrier has been built up using twigs and branches to stop deer from eating the new growth on the coppice stools.

Coppice stools surrounded by Bluebells and with the deer barrier in the background

A strange-looking stool which looks as though it might run off as soon as our backs are turned!

Harvested coppice logs

I believe this fungus is Dryad’s Saddle (Polyporus squamosus )

Early Purple Orchid ( Orchis mascula)

Early Purple Orchid showing its spotted leaves

Three-nerved Sandwort (Moehringia trinervia )

At first I thought this was Common Chickweed but then I noticed the petals are not split and that the sepals are longer than the petals.  The leaves have three to five parallel veins on them.  I didn’t manage to get a close-up shot of the plant.

Herb Robert (pink flowers) and Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea ) (Blue flowers)

Lesser Celandine, Herb Robert, Ground Ivy and Early Purple Orchid

 

 

Yellow Archangel ( Lamiastrum galeobdolon)

There is a cultivated form of this plant (subspecies ‘argentatum’) with silvery patches on the leaves which has escaped into the wild and is quite invasive.

Lesser Celandines and Bluebells

 

Early Purple Orchid and Bluebells

Fern and Bluebells

Bluebells and ferns

Here is a slideshow of the Bluebells we saw.

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The Bluebells were not quite at their peak and as the day was overcast and chilly we didn’t smell their wonderful scent.  We decided it would be a good idea for us to return in a week’s time to see how they had developed.  Unfortunately, we have had very cold weather this week with frosts and wintery showers of hail and sleet.  I hope the Bluebells are not too damaged.  I apologise for the length of this post.

Thanks for visiting!

Doris Remembered

Tags

church renovations, damage, Diary, garden flowers, home improvements, lay-led worship training, Mothering Sunday, power cuts, quizzes, Storm 'Doris', Suffolk

I arranged to visit Alice in Sheffield on Thursday 23rd February, spend the night in a hotel and return home again the following day.  What I hadn’t expected when I bought the train tickets and booked the hotel room was a visit from ‘Doris’ that day too.  For those who don’t know who ‘Doris’ is (or who might have forgotten), ‘Doris’ was a storm that caused some disruption here.  Fortunately, my journey went ahead with no problems other than a speed restriction.  Alice met me at the station and we decided to have lunch together before I went to my hotel.  We nearly got blown off our feet on the way to the café, the door of which kept blowing open while we ate, but we weren’t inconvenienced too much by this.  I spent a lovely afternoon with Alice either chatting in my hotel room, drinking tea in another coffee shop or buying books.

While I was enjoying myself, Richard and Elinor were having quite an unpleasant time at home.  The power went off at about 2 pm and in the garden a few of our belongings started flying through the air despite Richard having tried to make them safe before the storm began.

I wonder if any of you remember how pleased we were when we got our new summerhouse last year?  Here is a photo of it.

Our summerhouse when it was new last February.

The summerhouse after the storm this February.

The wind ripped the roof off and the rest of the building just broke apart.  A number of trees in the area were blown over and roads were blocked.  When I got back to Norwich the following afternoon Richard was a little delayed when collecting me from the station by having to make detours to avoid blocked roads.  The power was still off when I got home and the house was cold.  Richard and Elinor had coped very well using the gas hob to cook meals and heat water for hot drinks and washing up.  They had sat together the evening before in front of the gas fire listening to the battery-powered radio by candlelight.  We often get power-cuts living where we do, though not as many as we used to do before the power company changed the cables and started regular cutting-back of tree branches that are too close to the cables.  Having said that, we have had six power-cuts of at least an hour this year already.  We keep a supply of candles and lamps ready and have torches in all the bedrooms and in the kitchen, utility room and garage.  We have a portable gas heater as well as the gas fire and gas hob.  We can also use the caravan which has a large battery and a gas supply.

Fortunately, the power came back on later that day.  I was very grateful for it as we were expecting my cousin Beverley and her partner Jeremy to visit the following day for an evening meal.  I didn’t have the time to prepare all the things I had hoped to, but at least the house was warm and the evening was great fun!

We have been able to claim for a new summerhouse on our insurance and our replacement arrived on Monday of this week.  We got an identical summerhouse which had to be put where the old one was which is a little worrying, knowing how quickly it succumbed to the storm-force winds.  Richard will bolt it to the concrete base and try to make it somewhat sturdier.  We will see what we can do.  We lost our old incinerator during the storm and wondered how far it had travelled, but once Richard had taken photos of the wreck and started to clear up the glass and the panels he found it squashed as flat as a pancake underneath one of the sections.  I am grateful neither Richard nor Elinor got squashed under it!

Here is our new summerhouse. Spot the difference!

Our new internal doors were due to be fitted that week in February but the storm put paid to that, and, because of storm damage the carpenter had to deal with, we didn’t get the doors until nearly a fortnight later.  We are very pleased with them.  They look good, they are more sound-proof than the old ones and the doors downstairs are now glazed and let much needed light into the hall.  The sliding door to the en-suite WC has been replaced with a better one and the sliding door to the downstairs shower-room has been replaced with an ordinary door which is so much nicer.  We will now employ a painter and decorator to decorate the hall, stairs and landing and to paint all twelve doors (we replaced the airing cupboard door too).

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Richard and I have attended a Lay-led Worship Training Course at a church in Beccles.  To enable us to keep our churches open, the way forward is for us, the members of the church to take the services ourselves if there is no priest to lead us.   This will be very useful to us when our Rector retires in the summer.  The four-part course was interesting and well-attended and it gave us the opportunity to meet people from other churches in the Deanery.  Our Deanery is made up of a number of benefices from Halesworth, Bungay, Beccles, Southwold and the villages in-between.

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We have carried on with the usual round of duties and chores; hospital visits, blood tests, appointments with opticians, hairdressers, acupuncturists and chiropractors; housework, gardening, shopping.  We have all had bad colds.  I continue to take my mother to church once a fortnight and join Richard at church in our benefice when I can.

Richard went to visit his brother Chris in Manchester for a few days recently and had a very pleasant time.  On his return we took part in two quizzes.  Last year we had been in a team that had won the quiz held in the village of Walpole.  Part of the ‘prize’ was the honour of composing and presenting the following year’s quiz and Richard offered to take it on.  The time for the quiz duly arrived and he did a fantastic job as Quizmaster (I was his assistant) and he was presented with a bottle of wine as a thank-you gift.  The following night we were at the village of St James taking part in the quiz to raise funds for the Harleston Choral Society.  A meal was included in the fees – very good it was, too – and the questions appealed to me more than usual as there were more music ones and fewer sport! Our team managed to win again.

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We celebrated Mothering Sunday on the 26th of March and it was our church at Rumburgh’s turn to hold the service.  I helped make a few posies to present to the mothers or for people to give to their mothers or take to graves.  Though we have no flowers in church during Lent I was asked to provide some flowers to put in the porch.

The flowers in the porch.  Looking at this little work of art, you may be surprised to know I am not a flower-arranger 😉  The flowers are lovely in spite of my ministrations. As you can see, the porch is in urgent need of work. If nothing is done soon, the porch will collapse and we won’t be able to use the church.

The church was a little disorganised because we are having a tower screen fitted at the moment and there was dust everywhere.  We have been saving for years for this improvement!  We put everyone as near the front of the church as possible (well away from the building works) sitting in the choir stalls, which was very pleasant.  Richard our Rector chose lots of good hymns and his sermon was amusing and instructive.  I brought my mother to our church for a change and took her back home afterwards.  I couldn’t ask her to lunch because I had no time to prepare a midday meal but she came for an evening meal instead.

This is the new tower screen. You can see the framework for the glass which has yet to be put in. There will be a glazed door at the bottom of the screen.

We will now be able to see and watch the bell-ringers as they ring before our services.

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I will end this rather wordy post with some photos of the flowers in our garden starting with my favourite iris reticulata that bloomed for too short a time in February.

Miniature iris

Miniature iris

Miniature iris

Miniature irises

Crocus

Crocus

Crocus

Mahonia

Mahonia with a bumblebee

Winter-flowering honeysuckle

Miniature daffodils

My music selection is ‘Handle With Care’ by the Traveling Wilburys.

Thanks for visiting!

Slightly Newer News!

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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.

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

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

Our muddy lane

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!

Old News

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Black Spleenwort, family, hazel catkins, primrose, Rumburgh Church, Sainsbury Centre, snowdrops, spring, St Michael and St Felix Church Rumburgh, Suffolk, University of East Anglia, witch-hazel

It is over a month since I last wrote a diary post.  We haven’t done very much in that time but the days are getting longer and there are signs of spring in the garden and hedgerows.

Witch hazel

Witch hazel

Witch hazel

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The central elements on our old toaster had stopped working so we have bought ourselves a new toaster and this new one manages to toast both sides of a slice of bread at the same time!  It has a ‘bagel button’ (though as I have never eaten a bagel I think I would prefer to call it a ‘teacake button’) which toasts one side and warms the other.  We can now re-live the old toaster experience, except in reverse.

Snowdrops in bud

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Another excitement has been the emptying and repair of the septic tank.  Only those of you who do not have mains sewage can truly relate to this.  The tank was well overdue for emptying and we knew it needed repairing a year ago but we have been let down by our usual contractor and have had to find someone new.  The new contractor arrived and did what he had to do and was efficient and professional.  An added bonus, as far as we were concerned, was the wind direction on the day.

Hazel catkins in the hedge

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We have decided to have all our internal doors replaced and a carpenter has visited and priced up the job for us.  He will be doing the work over three days next week.  Richard will then have to spend quite a lot of time painting the doors, as well as all the skirting boards and the banisters.  We hope to redecorate the hall, stairs and landing and get a new carpet some time in the next few months.

I’m not sure how many hazel nuts we will have on this tree this year. The female flowers have appeared before the male catkins have matured.

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At the very end of January we had a morning prayer service at our church of St Michael and St Felix at Rumburgh.  The day before the service Richard and I called in at the church to make sure everything was tidy and to set the heating to come on well before the service.  It was a cold day but inside the church was even colder than out in the open!

I found the first rather bedraggled primroses of the year in a sheltered spot in the churchyard.

I also found my first snowdrops of the year

Rumburgh gravestone

This gravestone has a skull engraved on it.  Richard was asked to see if it was still in the graveyard recently as there had been a report that it might have gone missing.

The west door, which isn’t used anymore.

The west window

Work will start on March the 20th on the new tower screen in the church.  We have been saving for years and years to get the work done and at last it is about to happen.  Once the screen is in place the tower will be shut off from the body of the church and we hope it might be less draughty and warmer.

Black Spleenwort (Asplenium adiantum-nigrum) growing in the mortar on the wall of the church

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Elinor has now left the City College but we hope this is only a temporary thing.  As I mentioned in my last diary post she wants to enrol on a one year Art and Design course for older students and has therefore filled out the application form.  We have been notified that the college has received the form and I hope we will hear that Elinor has an interview soon.  At the interview she will be expected to hand in a review of an exhibition she has been to see recently and with that in mind, we went to the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich and viewed an exhibition of 20th century Japanese photography.  Photography was not allowed in the exhibition hall but there is a large collection of world art on display in the main gallery, most of the exhibits donated by Lord and Lady Sainsbury.

Below are my favourites from the main gallery.

Edgar Degas – Little Dancer Aged Fourteen

Edgar Degas – Little Dancer Aged Fourteen

A beautiful Benin bronze – the Head of an Oba; early 16th century

Henry Moore – Mother and Child

Whistling bottles from Equador – one in the shape of an owl and the other is a bird sitting on eggs or pods.  Both 1000 – 100 BC

Another couple of exhibits from Equador

Sketch for a Portrait of Lisa by Francis Bacon

Standing Jizo Bosatsu – Japan (1185-1333)

The top exhibit with the ram’s head is a backstrap from a sword or dagger hilt – India late 17th century The lower exhibit is an archer’s thumb-ring in the form of a bird – India 17th – 18th century

Left rear – Image of the Goddess Kaumari, India 17th century.   Right rear – Shiva as Chandrashekharamurti, South India c. AD 1100.   Front centre – Figure of Chamunda Devi, Nepal/Tibet 17th/18th century

Walking Hippopotamus – Egypt c. 1880 BC

The Sainsbury Centre.  One of the first major buildings designed by Sir Norman Foster, it was completed in 1978.

It is a steel clad building with one face almost entirely glazed.

By the late 80’s the collection had grown so much that Foster was asked to design an extension. He decided to build underground and this is one of the entrances to it.

The new basement has a curved glass frontage that emerges from the slope underneath the original building overlooking the man-made lake.  This new wing can only be seen from the lake but as it was very muddy there and beginning to go dark on a very gloomy day, I was unable to photograph it.

The University of East Anglia’s grounds looking towards the lake

Part of the university. There are many items of sculpture to be seen here.

Another Henry Moore sculpture

The University has an excellent creative writing department and many well known writers have studied here. Tracy Chevalier; Kazuo Ishiguro; Ian McEwan; Rose Tremain – to name but a few.

My music choice today is a song from Katie Melua.

Thanks for visiting!