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A Suffolk Lane

~ A diary of my life in rural north Suffolk.

A Suffolk Lane

Category Archives: Landscaping

October’s End

31 Sat Oct 2015

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, family, Insects, Landscaping, music, plants, Rural Diary, trees, weather

≈ 30 Comments

Tags

Anastasia Moutsatsou, autumn, berries, Diary, insects, leaf colour, Mendham, October, plants, renovations, Sir Alfred Munnings, sunset, trees, weather

IMG_5822Holly

I saw these holly berries (Ilex aquifolium) in one of the carparks in Halesworth at the beginning of the month.

We have had a fair amount of cloud and rain this month and there was a week when the rest of the country was getting very pleasant weather while we in eastern East Anglia and also those in eastern Kent were having gloomy, wet weather with north-easterly winds.   We have had a few slight frosts and some sunshine too – but not as much as we would have liked!  For anyone who is interested in our weather here in the east of Britain – and why wouldn’t you be! – here is a link to the local BBC weather forecast.

IMG_5823Spindle

Spindle berries (Euonymous europaeus) seen in our garden at the beginning of October

The leaf-colour has been very beautiful but I haven’t been able to get out often to take photos.  The leaves are falling fast now and the recent heavy rain and windy weather have stripped many trees of their leaves altogether.

IMG_5831Autumn colour

A beautiful Maple tree I saw on the way to my mother’s house on the 14th October.

IMG_5833Autumn colour

As I stood admiring it it began to rain heavily, as you can see!

IMG_5834Rainbow

The rainbow that appeared at the same time.

IMG_5835Autumn colour

I took a photo of the tree again on the way home later that day.

IMG_5832Hemp Agrimony

I was surprised to see some Hemp-agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum) in flower in the ditch next to the maple tree. It usually flowers during late summer and all other Hemp-agrimony plants had already gone to seed.

Richard and I have been sharing driving Elinor to and from college and I have been feeling much less tired than I did when I was doing all the driving.  The month has had its fair share of hospital, doctors’ surgery, optician and dentist visits.  Every week this month one of us (at least!) has had an appointment or has had to take someone (my mother) to an appointment.

DSC_0621

I mentioned to Richard that I had seen a beautiful Guelder-rose (Viburnum opulus) on my way to my mother’s house (yet again!) so he kindly photographed it for me with his phone when he walked past it on a breezy morning later in the week.

DSC_0622

He photographed it from the other side too

DSC_0623

He also photographed a Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)

Elinor has had her half-term holiday this week.  She has worked very hard during her first half-term and has had quite a lot of homework to do during this week.  She has enjoyed the course so far and her tutors are very pleased with her and the standard of her work.  This bodes very well.  She is also working hard to overcome her anxiety and also the sleep-phobia that has returned to plague her nights.

IMG_5836Raindrops

Raindrops caught in a spider’s web

IMG_5837Witch-hazel

A Witch-hazel leaf. All the rest of the tree’s leaves were a buttery yellow but the leaves on the new shoots went red.

IMG_5838Cricket

This Cricket, a female Speckled Bush-cricket (Leptophyes punctatissima) I believe, was sun-bathing while sitting on a yellow Witch-hazel leaf.

Alice seems well and is enjoying her new job but wishes she was able to work longer hours.  She has to have her PhD thesis printed before she can take part in her graduation ceremony so is trying to save up enough money to get it done.  She is coming home for the weekend in a fortnight and I am looking forward to it very much.  To see her in action discussing horror films please watch the video on the following link.

IMG_5840Autumn colour

Fine trees on a fine day. The churchyard of St Mary’s church in Halesworth. Whenever I see this wall I remember the times I have held one or other of my daughters’ hands when they were little as they balanced all the way along it. It used to take ages! Alice was especially keen.

Richard and I are starting to compile the list of improvements and repairs we need to do to the house and garden.  One of the first jobs will be to replace most of the windows and we hope to get this done before Christmas.  We are also getting a gardener/landscaper to clear and dig out the front ditch which has become overgrown and blocked.  We have asked him to cut the hedges too.  This will be done in a fortnight’s time.

IMG_5850Ladybirds

I found these ladybirds sheltering in my Rosemary bush next to the front door. I think they were hoping to hibernate there. We have since had some very wet weather and they are no longer there.

Last winter we had no ladybirds hibernating in the corner of the window in our bedroom.  This year, when we hope to replace the windows in a few weeks time, the ladybirds are back!  I will have to think of a way of gently moving them before the windows are removed.  I don’t know if they will be as interested in the new poly-carbonate windows we are to have, as they are in the old wooden ones with ladybird pheromones on!

IMG_5844Sir Alfred Munnings pub

Last Sunday we went out for lunch to The Sir Alfred Munnings in Mendham. (I don’t know what the black shadows are top right and bottom left of the photo).

The artist Sir Alfred Munnings was born in Mendham in 1878 and this restaurant and bar was re-named after him.

IMG_5849Mendham

Mendham is a very pretty village just a few miles from where we live.

IMG_5845Mendham church

Mendham church is quite large and well looked after. I couldn’t get far enough away from it to get the whole of the church in one photo.

IMG_5848Mendham church

Mendham church

IMG_5916Sunset

Sunset

IMG_5926Sunset

And another!

Here is one of my favourite songs – ‘Ola Ta Diskola’ (All the Difficulties) by Anastasia Moutsatsou.

Thanks for visiting!

 

 

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Miscellany Part 2

15 Sun Jun 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Landscaping, plants, Rural Diary, trees, Uncategorized, walking

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

barley, church cleaning, churchyard, coffin bier, electrical repairs, flowers, grasses, guelder rose, hedge woundwort, Klargester septic tank, landscaping, LED lights, lesser tortoiseshell butterfly, memorial stone, micro moth, ox-eye daisies, pond, Rumburgh Church, St Michael's water tower, St Peter's church, walking, wheat

I cannot believe how quickly this year is speeding by!  I always think at the beginning of spring that this year I will definitely make a better job of the gardening and I will have the time to do all the things I need to do around the house.  I always forget that as spring flows into summer the amount of jobs that need doing multiply and multiply and here I am left far behind yet again.  I forget how much time I have to spend away from the house driving about the countryside and this year I have had extra places to go.  Mum now has monthly check-ups at the hospital in Norwich to make sure her eyes are still free of macular degeneration.  My younger daughter E is hoping to go to City College Norwich in the autumn so we have had a number of visits there over the past few weeks, getting to know the place and some of the people there.

We have had a visit from the electrician who has done some work for us.  We had spoken to him a few weeks ago asking him to replace our kitchen under-cupboard lights which were very old and becoming faulty.  We also needed a new box cover for the electrics for our Klargester septic tank.  The old box cover had rusted away some years ago and we have had an upside-down plastic bin over the top since then!  We also need a lot of re-wiring done and some outside lights replacing.  The weekend before last R and I were woken in the middle of the night by a roaring noise in the house.  For some time we couldn’t think what it was and where the noise was coming from but eventually I realised it was something to do with the electric immersion heater which I switched off immediately.  (We use our immersion heater during the summer to heat our water; during the winter we use a gas boiler for water and central heating and this is fuelled by propane gas which is enormously expensive.  We are not on mains gas and as we often have power cuts it is better not to have everything powered by electricity.  We switch the immersion heater on over-night as electricity is cheaper then.)  The thermostat had gone faulty and the water was boiling.  The hot tank was emptying and the cold water tank and expansion tank were full of hot water – the house was turning into a kettle.  I wonder if steam was rising out of the roof?  If it had been left on much longer the tank would have exploded.  I phoned the electrician and asked him to add a new thermostat to his list of jobs to do.  When he visited last week he put in new kitchen lights for us….

010New kitchen lights

A thin strip of LED lights only a centimetre wide – such bright lights!

he replaced the septic tank electric box cover…..

015Septic tank with new box

The septic tank with the electric box wearing its attractive new cover.

and fitted a new thermostat to our immersion heater.  He will be coming again soon to do the rewiring and fitting new outside lights.

The landscaper who had worked on our big pond in February also visited our house on the same day as the electrician and filled in all the ruts the JCB had made in the lawn with top-soil.  R is very pleased that this has been done at last.  He has seeded it all and we are now waiting for the grass to regrow.

021Filled-in ruts

The ruts nicely filled-in at last.

While he was at our house we asked the landscaper to look at our small pond and let us know how it can be improved.  We don’t want the pond quite so close to the hedge, the liner needs replacing and I would like a boggy area at the side of the pond where I can plant iris, lobelia  and other marsh plants.

011Small pond

The small pond in desperate need of improvement

The last couple of weeks I haven’t had to take Mum to church.  She has been taken by a young man from her church who lives in Harleston.  He works abroad, especially in Asia and the far East, for much of the year as a film director.  When he returns home from his high-powered meetings and filming in India and China he resumes his more important job of taking old ladies to church and being bossed about by them.  Well, what else has he to do except a bit of script writing!  I am really very grateful to him.  He stays in this country until September and that is probably when I’ll have to resume my duties again.

Meanwhile, I have enjoyed two weeks of going to church with my husband.  It is our month for cleaning Rumburgh church and when we went in last week we were amazed at how dirty it was.  The church had had a few visitors who had left some rubbish about and there was dirt which had been trodden in on shoes.  The main mess had been caused by our resident bats.  It took us about two-and-a -half hours to clean up the worst of the mess.  I think that during the summer when we have more visitors and when the bats are active the church should be cleaned more than once a month but some of the people on our rota will only come in once a month or only if we have a service in the church and of course we don’t have services every week in our church.  I also find that some of our cleaners will concentrate on the entrance to the church and will often ignore the Sanctuary at the East end of the church where the altar is.

052Wild flowers in churchyard

Wild flowers in Rumburgh churchyard

054Ox-eye Daisies in churchyard

Ox-eye daisies in Rumburgh churchyard

039Altar flowers

A beautiful flower arrangement on the altar

044Coffin Bier

The old coffin bier in the church

040Grave memorial Eliz Davy

Memorial stone in the aisle

R and I went for another of our walks across the fields a week or so ago.  We didn’t intend to go far as we were both tired.

002View across fields

A view across the fields

042Path at edge of field

The path at the edge of the field

003Hedge Woundwort

Hedge Woundwort

Hedge Woundwort is in flower everywhere we look at the moment.  This plant has been used since the times of the ancient Greeks to stem bleeding and treat wounds.  Poultices, ointments and infusions were made with the leaves and the flowers made into conserves.  It has been proved that the volatile oil contained in this plant does have antiseptic qualities.

004Micro Moth

An, as yet, unidentified micro moth

006St Peters church over fields

St Peter’s church

011Water Tower at St Michaels

Water tower at St Michaels

Most of the water in East Anglia comes from springs and artesian wells and is very ‘hard’ water.  We all suffer from lime-scale in our homes and all those who can afford one get a water-softener.  I love the taste of our water and when and if we get a water-softener I would have to have a tap for un-softened water.

044Lesser Tortoiseshell butterfly

A Lesser Tortoiseshell butterfly

We saw this butterfly sunning itself on the path.

We also saw the crops ripening…..

046Barley

047Barley

010Barley

Barley.

014Ripening wheat

015Wheat

Wheat

We saw other grasses too

013Grasses

012Grasses

And a beautiful Guelder Rose.

019Guelder rose flower

018Guelder rose

I think I would love to have one of these in my garden!

The walk took longer than we thought it would because there was a path diversion which we took but after struggling through nettles and thistles and head-high grasses we had to turn back as the path hadn’t been cleared.

R has spent all this past week away, firstly in Gloucestershire and then he travelled to Lancashire for a couple of days.  He returned home on Friday having called in on his mother and spent the night with his brother in Manchester.  E and I had spent the day without electricity as there was a planned power cut to enable the electricity company to do repairs.  It is difficult to find things to do these days which doesn’t involve the use of electricity.  We managed however, and it is a good opportunity to have silence in the house with no humming fridges and freezers, no radios and TVs.  The only worry I had during the six-and-a-half hours was whether the food was still alright in the fridge and freezers.  It was a very warm day!  As it turned out, all was well.

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Our Pond

15 Sat Feb 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, Landscaping, Rural Diary

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005The pond during clearance work (640x480)
003The pond during clearance work with geese (2) (640x480)
004The pond during clearance work (640x480)
006The island before clearance (640x480)
007The JCB used for clearance (640x480)
001Our pond (640x480)
002The island (640x480)
003The island again (640x480)
004Mole tunnels (640x480)
005Water-filled ruts (640x480)
006More water-filled ruts (640x480)
007More ruts! (640x480)

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I talk about what it's like living in a quiet part of Suffolk. I am a wife, mother and daughter, a practising Christian and love the natural world that surrounds me. I enjoy my life - most of the time!

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