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A Suffolk Lane

~ A diary of my life in rural north Suffolk.

A Suffolk Lane

Tag Archives: aquilegia

A Hotch Potch.

16 Fri May 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, Insects, plants, Rural Diary, trees, wild animals, wild birds

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Allium, Alpine Pasque Flower, Ant hill, aquilegia, Balm of Gilead, Bee, blackberry, Bramley Apple blossom, Cacti, Cedar of Lebanon, chaffinch, Christmas Cactus, Clematis, Common Sedge, Common Vetch, Cotoneaster, Damson, GERANIUM, Goat Willow seeds, Great Tit, hare, Hawthorn, Holly, House Spider, Japanese Maple, Jay, Knautica, moon, Muntjac, pheasant, Shrub rose Canary Bird, Spindle, stock dove, sunset, thrift, Thyme-leaved Speedwell, Tufted Duck, vegetable garden, Viburnum, White-Shouldered House Moth, winter-flowering honeysuckle, Zebra Spider

 

Last evening while I was admiring the pink sunset…..

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….E was admiring the rising of the moon.  She called to me to come and see it as it was so large and orange.  I joined her at her bedroom window and we watched it slowly slide up the sky behind the trees.  I went into my room hoping to see it more clearly from there and saw below me on the drive, the hare again!  Typically, I had the wrong camera with me, it was too dark and the hare wouldn’t stay and be photographed.

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This is the only photo I managed to get.

I went outside into the twilight with little bats flying about the garden and crossed the road and looked at the moon through the hedge.  It wasn’t orange any more but it was still beautiful.

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The visit from the hare and the rising moon reminded me that hares are supposed to be magical and people today still take care not to hurt a hare.  One of Mum’s neighbours was new to the area a few years ago and asked another neighbour how he could get rid of the rabbits and hares which were damaging the trees and plants in his garden.  He was told that the rabbits could be shot but ‘we don’t shoot hares in Suffolk’.  In Anglo Saxon mythology, Ostara the goddess of the moon, fertility and Spring was often depicted with hare’s ears or a hare’s head.  Eostre (where we get the word Easter from) was the Celtic version of Ostara and was the goddess associated with the moon, death, redemption and resurrection during the turning of Winter into Spring.  Eostre was a shape-shifter too and took the shape of a hare at each full moon.  Well, well, well!  (I looked all that up using Google!).

Yesterday was a busy one with my usual shopping with Mum and then going to Halesworth to hand in my prescription at the surgery and post a couple of letters.  I got home just after 2.00pm and had some lunch.  The afternoon was spent dusting, vacuuming and doing more mending.  R got home just as I was finishing.  He had had a fraught day at work so after we had had our cup of tea he went into the garden and planted out his peas and beans.  A soothing task which took him over an hour and was all done except the watering-in by the time I had cooked the evening meal.

This morning I went out to admire his handiwork.

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Putting the anti-rabbit/deer/hare/pigeon etc barriers up had taken most of the time yesterday.  We hope they work!  You can see the potatoes coming up in the bed behind the peas and beans.  While I was down at the vegetable patch I had a look at the pond and saw a strange looking duck.  I tried taking its photo with my small camera but wasn’t able to get a clear picture.  I fetched our newer, better camera and tried again.

 

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I think this is a female tufted duck who visited to sample the fish in our pond.  I had to crop the photos as I still couldn’t get near enough to the duck.  The pond, as you see, is covered in the fluffy seeds of Goat Willow.  The seeds aren’t only on the pond but are everywhere, floating in the air, covering the grass, coming into the house.

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This is a spider’s web I noticed yesterday on the outside of one of our windows.  It is covered with fluffy willow seeds.  Despite my brushing the web away very often the spider insists on making its web just there all the time.

The rest of this post will be a strange selection of photos that I took today and some others that I haven’t been able to put in any of my recent posts.

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This is a late entry in the apple blossom awards.  We thought the Bramley Apple wasn’t going to flower this year, but we were wrong!

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The Cedar of Lebanon has new leaves growing that look like old-fashioned shaving brushes.

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All the hollies have new leaves too.

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The Japanese Maple has the most beautiful cherry-red seeds.

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It has beautiful leaves too that glow in the sunshine.

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I got home yesterday and saw a Jay in the garden.  I had great difficulty taking these photos from inside the car.

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This is one of my Christmas Cacti and it is flowering again for the third time in six months.  It first flowered in November, then in February and now in May.  I think it is very confused!

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R’s cacti are all coming in to flower too.

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Mammalaria

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Mammalaria flower

 

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Peanut cactus flower.

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I don’t know what this one is called.

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The little white Alliums in the garden are very popular with the bees.  They are under the laburnum trees which are also full of bees and the noise they make is astounding.  I think they sound like cars in a grand prix race – the pitch is almost exactly the same – it’s like listening to a race about a mile away.

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The new shoots on the Viburnum Bodnantense are crimson.

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Tiny damsons.

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Willow seeds.

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Bee on the cotoneaster horizontalis.

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Geranium Phaeum in R’s flowerbed.

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Flowers on the Spindle tree.

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The Hawthorn hedge at the bottom of the garden near the old summerhouse.

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A White-shouldered House Moth

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R took these photos of a muntjac deer.

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A chaffinch

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One of my herbs – cedronella canariensis (Balm of Gilead).

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Alpine Pasque Flower

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A Great Tit

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A Stock Dove.

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A female Pheasant.

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A Zebra Spider.  These spiders are only about 4mm long.  They are jumping spiders and can leap a distance of about 4cm.

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A baby House Spider.

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The tiny flowers of Thyme-Leaved Speedwell.

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Aquilegia flower

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Thrift flower

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The wonderfully scented Clematis Montana ‘Rubens’

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Shrub rose ‘Canary Bird’

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Blackberry flowers

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Knautica Macedonica

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Aquilegia flower

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Reflections in the pond

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Common sedge

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Common Vetch

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An ant hill

 

 

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Male Holly flower buds.  We don’t have any female holly bushes so no berries!

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Heart-shaped berries of the Winter-flowering Honeysuckle

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These lovely berries don’t last long as the blackbirds find them irresistible.

 

 

 

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The Archdeacon’s Visitation.

08 Thu May 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in amphibians, churches, Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, trees, Uncategorized, wild birds

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

aquilegia, Archdeacon's Visitation, Easter cactus, Halesworth, hare, lilac, newts, rowan, St Mary's church, woodpigeon

I am amazed at how lucky we were with the weather on Monday!  Since then the weather has been ‘changeable’ as the forecasters say. Tuesday had showers in the morning but a sunny, breezy afternoon, Wednesday had light showers in the early morning, a very fine middle of the day and then heavy showers from late afternoon onwards and today, well, yuk! is all I can say.  Light showers this morning, heavy showers by midday and persistent rain this afternoon and evening.  What makes it worse is that I have a nasty cold in the head.  I had hoped to go with R to the Archdeacon’s Visitation service at St Mary’s church in Halesworth this evening but E needed to see her doctor and the only available appointment time was 6.30pm.  I drove her home afterwards and saw R driving past us in the opposite direction on his way to the service and there wasn’t enough time for me to drop E at home and join him.  And anyway, I think I’m better off at home not spreading germs about.

An Archdeacon’s visitation, as far as I understand it, is when all the Churchwardens (R is a Churchwarden) in the Deanery get together for a special service once a year with all their priests and the Archdeacon.  They hand in their annual reports and accounts if they haven’t already done it on-line and also their Declaration.  Churchwardens are supposed to serve for six years at most, I think, and then a new one is voted in.  However, it usually is a case of ‘once a Churchwarden always a Churchwarden’, as no-one wants the job.  The Churchwardens are ‘sworn in’, for want of a proper phrase at this special service and take their oaths to do their duty.  A few hymns are sung and this sounds lovely as only large churches are chosen for this service and they are always full.  The Archdeacon has his or her say and maybe some of the priests will give a talk too.  This year there will be an extra item.  Our Rector and the priest in the Benefice next to ours will be licensed to each others Benefice.  This will mean that they will be able to serve in each others Benefice without having to get special permission each time from the Bishop.  Our Rector looks after a Benefice of eleven churches with a couple of retired priests, one Reader and two Elders to help him.  The priest in the Benefice next to ours looks after three churches one of which is in a town.  It will make life much easier for our Rector especially, once this is done.  Our Rector is due to retire in a very few years and we don’t know if we will get another priest to replace him.  We think there will be a lot of changes and not for the better and our priests are preparing the ground for us.  To add insult to injury we haven’t even got a Bishop at the moment and haven’t had for some time!

I wanted to go to the service, not only to support R and our church but to go into St Mary’s church again.  When I first moved to Suffolk in 1988 I lived in Halesworth and attended St Marys.  I was made very welcome at the church and made a number of friends.  I also met R there and he asked me out while drinking coffee after a Sunday service.  We had our Marriage Blessing Service there too.  R has just returned and tells me the service went well and the refreshments afterwards were very good.

I have been able to take a few photos round the garden during the past few days.

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Our Rowan or Mountain Ash tree is flowering.  It has grown well in the last couple of years and this is the best it’s ever looked.

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Rowan blossom.

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Rowan blossom.

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A very poor photo of the newts in our front pond.

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White lilac.

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White lilac blossom.

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White lilac blossom.

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Pink and purple aquilegias.

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This the best photo I have of the hare that has been visiting our garden recently.  Back view only!

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Woodpigeons having a bath in a puddle in our drive earlier today.

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Indoors now.  This is my Easter cactus which is just coming into flower.  Unlike Christmas cacti these flowers shut during the afternoon and re-open next morning.

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Easter cactus flowers.

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Easter cactus flowers.

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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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