Quiet Sunday

Tags

Bees, Cotoneaster, gardening, Great Mullein, Mullein Moth larva, purple toadflax, recording of Turtle Dove song, scabious, St Michael and St Felix Church Rumburgh, Suffolk, sunset, The Vapourer Moth larva, Turtle Dove

 

Grasses growing round the edge of the field behind our house.

I have been doing a lot of gardening recently.  Not the gentle-dead-heading, touch-of-light-weeding type of gardening but lots of digging – which always involves extracting large flint boulders from clay soil, lots of watering – carrying heavy watering cans round our large garden and lots of grass-cutting – I do most of this with shears.  We have a large area of grass which is planted up with spring bulbs.  There are a few trees planted there as well and the ground is very uneven.  I think that it was originally a spoil heap from when the house was built; it also slopes quite steeply down to the ditch at the front of the house.  We leave cutting the grass until the bulb leaves have died back which means it is left until June by which time it is looking quite unkempt.  The ground is much too uneven for the tractor mower and because of the trees it is a very difficult area for Richard to do (he is 6′ 3″ tall).  I am a foot shorter in height than he is, so I do this part of the garden.  I can’t use the strimmer as it is too heavy for me so I cut the 3′ high grass with shears.  We bought a scythe but somehow we can’t get it to sharpen.  I like using shears as I can see what I am doing and I don’t cut the wrong things down as I might if I could use the strimmer.  A strimmer makes such a mess; shears are tidy.  Once I have cut the grass to a manageable length I then rake it up into a number of enormous heaps and then transport it to the other end of the garden in a wheelbarrow and put it on the grass heap.  I then use the electric mower and cut the grass even shorter.

The field of barley behind our house.

As  a result of this work I am extremely achy and stiff but I have developed some good muscles in my arms and shoulders!  I was glad we had a little rain on Sunday so I excused myself from working outside.  I read my book, talked with my husband and daughter and generally had a relaxing day.

View across the pond to the field beyond.

We had an Evening Prayer service at St Michael and St Felix Church in Rumburgh where Richard is one of the church wardens.  We left home at 5.45 pm to make sure the church was tidy and ready for the service.  There had been a big wedding there on Saturday so the church is full of beautiful flowers.

The decorated Rood Screen. This is very pretty but it would be better if people didn’t decorate it as the screen is hundreds of years old and falling apart.

Posies on the pew ends. I think the top of the poppyhead (the carved pew end) looks like a clown with a bowler hat.

Flowers at the East Window

Flowers round the Font

Flowers in the porch

Flowers in the porch

The path has been regravelled and the fence panel at the side of the church has been repaired.

Fresh gravel and new fence panel.

The bride’s family live at the farm which surrounds the church and the church is in their back garden.  I have never walked all round my church because that would mean walking through someone else’s property.  However, it is so nice to have kind people who decorate our church and repair our fence and path because their daughter wanted to get married in the church!

Our evening service was taken by Maurice and we concentrated on the Trinity.  It was a pleasant, peaceful and thoughtful service.

I’ll use the rest of the post to show you a few more things I’ve seen on my travels and in the garden recently.

This is a Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) and I noticed the other day that it was looking a little ragged.

This is one of the culprits – a Mullein Moth larva (Shargacucullia verbasci). The plant was covered in the caterpillars which will probably eat most of the plant and leave a blackened stump.

I had noticed that a few of my plants and tree seedlings had been damaged and on Sunday I found a few of the caterpillars that were responsible.

This is a Vapourer Moth larva (Orgyia antiqua), and it is eating a Laburnum seedling.

The Vapourer is often found in towns and often defoliates street trees.  I’ve never seen it in our garden before – perhaps they found their way here on a plant from the garden centre in town.  Vapourers are tussock moths which are all rather hairy.  The Vapourer female moth doesn’t have functional wings and will stay close to her cocoon after hatching out.  The Vapourer larva, along with other members of the Tussock Moth family, has tufts or tussocks of often colourful hairs (the Vapourer’s are yellow).  The hairs on adults and larva are usually barbed which makes them unpleasant and painful to handle.

A bee on a scabious flower.

I am not very good at identifying bees.  I never seem to notice or photograph the key feature mentioned in the ID guide.  The bee above could be a cuckoo bee.

I try to grow as many plants as possible that are liked by bees and other insects.

Bee on Cotoneaster.

Bee on Purple Toadflax.

A rather lovely sunset I saw last week.

Lastly, I have another video to share with you but it isn’t the video that’s important just the soundtrack.  I would like you to ignore the video!  It’s rubbish!  I was taking photos in the garden next to the pond, when the Turtle Dove started singing.  I switched the camera to film so I could record the song and vaguely pointed the camera in the direction of the pond.  The video is very shaky as I didn’t have a tripod with me.  I only managed to record a very short part of the song.  It is quite a quiet purring sound and the other birds in the garden were singing very loudly!

Thanks for visiting!

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.