Nothing In Particular

02 Tue Feb 2016

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, family, Gardening, music, plants, Rural Diary

Tags

'The Company', Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, Berwang Holiday Music Course, Candlemas, Christmas Cactus, church, family, flowers, funeral, hellebores, house improvements, Kerry Camden, Mozart, phalaenopsis orchid, renovations, Serenade for 13 Winds, snowdrops, wet weather

Snowdrops under the crabapple tree

As the title of this post states, this is about nothing in particular. Since Christmas we, as a family, have been nowhere and have done nothing except the usual chores of housework and shopping and driving – and in Elinor’s case, going to college. Richard has just returned from three nights away in Manchester staying with his brother and enjoyed a visit to a mining museum and a trip to Bury Market and the East Lancashire Railway. Elinor and I stayed at home.

A Hellebore flower

We have found the changeable weather a little trying but fortunately for us we haven’t had to deal with flooding, just lots of deep puddles and mud, mud and yet more mud! My car was half brown and half blue and the mud had oozed into the car round the doors, so just before he went away Richard hosed it down for me and restored it to its original blue-all-over colour.

Another Hellebore

The next two weeks will be very busy as we are beginning on our house renovations. The new garage doors were fitted today and most of the windows and doors in the house will be replaced next week. I am not looking forward to the disruption at all but when it is done the house will be warmer and more secure.

Snowdrop flower. Please excuse the horrible red finger!

One of my aunts died last Sunday 24th January and I will be travelling to Kent with my brother tomorrow for her funeral. Richard will be staying at home and will be driving Elinor to and from college. It will be good to see my cousins again despite the sad occasion. My aunt was my late father’s older sister and she was the last of Dad’s siblings. I have six first cousins on Dad’s side of the family and I am hoping to see most of them tomorrow. Andrew (my brother) and I will be meeting up with Francesca (my sister) when we get to the church.

Phalaenopsis Orchid

I am also going to visit Alice in Sheffield on the 12th of February and I will be watching her perform in another play, ‘And Then There Were None’ – an adaptation of the book by Agatha Christie.

Here is the trailer they have made for the play. I think you will be amused!

All my Christmas Cacti are re-flowering. Perhaps these are now Candlemas Cacti?

It is Candlemas today. We had a Eucharist service at Rumburgh on Sunday and celebrated the festival early. At Candlemas we remember three things; the presentation of the child Jesus, Jesus’ first entry into the temple and the Virgin Mary’s purification. Traditionally, candles are also blessed at Candlemas and Richard our priest gave us two new altar candles.

My choice of music today is Mozart’s Serenade for 13 Winds in B-flat major. My first introduction to this piece was when I was nearly 14 years of age and I was on a music course in the Austrian Tirol. I was lucky enough to be given the first (lead) clarinet part and I loved the whole experience – the great responsibility, the team-work, the music itself. I will never forget that feeling of euphoria as we played through the whole piece together! As soon as I hear the opening bars of music I am transported back in time to Austria, I am 13 years old and full of hope and excitement. This was my first ever trip abroad and I and a friend travelled there with our clarinet teacher and Kerry Camden the bassoonist who drove us from London all the way to the Tirol with a stop overnight in the Ardennes. I had a one-year passport and my parents had given me £15 spending money!

Thanks for visiting!

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…..

….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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

All the hollies have new leaves too.

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

It has beautiful leaves too that glow in the sunshine.

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

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!

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

Mammalaria

Mammalaria flower

Peanut cactus flower.

I don’t know what this one is called.

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.