This and That – Part 1

Tags

amelanchier, blackbird, blackthorn, bluebell, countryside, cowslip, daffodils, English Elm, English Oak, garden, Goat Willow, green woodpecker, greengage, horse chestnut, Lords and Ladies, Marxh-marigold, pheasant, photography, rainbow, Red Deer, shrubs, Snowy Mespil, Suffolk, trees, white dead-nettle, wild cherry, wild flowers

I have taken a number of photographs over the last few weeks but haven’t had the time to write any posts.   Here are a few of the better pictures from April and earlier.

Red Deer (Cervus elaphus)

Back in January I was driving home from shopping when I saw this small group of five Red Deer making their way across a field towards the road.  I had to slow down and then stop because I could see that they were not only made nervous by my car but their usual path was blocked by a fire someone had lit to get rid of brushwood.  They eventually managed to cross the lane a little further along and then carried on their way.  I took a photo of them through the car window and this is the result – heavily cropped.  I had thought that I had missed them and it was only when I eventually looked carefully at the shot on my computer a few weeks ago I realised that they were there!

The Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) family wandering through the garden at the beginning of April.

This is such an untidy photo with the recycling bin out by the roadside and my former car in the way too.  This is another photo taken through glass (the kitchen window this time – you can see a reflection in the bottom left corner of the picture).  We haven’t seen the pheasants for a while now so I presume the females are busy on their nests.

We had a storm with heavy rain and then the sun came out.  It all looked so bright and fresh, so I stood at the front door and took three photos, to the left, straight ahead and to the right.

A few days later I stood at the end of the drive and took this photo of the ditch that runs along the edge of the garden. We have daffodils growing all along its length. The lane runs parallel with the front of our property. You can also see my new car in this picture.

Pussy Willow / Goat Willow (Salix caprea)

Goat Willow in flower

Cowslips (Primula veris)

A stormy sky. A photo of our house (and the house next door) taken standing next to our big pond and looking across the corner of the field.

The summerhouse

A Green Woodpecker (Picus viridis) looking for ants in the lawn

I was quite pleased with this photo as it showed all the different colours of its feathers, even the black and white spotted feathers under the wings.  This is a female adult as the moustachial feathers are all black.  The male has a crimson centre to the stripe.

A male Blackbird (Turdus merula) was also on the lawn looking for food.

White Dead-nettle (Lamium album)

Wild Cherry blossom (Prunus avium)

The first Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) flower in our garden this spring

There is nothing quite like the scent of Bluebells.  They are wild hyacinths but don’t have the cloying scent of the garden variety.  There is a sweet freshness that lifts the spirits and is irrevocably linked, to my mind, with birdsong, sunshine after rain and hope.

Greengage blossom (Prunus domestica ssp. italica). I hope we have some fruit this year.

Some of the Cowslips in our garden are orange and red.

Pendunculate / English Oak (Quercus robur). New leaves and flowers (catkins) appear at the same time.

Marsh-marigold (Caltha palustris). I found it impossible to photograph this bright yellow flower well.

More Marsh-marigold

New Horse-chestnut leaves and flower buds (Aesculus hippocastanum)

Beautiful new English Elm leaves (Ulmus procera). We have a number of small Elm trees in our garden. Sadly they will only live for a few years before they succumb to Dutch Elm disease.

Lords and Ladies / Jack-in-the-pulpit / Cuckoo pint (Arum maculatum).  This plant has many names.   Its arrowhead-shaped leaves are often dark spotted.

Snowy Mespil (Amelanchier canadensis) blossom

Blackthorn blossom (Prunus spinosa). This poor photo is the only image of this year’s blossom I managed to get.

A rainbow behind the trees

All these photos were taken in April and in my garden, except the first one.

I find I haven’t made a music selection for a while so this post’s choice is ‘Let’s Work Together’ by Canned Heat.  Excellent lyrics, great tune and the best tempo ever!

Thanks for visiting!

A Few Things I’ve Seen in my Garden.

Tags

bird's nest, birds, Common Frog, cowslip, daffodils, ducks, fish, flowers, frogspawn, garden, Great Tit, ground-ivy, hazel, Hazel bud-gall, horse chestnut, lichen, Mallard, marsh marigold, moss, pond, primrose, primula, spring, Suffolk, sweet violet, tadpoles, trees, Water Mint

Two very handsome Mallard drakes (Anas platyrhynchos).

Ground-ivy (Glechoma hederacea). Many of the newer leaves are purple and the plant has a slightly unpleasant minty scent.

As I have mentioned before, when we moved to this house there were no Primroses (Primula vulgaris) in the garden at all. We now have a few plants here and there on the banks of our ditches.

The Cowslips (Primula veris) are beginning to bloom. We have always had plenty of these!

A primula hybrid that arrived unbidden about three years ago. I rather like it.

The house next door to us is the former village school.  I am not sure when it closed but a friend of ours from church used to attend it during the 1940’s.  Where our house and garden is now, there was a meadow full of wild flowers and our friend walked across it every day to collect the milk for the school from the farm next door.  These wild flowers we have in our garden are all that’s left of the hundreds that used to be here up to about 50 or 60 years ago.  I hope that we can hang on to these few and perhaps, by not using chemicals, encourage them to spread.

Sweet Violet (Viola odorata)

This is our parcels and newspaper box at the end of our drive. We noticed during the winter that it was starting to rot and needed replacing. It appears that we weren’t the only ones to notice the state the box was in. I opened it the other day to find something had made a hole in the back of it ( you can see where the light is shining through just below my thumb as I lift the lid). The next day I found this straw and moss had been put in there. Richard saw a Great Tit (Parus major) flying away from the box so I suspect this is a Great Tit’s nest. I carefully peeped into it a day or so later and found the whole box stuffed full of moss and we can also see lots of straw sticking out from where the box sides are coming away from the base. We have tied up the box and put a ‘not in use’ sign on it and we now await the happy arrival of baby Great Tits.

I knew that Tits nested in holes and I also was aware that Willow Tits excavated their own holes but I hadn’t realised that Great Tits also excavated holes to nest in.

The top of the brick gate-post at the end of our drive is covered in moss and lichen but because we haven’t had much rain recently, it isn’t looking as good as usual. Birds have been collecting the moss for their nests too.

This is a close-up of one of the lichens.

The Marsh-marigold or King Cup (Caltha palustris) is flowering in the pond.

I love its shiny yellow petals.

I took this photo of the daffodils round the pond over a week ago and I am glad I did. On Tuesday and Wednesday of last week we had very warm weather (24 degrees C on Wednesday!) and the daffodils that had come out earliest began to wilt.

Earlier this year I posted pictures of these Hazel (Corylus avellana) bud galls. I went to look at them again last week and noticed tiny flies sitting on all of the galls. I wonder if these flies had hatched out of the galls.

New Hazel leaves

Water Mint (Mentha aquatica). The new shoots are growing round and in the big pond.

Horse-chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). This photo was taken about a week ago.

This photo of our Horse-chestnut tree was taken on the same day. These leaves are higher and get more sunlight. I was pleased to see that the flower panicles (candles) were growing nicely.

I saw the frogs spawning but unfortunately didn’t have my camera with me. I took this photo of the spawn later in the day. This is the first time I have found frogspawn in our pond and was surprised at how late in the year it was. We have a windswept, exposed garden which may account for it.

There were lots of eggs and I was glad that the fish that live in the pond hadn’t come out of hibernation yet.

I took this picture a week later as the tadpoles were hatching out. The fish still hadn’t woken up!

Two days after this the tadpoles had dispersed but I had also seen the fish swimming in the pond and leaping to catch flies.  They were probably feasting on tadpoles too.

I found a dead fish on the path round the pond again – I found one last year that had been caught by the Heron who had been disturbed by one of us.  I don’t know what had caught this year’s fish as there was no stab mark on it.  It is interesting to see the workings of the food-chain.  We are part of it as we get bitten by the flies that the fish eat!

Thank-you for visiting!

Could Be Worse

Tags

Alpine Pasque Flower, anxiety, black-headed gulls, college, cowslip, fungi, horse chestnut, illness, job seeking, Knopper gall, muck spreading, oak, pleated inkcap, seagulls, shaggy inkcap, snowy waxcap, unpredictable weather, viburnum bodnantense

This has been a very strange summer.  The weather, for one thing, has been very unpredictable.  British weather is always unpredictable but this year it has outdone itself, I think.  Torrential rain, gale-force winds, mini tornadoes ( they are called willies in East Anglia!).  Lots of humid, stormy days in July and the coldest August for many years.  The plants in my garden have got very confused.  It became quite cool and wet at the end of June and the beginning of July (just in time for our holiday) so my Viburnum Bodnantense thought Autumn had arrived and started to flower.

Viburnum Bodnantense is supposed to flower from Autumn through to Spring.

My Alpine Pasque Flower thought Spring had come back and began flowering again.

Alpine Pasque Flower flowering for a second time this year

We found them blooming when we got home from our holiday on the 9th of July.  The poor things then got a bit of a shock as the temperature rose from about 15 degrees C to 28 degrees with high humidity.  August temperatures dipped again and last week I found cowslips in flower in the garden.

A cowslip in flower at the end of August. Cowslips usually flower in April and May.

This week the temperature has risen at last from 12 degrees C and grass frost at night ( in August!) to a pleasant 20 degrees today.

I have found a few fungi recently.

Pleated Inkcap

I photographed a better specimen in May

Pleated Inkcap

which is when I saw this one which is ( I think ) a Snowy Waxcap.

Snowy Waxcap

Coming home from church on Sunday we saw  this

Shaggy Inkcap

The oak tree in our garden is covered in galls as usual.

This is a Knopper Gall on the acorns photographed on 26th July

The same gall photographed on 5th August

As you can see, it had grown quite a lot in ten days.  They are now turning a darker colour.

Our Horse Chestnut is suffering from the fungus infection that causes blotches on the leaves.

Blotches caused by the fungus Guignadia aesculi accidentally introduced into Britain from North America in the 1930s

Muck spreading and ploughing was delayed for a few weeks but was eventually done in the field behind our house last week.

Muck spreading. Mmmmn lovely!

Ploughing

Muck spreading and ploughing. The local farmer is very considerate and doesn’t leave stinky pig-muck on the fields for long as you see.

Skillful and speedy tractor work

The seagulls love following the plough and then stay around for a day or so feasting on all the grubs and worms.

A mixed flock of seagulls

These gulls are Black-headed Gulls with their winter plumage ( no black heads only black smudges on the side of their heads)

Another reason I think this has been a strange summer is the anxiety and worry we have all had has caused the time to pass by in a kind of haze.

My elder daughter has been trying to finish her PhD and find work and now has a large overdraft with the bank.  She has been able to do some proof-reading recently which has helped a little.

My mother was disappointed to find she had another bleed behind her left eye when she went for her check-up at the hospital.  She has started another course of injections.  She has been unwell with a bad upset stomach this last week and when I saw her today she had lost a lot of weight and had become very frail and vague.  She only told me about the upset stomach when I rang her yesterday – she hadn’t wanted to worry me!

My younger daughter, after two years out of education because of chronic anxiety has had the courage to apply for a place at college to do some GCSE exams.  She has been accepted and yesterday she went there for a ‘taster day’ – a practise run-through and a chance to meet her tutors and get time-tables etc.  She came home exhausted and tearful after spending seven-and-a-half hours in college – the longest time away from home and/or family for years.  Her term starts next Monday and she is so very nervous.  I will be driving her into college and then picking her up again when she finishes which will mean nearly 100 miles a day for me.  Eventually we hope that she may be able to get the bus into Norwich but she probably won’t be able to manage it for some time.  We are all holding our breath and hoping that she doesn’t lose her nerve.

My husband has had a problem with his throat since April.  He has had a recurring painful ulcer at the back of his throat that comes up when he eats.  He has pains in his neck too.  He has found that taking anti-histamine seems to control the ulcer.  He has visited his doctor three times and the first two times was told it probably wasn’t anything to worry about and to come back in a month. The third time the doctor referred him to the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist at the hospital.  He eventually got an appointment to see the specialist on the 5th August.  The specialist didn’t know what was causing the problem so arranged for R to have an MRI scan which took place on 18th August.  R got a letter from the hospital last week asking him to see the specialist again yesterday.  R has been getting more and more anxious as the summer has progressed, as is only natural, and the long delays in between appointments have been difficult to cope with.  The specialist began by saying that she couldn’t find anything in the scan to account for the problems R has been experiencing, however she had found something else which will need dealing with before any more investigation into the throat business is done.  There is a growth on his pituitary gland at the base of his brain and this will have to be operated on soon before he becomes really unwell.  He will have to take some time off work and won’t be able to drive for some time before and after the operation.  The specialist is referring my poor husband to another specialist who will contact R in about a month.  R is very relieved it isn’t cancer but is very nervous about having a brain operation.

If my posts have been sporadic, if I have written a load of rubbish or made a rather stupid comment on your blogs it is because of all of the above.  I can’t think straight and I can’t concentrate on anything.  My arthritis is playing-up in my hands especially and I am so far behind with everything it is shocking!  However, I am a strong person and with God’s help I will be able to support all the members of my family and all will be well.

 

Monday’s Garden

Tags

blackthorn, bullace, cowslip, daffodils, Elmer Fudd, fritillaries, greengage, jonquils, ladybird, lathyrus, Mothering Sunday, pieris, primulas, rabbits, saxifrage, simnel cake, wild cherry

 

I must admit to having an Elmer Fudd moment this morning.  I went to have a look at the cowslip/primula plants I had transplanted last weekend and to my horror I saw that all the flowers and buds had been eaten on almost all the plants.  I suspect some wascally wabbit!  I will now not know until next spring which of the plants are normal cowslips to be planted at the top of the ditch and which are the different ones to be grown on elsewhere.

Very strange weather today.  It was quite warm – in fact it got to 18 degrees centigrade but we only got a little sunshine at midday and then a few showers of rain during the afternoon.  Quite humid all day and extremely cloudy this afternoon.   I walked round the garden checking on the bird feeders and looking to see what plants had started to grow or flower since Saturday.  I hadn’t been able to get into the garden at all yesterday as I had been busy cooking lunch after coming home from church and then entertaining Mum all the afternoon.  We had had a good Mothering Sunday service at church and all the women had been presented with little posies of flowers.  The Rector looked wonderful in his rose coloured chasuble but sneakily removed it before I could photograph him!

My eldest daughter A had sent me a card which had arrived in the post on Saturday and she telephoned me when I got back from church.  E gave me a card and two stoneware pots for the garden.  Mum arrived bringing with her an apple pie and a simnel cake.  My mother will be 84 in a couple of weeks time and can hardly see but she still manages to bake and garden and run her house with no help at all.

Mum’s simnel cake.

 

The goose is still sitting on her nest on the island.  She probably only has another week or so to go until her eggs hatch and then we’ll see how many goslings there are.  While I walked round the pond I heard not only frogs croaking but also what I assume to be toads as well.  We do get toads in the garden but I’ve never noticed them in the pond before.  I also saw flower buds on the marsh marigold in the big pond that has never flowered before as well.  I was really quite pleased about this as the pond has looked so awful since we had the work done to remove most of the willow scrub.  What willows we have left are full of pussy willow flowers and alive with so many bees.

The wild damson or bullace tree is in flower.

The wild or bird cherry is also just coming into flower too.

Our greengage tree has its first flowers.  We planted it the autumn before last and it didn’t flower at all last year but grew very well.  My mother-in-law had asked us if we would grow one as she likes greengages so we got it especially for her and we call it Joyce (her name).

The blackthorn at the front of the house is now in full flower.  The tree at the back of the house has finished flowering and the tree by the front gate hasn’t started to flower yet.  The front of the house is colder than the back and the gate is coldest and shadiest of all.

My pieris ‘Forest Flame’ has new leaves on it.

The saxifrage has started to flower.

The new Frittilaries under the crabapple are flowering.  I am pleased to see that there is a white one.

Primulas.

Cowslip.

Daffodils at the front of the house at the edge of the ditch.

A seven-spot ladybird on a daffodil.  A lot of our daffodils suffered in the hail and rain we had last Wednesday and they also have to put up with all sorts of wild fowl trampling over them.

An orange-red cowslip.

Jonquils.

Lathyrus vernus ‘Spring Beauty’.  This is an ornamental vetch – a member of the pea family.

Wednesday 12th to Sunday 16th March

Tags

alder, ambulances, brimstone butterfly, chaffinch, church, cowslip, daffodils, dog violet, Eye, fields, figs, greylags, Harleston, hazel, heartsease, Lent, mallards, moon, moorhen, nesting, pond, prayer, pussy willow, quiz night, rooks, Rumburgh, silverlace primula, sunset, tortoiseshell butterfly, trees, Wissett

Wednesday began with frost and mist.  This soon cleared and the weather was then lovely for the rest of the day.  I did my usual shopping trip with my mother with a detour to a free-range chicken farm at Eye where Mum buys her eggs.  I had a little shopping to do for myself, so called in at Harleston on my way home.  I arrived home just after 2pm for a late lunch and had time for a few household chores and a quick walk round the garden to feed the birds, tidy up a couple of things and take some photos before R came home.

A moorhen and a chaffinch at the front of the house.

 

The moorhen again.

 

A couple of photos of the daffodils that have come up round the big pond.

Some violet leaves that have struggled up through the dried mud round the pond.

 

And some cowslip leaves too!

 

Reflection of trees and cloud in the pond.

 

Afternoon moon.

 

I had decided what we should have for an evening meal and was about to start it when R offered to cook and I gladly accepted his offer.  I didn’t have time to eat anything as I had to go out at 6.45pm to collect Mum and take her to Eye to attend a Lent course.  The course in her area is a deanery course.  A deanery is a collection of benefices and a benefice is a collection of parishes.  In rural areas to have benefice and or deanery meetings or courses means that there will be more people attending and any speakers kind enough to visit will have a good audience.  The only downside is that the distances to be travelled by many parishioners is very great.  This year’s course is on prayer and Wednesday’s talk was on ‘Prayer with Words’.  The speaker was the Precentor from the Cathedral at Bury St Edmund’s; a really pleasant man who gave an interesting talk.  He introduced us to poets and poems that were new to us as well as reading from old favourites.  My journey home was very difficult because of thick fog.

Thursday.  I was woken just before 6.00am by the rooks!  I had remembered to bring in the sunflower seed feeder but the rooks were trying to get the remains of yesterday’s seed off the bird-table and were tapping loudly on it with their enormous beaks.  I have a cage round the bird-table which is supposed to prevent large birds from getting on it. However, it doesn’t stop the birds from clinging on to the edge of the table with their claws, flapping their wings for balance and pecking food through the mesh!  Another lovely day.  Went in to Halesworth for a haircut and to get yet more shopping (I always manage to forget something each time I go!)  My usual hairdresser is on maternity leave so her Mum did my hair and we chatted about babies.  Both her daughters are having their first babies in the next two weeks and they are getting a little apprehensive.  On the way home I saw a tortoiseshell butterfly and an enormous brimstone butterfly.

I spent the afternoon gardening as well as having a short (for us!) conversation with my sister who was planning to visit Mum at the weekend.  The geese have been very argumentative this week.  The gander of the pair who have claimed the island has been spending most of his time swimming in the pond and seeing off any other goose/gander who dares to come anywhere near the pond bank.  He must be exhausted as he doesn’t seem to have eaten anything either.

A couple of photos of the mallards in our front ditch.

Miniature daffodils in the grass.

 

Goat or Pussy Willow.  Salix caprea.

 

When R got home he wanted to go out for a short walk across the fields.  The wind had got up a little and it had got cloudy but R managed to take some decent photos while we were out.

Alder catkins and cone-like fruits from last year.

 

Hazel catkins.

 

More fog overnight.

Friday.  A cooler, cloudier, breezier day.  I did some more gardening and lots of ironing.  The geese seemed to have resolved their differences.  The resident pair came to sit near me while I gardened and whenever I looked up they gave gentle honks.  I knew they were asking for food so when I had got to the end of my weeding I fetched some special goose and duck feed I have for just such an occasion (to quote Foghorn Leghorn) and cast it on the grass near by them.  Of course, the gander then hissed at me while the goose ate the food.  He is a very protective mate and even though I have provided the food he has to warn me off and so I do keep my distance!

Saturday.  A quiet morning and another beautiful one.  Still very breezy but much brighter than yesterday.  Did some housework and spoke to A on the phone.  We drove to Mum’s in the afternoon to see my sister F who was visiting with her eldest son and her dog Ben.   We had a lovely couple of chatty hours and we then had to leave to get our evening meal before going to yet another quiz night.  This one was in aid of Rumburgh village hall.  I think it was the noisiest event I had been too since going to dances when I was young.  The hall had just been insulated and redecorated but there were no curtains or blinds at the windows yet and I think this was the reason it was so noisy.  The two farmers on our team were both a little deaf (caused by driving noisy farm machinery) and they were finding it really difficult to hear anything above the hubbub of loud chatter.  Our local Member of Parliament was taking part too.  He lives in Wissett, the next village along on the way to Halesworth, and is very good about taking part in local events and is a truely supportive MP.  He had been out all day on the ambulances as there has been an enquiry about the time it takes for ambulances to get to emergencies.  He was talking to R and one of our farmer friends and said he was very sympathetic towards the ambulance crews, as he had seen for himself the great distances they had to travel and also how many wasted journeys they had to make.  R told him about my sister’s job as a paramedic in Kent and some of the problems she has to put up with too.  Unfortunately we came ninth today but R won a picture of a tree in the raffle.

Sunday.  There was a Morning Prayer service at Rumburgh today but I couldn’t attend as I took Mum to her church.  She hasn’t got anyone to give her a lift at the moment and as she doesn’t usually see anyone at all during the week except me, and all her friends are at her church, I think it only right that I take her there.  I got back home at 1.00pm and had lunch before doing some chores, putting a loaf on to bake and then back out into the garden.  I fed the birds which took nearly an hour – all the feeders were empty, I have a number of them scattered about the garden and the garden is well over an acre in size.  I had noticed this morning when I looked out of the window that the goose has started sitting on her nest on the island.

 

A dog violet in flower.

 

A silverlace primula.

 

A heartsease flower.

 

Figs are starting to swell on the tree.

 

Lots of pictures of this evening’s sunset.

The rookery in the sunset.