April’s End

Tags

April, church porch repair, churches, Common Hawthorn, Common Storksbill, cowslips, crown imperial, daisy, dandelion, Dove's-foot Cranesbill, Forget-me-not, Greater Stitchwort, Lords and Ladies, Ribwort Plantain, St Michael and St Felix Church Rumburgh, St Michael South Elmham church, Suffolk, sunset, the Beck, walking

I began writing this post immediately after publishing my last one and got well over half way through writing it and then had to stop.  No time for much self-indulgence, reading and writing for some weeks and now that I have a little time, this post seems somewhat irrelevant.  However, I don’t want to waste it by deleting it so I’ll finish it as best I can.

A pastoral scene at St Michael South Elmham church

Holy Week and then Easter week were very busy, so I didn’t manage to take many photos.  This was one of a very few and was taken on Good Friday as I was leaving church after a service of quiet prayer.

The churchyard of the church of St. Michael and St. Felix at Rumburgh

This and the next two photos were taken on Easter Day in the early afternoon.  As you can see, the churchyard was full of yellow Cowslips ( Primula veris).  I had taken Mum to her church at Eye in the morning and Richard had been to a service at St. Margaret South Elmham in our benefice.  After having some lunch we visited Rumburgh church to make sure all was well and to change the colours on the altar and to put flowers in the church.  We returned home and I began preparing the dinner to which Mum had been invited.

One of the many cowslips in the churchyard

Rumburgh church

During April we had work done on the church porch at Rumburgh.  It is now less likely to fall down.

A striking sunset seen from the back of our house.

Richard and I managed to find time for a short walk round the lanes during Easter week.

Crown Imperial

Someone must have either discarded a Crown Imperial fritillary at the side of our lane or planted it there on purpose.  We have seen it here for a few springs now and it is getting larger and larger.  It is about 3.5 feet tall, well over a metre in height.  I was unable to stop and photograph it when it was in full and glorious flower but even with its shrivelled petals you can easily see what it is and how well it is doing.

The Beck – the stream that flows through much of The Saints.

There was very little water in the Beck at the end of April and by the middle of the following month it had dried up completely.

Some of the undergrowth and scrub had been cleared away from this area next to the lane and an ancient boundary ditch was revealed

The first Greater Stitchwort (Stellaria holostea ) flowers of the year

A bright and beautiful Dandelion (Taraxacum agg. )

The Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna ) was just beginning to blossom

I noticed some Forget-me-nots at the back of the grass verge but didn’t look to see what kind they were.  Probably Field Forget-me-not (Myosotis arvensis).

I also saw my first Lords and Ladies (Arum maculatum) of the season. I love all the different shades of green in this photo!

A couple of days later I had to go to the doctor’s surgery for my regular blood-test and noticed that there were many flowers blooming in the patches of grass alongside the driveway.  These grassy areas haven’t been tended as they used to be, due to financial cuts and other problems so these ‘weeds’ have flourished.

Dove’s-foot Cranesbill (Geranium molle) with Daisy (Bellis perennis) and Ribwort Plantain (Plantago lanceolata)

I noticed a profusion of yet more small pink flowers….

…and discovered they were Common Storksbill (Erodium cicutarium), a plant that I usually see nearer to the sea as it likes growing in sand and gravel. My camera doesn’t show how very pink this flower is.

And that is all I managed to record in April this year.  Rather an abrupt end, for which I apologise.

Primroses

Tags

Celandines, cowslips, early dog-violet, primroses, red dead-nettle, Suffolk, wild flowers

Primroses (Primula vulgaris) along the edge of the ditch at the side of the road.  I saw these on Good Friday after we had been to church and then to the Rector’s house to enjoy Hot Cross Buns.

The primroses this year are so abundant.  They are everywhere!

Richard pointed these out to me. He had noticed them while he was cycling to church on Good Friday morning to strip the altar.  After we got home we walked down the lane towards Rumburgh.

I am not sure if these pink primroses are the naturally occurring pink primroses or if they have spread from a garden.  Primroses and cowslips hybridise very easily but as these ones are some way from the nearest house I hope that they are naturally pink.  I have seen a number of pink ones on my travels this spring.

Here is a close-up of them.

These are the primroses on the bank by St Margaret South Elmham church. I took the photo on our way home after the Easter morning service.

They do look very pretty in large groups.

I think all the wild flowers have benefited from two milder winters and lots of rainfall.  We had no time during last summer when it became too dry for the grass to grow.

A couple of lesser celandines (Ranunculus ficaria) are with these primroses.

Some early cowslips (Primula veris) just coming out.

A patch of rather stunted red dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum)

Early Dog-violet (Viola reichenbachiana) was growing under the hedgerow.

As we walked past Cordelia’s house we saw her geese walking down the drive.

They are free to roam wherever they wish to go.

The grass was starred with golden celandines. A few daffodils have been planted here too. More primroses at the edge of the ditch.

Just a few celandines with what looks like Great Willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum) leaf rosettes, a few Common (Stinging) Nettles (Urtica dioica) and Cow Parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) shoots too.

We went into the field and looked towards our house.

Here it is.

A last photo of primroses. On the other side of the hedge are Jacob sheep with their lambs. I tried to photograph them but the hedge was so thick I couldn’t get the camera to stop focusing on the hedge instead of the lambs!

 

I hope you have enjoyed the flowers!

Before I publish this I must ask for your advice.  I have been looking back at posts I published last April and have noticed that at least one has disappeared.  I have not erased it myself, in fact I hadn’t looked at these posts since I published them.  I have no idea when it/they disappeared.  I remember a post about a trip to Covehithe – I still have the photos in my Media Library.  Has this happened to anyone else?  I don’t suppose there is any chance of my retrieving them; they are of no real value but I would like to know if there is anything I can do to get them back.  I have mentioned this on the WordPress Forum but I have had no response.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Weather

Tags

blackberry, clouds, cowslips, gardening, primroses, rhubarb, snow, weather

The weather is a topic we British never tire of talking about.  This is because it is forever changing and unpredictable.  The temperature can rise or fall by as much as ten degrees centigrade in just a few hours at any time of the day; we can have warm days in winter and cold days in summer and a rain cloud is usually just about to appear over the horizon.  Our lives are all affected by the weather to a lesser or greater extent.  The North Atlantic Drift around our shores protects us from the bitter cold winters that other countries this far north have to endure.  We are a maritime nation.

I live in north Suffolk at a latitude of about 52.5 degrees north which is further north than Winnipeg and at about the same latitude as Berlin, Warsaw and Irkutsk.  We are buffeted by the strong, wet, warm Westerlies from the Atlantic but also get winds straight from the Arctic or from Siberia and, if the weather forecast is correct for this weekend, we also get nice warm winds from the south-east; from the Mediterranean.  Lovely!

Yesterday began with a frost.  The temperature had gone down to minus 2 degrees centigrade overnight but at dawn the sky was starting to cloud over and the frost soon disappeared.  We then had a day of ‘April’ weather – lots of showers of hail, sleet and rain – and also some sunshine.  Not a good day for gardening!  I spent most of it with my mother taking her shopping and then to church with her for Stations of the Cross and then a Mass.

March and April can be so beautiful but the gardener must be forever vigilant and protect vulnerable plants from frost, ice and also the strengthening sun.  I looked at my diaries for last winter the other day and made a note of the amount of snow we had had.  The first lot of snow was on the 5th of December 2012 and temperatures didn’t get much above freezing for some days after that.  A thaw on 14th December.  Snow again on 13th January 2013 and snow showers continuing most days without a thaw until 26th January. A thaw on 27th January.  Snow again on 2nd February and snow showers most days until a thaw on 14th February.  Snow flurries from 21st to 24th February and then heavy snow from 9th to 13th March which took ages to disappear.  A day of snow on 4th April.  And this winter not one flake of snow here at all!  Yet!  The thaws and consequent ice are the real problems I find during a cold winter.  This is what kills the plants and damages roads and buildings.

R and I are weather watchers and we have such a wonderful view of the wide East Anglian sky from the back of our house.  I took a couple of photos of the edge of a cold front going over last Friday.  The thick grey cloud overhead with a sharp edge to it to the west and clear blue sky beyond approaching on a stiff south-westerly breeze.

The following day was Saturday and a good gardening day.  I had weeded round our rhubarb plant during last week, which, by the way is now ready for pulling, and I had tidied the blackberry canes next to it as well.  The blackberry wanted to grow where the rhubarb is and I had a bit of a fight with it, removing unwanted canes and cutting down others.  It is now nice and tidy with most of the new canes tied up and well away from the rhubarb.  I also had to dig up some cowslip plants from where they wanted to grow in the lawn and put them where R and I want them to grow, on the edge of the ditch at the front of the house.  R finds it difficult to mow round the flowers when they are in the lawn and even though I think they look lovely there it will make R’s job quicker and easier now they are elsewhere.  We have a few different coloured cowslips in our garden and some new plants which are neither primroses nor cowslips.  The bees do a good job of fertilizing all our flowers and the resultant mongrel plants are very interesting and varied.  Next to the rhubarb on the opposite side to the blackberry I found a wonderful collection of different types of primula.  I have dug these up and put them in a seed bed area to see how they develop.

I then spent a little time looking at and photographing the clouds.  Caravans and convoys of clouds travelling across the sky.  To use a well-worn simile they really are like fleets of sailing ships on the ocean.  R likes to look at clouds and see pictures and objects in them:  I see islands and mountain ranges in the sky.

 

 

 

 

 

Later that afternoon the sky darkened and even though we stayed dry there were rain clouds all around us.