A Quiet Spring – March and April Part 2

Tags

blossom, butterfly, daffodils, flowers, fruit trees, gardening, plants, spring flowers, Suffolk, sunset

Let me take you back in time……

The daffodils this spring were marvellous!  We had a few warm days at the beginning of April that brought the flowers forward and then from Easter onwards the weather was decidedly chilly.  Very dry but chilly and with very little sunshine.

The white daffodils look just like butterflies when a breeze catches them!  Most of these flowers are scented as well.

The blossom on the fruit trees was good this spring.

Wild Cherry

Wild Cherry blossom

Weeping Crabtree

Weeping Crabtree blossom

Crabtree ‘Evereste’

‘Evereste’ blossom

Crabtree ‘Harry Baker’

‘Harry Baker’ blossom

Greengage

Greengage blossom

Damson blossom

Pear ‘Concorde’ blossom

Other trees with blossom looked wonderful this spring too.

Amelanchier

Amelanchier blossom

The Blackthorn at the end of our drive

The Pussy Willow was covered in fuzzy flowers

I took photos of some of the plants in the garden.

The Spirea in Richard’s new shrub border was very bright and beautiful.

A pretty primula had planted itself in one of the ditches that surround our garden

We have a number of orange and red cowslips that grow here and there about the garden. I have started to gather them into one place so they don’t get mowed before they set seed.

The King-cups on the bank of the pond looked cheerful.

Primroses and Anemone blanda

The clematis flowered at the end of the month and filled the garden with scent.

Clematis flowers

Last autumn I ordered some tulips and planted them in large tubs.  I was glad I did when I saw the damage the deer had wreaked on those planted in the borders!  I covered the tubs in wire mesh and left them at the back of the house to over-winter.  I had no mouse, vole or deer damage at all!

These lovely tulips look more like peonies! Because of the cool spring they were in flower for nearly a month.

This is a male Holly Blue butterfly (Celastrina argiolus). There were a number of these flying in the garden at the end of April.

A sunset seen from the back of the house

This post has taken me weeks to write because I have been so busy and tired!  I thought about abandoning it a couple of times because of its lateness but decided to post it after all and I hope you will forebear with me.

My choice of music is ‘Schmetterling’ (Butterfly) by Grieg, one of his Lyric Pieces.

Thanks for visiting!

Spring Flowers: March

Tags

Celandines, cherry-plum, daffodils, flowers, garden, gardening, lathyrus, primroses, scilla, Suffolk, violets, wild flowers

I managed to find a number of flowers to photograph in my garden this March.

We have areas in our garden that are left wild. This is one of the many violets that bloomed in March. I think this is an Early Dog Violet (Viola reichenbachiana )

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna ).  Not only are the flowers so shiny and buttercup-yellow but the leaves are interesting too. They are patterned and blotchy with different shades of green and then there is the strange black line down the centre of the leaf looking like it was drawn carelessly with a felt pen.

This is all that was left of some of my favourite tulips after a Muntjac deer came visiting. I wasn’t too happy about this.  I can see a grape hyacinth bulb that was dug up as well.

I am very fond of Scillas and this was a patch of them as they were beginning to flower.

This is a pea – Lathyrus ‘Spring Beauty’ just as it too, began to flower.

Our Cherry Plum (Prunus cerasifera ) always looks good against a blue sky. Cherry Plum are the first of the flowering trees to have blossom in the spring.

Cherry Plum blossom

Pots of ‘Tete a Tete’ miniature daffodils and just a few pale blue crocus.

Sweet Violets (Viola odorata ) growing under the Crabapple tree.

The first of the garden daffodils to flower. It isn’t easy to see in this photo but the trumpets are a darker orange colour.  I think they might be ‘Jetfire’ daffodils.

A large clump of Primroses ( Primula vulgaris) growing in the verge at the front of the house.

Primrose flower. This is a pin-eye flower, with the pinhead-like stigma in the centre of the flower and the stamens hidden below.

I showed you a ‘thrum-eyed’ primrose in an earlier post 

‘Thrum-eyed’ primrose – the long stamens are visible in the centre of the flower but the shorter stigma is invisible.

I have made a slideshow of some of the daffodils we have planted round the perimeter of the garden and round the big pond.

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My music selection is Julie Fowlis singing Lon-dubh; a beautiful rendition in Gaelic of Paul McCartney’s song ‘Blackbird’.

Thanks for visiting!

Garden-work

Tags

cherry-plum, daffodil, garden, gardening, hawthorn berries, hazel, hellebore, ponds, sheds, spring, summerhouse, witch-hazel

Daffodils and crocuses

I managed to do some work in the garden on Sunday; the first time in many weeks that I have spent more than a couple of minutes outside.

Some weeks ago I moved three tubs of spring bulbs – snowdrops with Tete-a-tete daffodils in two tubs and little blue crocuses in the third – from their winter-quarters behind the greenhouse to the front of the house under the kitchen window.  They were ready to bloom and they have brightened up the area near the front door.  On Sunday I moved the rest of the pots and tubs away from the back of the greenhouse either to the front of the house or to the rear near the conservatory.

The area round the greenhouse has become very wet and waterlogged and the pots were sitting in puddles.  Richard and I had a talk about how to solve this problem and I suggested a French drain ( a trench filled with gravel) immediately round the greenhouse and then we discussed again our idea of putting flagstones round the greenhouse to make it nicer to walk on than muddy grass.  We have a plastic compost bin near to the greenhouse and a lidded water-butt behind the greenhouse –  the water-butt will then go on the flags and so will the compost bin.  The water-butt keeps sinking into the ground despite the bricks and flints it is standing on (there must be quite a collection under the water-butt by now).  Also, we often get rats, mice and/or voles getting into the compost bin and having the bin on hard-standing would stop that little game!  They dig tunnels that come up under the bin and then make themselves at home amongst the potato peelings and weeds.

One of the daffodils that have started blooming round the big pond

We also discussed where we would put the new potting shed.  We have a very old tumbledown shed in the middle of the garden.  It is rotting and disintegrating very quickly and we need to replace it and we don’t want to use the same site for the new shed.  We have a very nice tool shed near the greenhouse so the new potting shed with a large window and bench will go next to the tool shed.  This will keep all the out-buildings together in one place and will save us a lot of time walking from one side of the garden to the other.

Witch-hazel by our front door

Witch-hazel

Witch-hazel

I am considering drawing a plan of our garden as it is now and scanning it so that I can include it in this blog.  When we make changes to the garden I can then update the plan.

This is our new summer house

I mentioned in a former post that our old summerhouse was demolished and the base was extended in readiness for a replacement.  The new building arrived and was put up during a gale on 8th February and is just what Richard wanted.  He has been enjoying his room with a view and often sits inside it looking out over the big pond.

Hazel catkins on one of our Hazel trees

A poor photo of a female hazel flower. You can just see the little red tuft at the top of the bud-like object in the centre of the photo

Behind the summerhouse (you can’t see it from the angle the photo was taken from) is our large open compost heap where we put our bulkier garden clippings and waste.  Next door’s chickens are often here turning it over for us and kicking it about and in the summer Richard often finds Grass Snakes sleeping in its warmth.  Richard doesn’t like snakes.

Not all of the Hawthorn berries have been eaten yet. These two had fallen from an overhanging Hawthorn branch above and caught on this Elm twig

I have also mentioned in former posts that the garden is large and is mainly laid to grass.  There are a couple of vegetable beds near the summerhouse and another mixed vegetable and flower bed half way up the garden.  I had started to use this mixed bed when we moved in to this house but I haven’t had the time to do much to it since my father died and Elinor started suffering so badly with anxiety.  Most of my plants there have died and couch grass and ox-eye daisies have taken over.  Richard is using part of the bed for his dahlias and chrysanthemums and there is a rhubarb plant and some blackberry canes there too.

The big pond

The arable field to the rear of our house

There is an old rose arbour next to the mixed bed and on this side of the arbour Richard has made a flowerbed for his favourite flowers.  He has also started to make a shrubbery fairly near to our septic tank.  We have a large gas tank close to the house and I have made a small flowerbed on the northern side of it and filled it mainly with spring flowers.  I haven’t weeded it recently and this will be a project for the next time I get outside.

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There are narrow flowerbeds most of the way round the house which I look after and I have also started to landscape the area to the south of the house.  I had made a flowerbed near the hedge at the rear of the house but again, I had to abandon this when Dad died and Elinor started to need more support and I had much less free time.  Many of my plants are in pots and tubs waiting to find a proper home.  I hope to make a gravel garden at the front of the house with paths through it from the front door to the drive way.  I bought the gravel for this project eight years ago!

Cherry-plum blossom in our hedge

Cherry-plum blossom

Cherry-plum or Myrobalan Plum (Prunus cerasifera) is not a native tree but has become naturalised here and is often found in hedges.  It is often confused with Blackthorn or Sloe (Prunus spinosa) but the Blackthorn flowers open before the leaves come out and the Cherry-plum’s flowers and leaves open at the same time.  The cherry-plum isn’t so spiny as Blackthorn.

The corner pond at the front of the house.

My music choice today is a song written by B A Robertson and Mike Rutherford shortly after the death of their respective fathers.  It is sung by a favourite singer of mine, Paul  Carrack, whose father died when Paul was eleven years old.  It is a song about the regret we have when we lose a relative and realise all the things we should have said to them when they were alive.  I am so glad I was able to tell my father how much I loved him and appreciated the love he had for me.

Thanks for visiting!

Autumn in a Suffolk Lane – Part 2

Tags

Acorn, ash keys, Astrantia, autumn, Bantam Cock, beach, chickens, Chrysanthemum, conker, dogwood, Dunwich Heath, dwarf gorse, eating apples, Elderberries, fungi, gardening, GERANIUM, Grove snail, Hibiscus, Jake Thackray, Knopper gall, leaf colour, Linstead Magna, Linstead Parva, liverwort, Michaelmas Daisy, moorhen, Pyracantha, rough sea, Salvia, silver birch, Suffolk, sunset, Tansy, viola

The beach at Dunwich Heath.

We visited yet another of our local beaches on a very windy, cool afternoon recently.  We only stayed on the beach for a short while because the wind was so biting; Elinor and I both got earache.

The mist in the distance is sea-spray.

The waves were quite rough but the tide was going out.

Foam was left on the sand and was blowing about.

This little fish must have come too close to the shore.

This Grove Snail (Cepaea nemoralis) attached to its bit of bracken was swinging about in the wind.

My ID guide suggests that the Grove Snail “is used to demonstrate the survival of the fittest in evolution, because Thrushes eat the snails which are least well camouflaged against their environment.”

The Heather (Calluna vulgaris) was past its best but the Dwarf Gorse (Ulex minor) was looking wonderful

Another sunset.

In a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the bright yellow of the Perennial Sow-thistle was not common at this time of year.  I will have to eat my words because most of the flowers I have seen since then have been yellow!

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) seen on the roadside between Linstead Magna and the village of Linstead Parva *(see below)

The Tansy has very aromatic leaves and the little button flowerheads are made up of disc florets only.

The genus name ‘Tanecetum’ and the name Tansy are both derived from the Greek word for immortality. The plant was believed to give  eternal life to the drinker of an infusion made from it.

Tansy used to be used as a flavouring in food until fairly recently.  Egg dishes especially, were enhanced by the use of finely chopped tansy leaves.  Tansy was also used as an alternative to expensive imported spices such as nutmeg and cinnamon and Tansy Cake at Easter was very popular.  Because of the strength of its scent, Tansy was also used as a repellent, keeping mice from corn and flies from meat.

Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea)

Close to where I photographed the Tansy I found this hedge of Dogwood.  It was covered in large black berries – the largest I have ever seen on a Dogwood – and most of  the leaves had turned a beautiful red.  Dogwood leaves are usually a much darker, duller maroon in Autumn.

What also surprised me about these Dogwood bushes was seeing flowers in bloom at the same time as the berries and the red leaves.

It isn’t easy to see them in this photo so I cropped it.

One of the flower-heads is in the centre of this picture.  The couple of weeks of warm and sunny weather we have had recently had fooled the bush into thinking it was spring again.

Richard and I have been working in the garden, getting it ready for winter.  I only seem able to get out there a couple of days a week but I have managed to get quite a lot done.  One of my jobs has been tidying behind the garden shed and round the back of the greenhouse.  Behind the shed was rank with weeds, mainly stinging nettles, which I was able to pull out fairly easily as the soil is quite damp there.  I had stored lots of pots and tubs full of spring bulbs behind the greenhouse so these have come back out to be smartened up and got ready for next spring.  I discovered other flowerpots that should have been emptied and cleaned ages ago.

This pot was covered with liverwort Marchantia polymorpha. It has little green cups on the leaf-like structures (thallus). Do you see the baby snail?

We have a lot of fungus all over the grass in our garden. Nothing exciting or colourful, just brown and cream-coloured toadstools. These had been nibbled by something.

Two other unidentified types of fungi.

I have had this Hibiscus for about 26 years. It was a gift from my ex-mother-in-law who brought this with her when she came to see us when Alice was a tiny girl.

I love these double flowers – the peach petals have dark crimson bases.

Richard has a new Chrysanthemum flower

My Geraniums are still flowering

I like this pretty Viola

Three different Michaelmas Daisies

Salvia

The three ages of Astrantia

Elderberries from the bush at the end of the drive.

Acorn  This is the first time in years that these acorns aren’t affected by Knopper galls.

This is a photo I took last year of Knopper gall damage on acorns

‘Conker’

Ash ‘keys’

The trees in our lane

Our Silver Birch is changing colour

Birch leaves

I pruned our Pyracantha recently

We not only had a lot of aphid damage to our apple trees in the spring and early summer but the apples on this tree are now being eaten by Moorhens!  It is odd seeing water birds wobbling about in the trees gulping down our apples as fast as they can.

We are getting a little tired of next-door’s free-range chickens in our garden all day.  They kick about in the flower beds and damage seedlings; they peck off flowers and generally make a mess of the paths, beds and compost heaps in the garden.  We have spoken to our neighbours about it a few times but they don’t appear to have any intention of keeping their chickens on their own land.  They have a constant supply of chicks too.

Linstead Magna (large/greater Linstead) is now a small collection of houses and farm buildings.  The church no longer exists but I spoke to someone some years ago who remembered the church and used to attend it.  For more information about this church see here.

Linstead Parva (small/lesser Linstead) is a pleasant little village with a pretty church.  In spring the churchyard is covered in snowdrops and other spring flowers.

Thanks for visiting!

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!

Before the Eclipse

Tags

daffodils, dotted border moth, ducks, early dog-violet, gardening, geese, greylags, hellebores, house sparrow, mallards, Mothering Sunday, Rip van Winkle daffodils, silver-lace primula, simnel cake, solar eclipse, Suffolk, viburnum bodnantense

Such a busy week I have had!

Some pretty, delicate daffodils growing at the top of the ditch-bank at the front of the house.

 

After a couple of problems were sorted out, Elinor’s week last week ended well.  She spent Friday in London with her Art class visiting The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Natural History Museum and the Saatchi Gallery and had a wonderful time.  She was able to rest as often as she needed to (she has scoliosis) and so therefore had hardly any back pain.  She travelled by coach and, as many of her colleagues had never been to London before, the driver took them on a route that passed by many of the sights – they drove along the Embankment so they saw the Thames, Cleopatra’s Needle with the two Sphinx, then the Tower of London and the 2012 Olympic Stadium among others.  I left her at the college at about 8.15 am and Richard collected her at 8.00 pm – so about twelve hours away from family – the longest time ever.  I spent the day ironing.

Silver-lace Primula

 

Some more of my new Hellebores have begun flowering.

I was able to do a little gardening on Saturday.  It was quite chilly but dry and I progressed quite well with the weeding I had started earlier in the week.  Richard gave the lawn another mow and over the weekend he was able to finish cutting the leylandii hedge.

The Viburnum Bodnantense is just coming into leaf.

I love these little Rip-van-Winkle daffodils.

It looks more like a miniature Chrysanthemum from this angle.

 

 

 

Sunday was Mothering Sunday and I had told Mum I would be taking her to church.  I collected her and helped her put the Simnel Cake she had made carefully into the car.  She had received a phone call from one of the ladies at church asking if she would be bringing a cake as usual and fortunately she had the ingredients ready in case they asked her.  I took an elderly retired priest back home after the service then took Mum home too.  I arranged with her that Richard would collect her at 6.00 pm as she was coming for a meal at our house.  It had to be an evening meal as I hadn’t time to cook lunch and drive to church.  I spent most of the afternoon preparing the food.  Mum provided an apple pie and another Simnel Cake for us.

This is the Simnel Cake Mum made for us last year. This year’s one looked the same so I’m reposting the photo

 

The temperature at the weekend was about 10 degrees C lower than the weekend before.  The easterly wind dragged such a lot of cloud and mist in off the North Sea but not very much rain.  I have had to water the pots and tubs as they are all drying out very quickly.  Today the wind was veering round to the North, so a change – but not necessarily for the better!

This is an Early Dog-violet (Viola reichenbachiana).   We have them growing on the grass path round the big pond. They are very small and the flower here was only just over an inch tall.

Here’s another one.

 

 

Richard travelled to Lancaster in Lancashire on Monday for work and continued there until Wednesday.  He is now staying with his brother in Manchester as he wanted to see him and his mother.  She has been assessed at last and to our complete surprise she has been told that she is fit to leave the respite home she has been in for three months and go home.  We know that she is not at all able to look after herself – she cannot stand up on her own anymore, let alone walk.  She would need 24 hour care and she would need her home adapting even more than it is at the moment.  Richard and his brother needed to discuss this new challenge together and with Mum-in-law.  They are also going to visit a couple of nursing homes to see if they are suitable for their mother to live in. They have spent the day at York, visiting the National Railway Museum.

This is the goose on a visit to her nest on the very brambly island on our pond. She has been laying eggs but hasn’t started sitting yet.

Here is the goose and gander up close to the house. They come to have a look to see what food they can find under the bird-tables. I am sure the goose, if not the gander, is one of the goslings from two years ago. She follows me round the garden as I fill the feeders so of course I give her and the gander some special duck and goose mixture I have .

The Mallards also come up close to the house looking for food.

They are enthusiastic eaters and rip up a lot of grass too.

 

 

 

 

I had an appointment at the opticians on Tuesday and yet again failed to do well enough in one of the tests and have to go back again next week.  Mum had another appointment at the eye clinic at Norwich hospital on Wednesday afternoon so I took her.  Her appointment went well and we go back again in six weeks.  I have done Mum’s shopping for her but it took three different trips.

A male House Sparrow in the crabapple tree.

 

Tomorrow morning we have a solar eclipse.  We will be lucky to see anything of it because of the cloud cover.  It may be possible to see it if the cloud thins early enough.  I remember the last total solar eclipse 16 years ago.  It was a bright, warm, sunny day and we all went out into the garden to witness it.  What I remember most about it were the strange shadows – each leaf had two shadows and as it got darker it was such a strange twilight with the dimming sun above us and not on the horizon.  As it got dark the birds stopped singing and the silence was eerie.  I wonder what I will see tomorrow at 9.30 am?  I will be just arriving home from taking Elinor to college.

This is a Dotted Border Moth (Agriopis marginaria) that I saw on the outside of my kitchen window. The strange white light is a reflection of my flash in the double-glazing.

 

Elinor has been invited to a party.  One of her old school friends is holding an 18th birthday party tomorrow and Elinor thinks she would like to go.  She may need collecting early but it will be so good for her even to go for a short time.

Thank-you for visiting!

A Mild Weekend

Tags

chaffinches, Coffee morning, daffodils, euonymus, gardening, goldfinches, grass-cutting, green woodpecker, hedge-cutting, honey bees, honeysuckle, ladybird, primulas, Robin, rosemary, weather

These daffodils are only about 8″ tall – I like their delicate yellow colour.  The clay soil in the flowerbed had already formed a hard crust when I took this photo.

We had hardly any rain last week and as a strong breeze was blowing most of the time, the ground at last started to dry out and we weren’t sinking into the lawn at every step.  We had a few frosts that disappeared very quickly and the temperature rose progressively through the week until at the weekend we had temperatures in the mid teens (Centigrade).

A honey bee on honeysuckle. We have some new neighbours living near us who have bee hives. On Thursday I saw that their bees had ventured out and were enjoying our honeysuckle flowers.

Both Richard and I worked quite hard in the garden this weekend, trying to catch up with the tidying chores that should have been done in the autumn and make a start on the jobs that need to be done in the spring.

Rosemary in flower against the front wall of our house.

Rosemary flowers.  Whilst weeding on Sunday I found a number of rosemary seedlings.

The job that Richard was most pleased about was getting the grass cut at last.  He has cut it long to start with and next weekend (weather permitting) he will cut it shorter.  He had also not been able to finish cutting the Leylandii hedge last autumn and on Sunday he worked on that too.  There is only the top to cut now and if the ground continues to dry out he will be able to get on the stepladder without it sinking in a couple of feet and finish that next weekend as well.  Hopefully, before the birds start to nest in the hedge!  Richard wondered if gardening counts as exercise.  The nurse always looks at me in a sceptical way when I suggest that gardening should be classed as exercise.  I expect she imagines I wander about doing a little pruning and weeding – no raised heart-rate there, she thinks.  However, as most gardeners know, gardening can be very strenuous at times and I do my fair share of digging, raking and other heavy work.  Richard worked out that he had walked almost a mile and a half yesterday taking six barrow-loads of hedge clippings to the bonfire heap.  We have a large garden.

Richard mowing the grass. The building on the far side of the hedge is the old school house. It is now a private dwelling.

This is where we have planted our fruit trees at the front of the house. The school house beyond the hedge, the corner pond to the right and you can see our grey septic tank cover to the left. You can see from the tracks in the grass, Richard must have been practising his slalom driving.

Elinor didn’t have a good day on Friday and wasn’t able to get out of the car when I took her to college.  I brought her home again and she slept for a few hours and felt a little better when she woke.  She has had three out of four results for her mock GCSE exams so far.  Psychology A, English A and Maths E.  An E is only just a pass but we are pleased that she did as well as she did with only having attended half a dozen classes at college.  She is determined to do better and really wants to get at least a C grade.

Richard and I went to the church coffee morning on Saturday which was held at the Rector’s house.  The Rector is still recovering from heart surgery and was pale and thin but gamely hosted the gathering.   We won a picture frame in the raffle and I bought a delicious sticky tea bread and some more of the Rector’s home-made marmalade.  We indulged in the usual chat and gossip.  There are a few events coming up soon.  Cordelia is holding her annual Daffodil Day (on Palm Sunday this year), when we admire her beautiful garden and buy food and goods from stalls in aid of church funds.  Our other friends, Pam and Ian are holding an Open Garden on Easter Monday also in aid of church funds and their garden is always a joy to visit too.

Ladybird on Euonymus

I had a migraine on Saturday so wasn’t able to take advantage of the fine weather.  Sunday started very fair but by the time we left church it was starting to cloud over and we had a little drizzle then rain showers during the afternoon.  The weather didn’t stop us working outside as it was so mild.

The churchyard at Flixton where we attended the service on Sunday.

Green Woodpecker

Green Woodpecker

Green Woodpecker. I am glad we have these visiting our garden because they enjoy ants eggs and our garden seems to be one enormous anthill!

I think the woodpecker is a female as the males have a crimson centre to their moustachial stripe.

Chaffinches and Goldfinches feeding under the crabapple tree.

House Sparrows on fat feeder

House Sparrows on fat feeder

Chaffinches

Robin

Just a few of the birds in our garden.

Thank-you for visiting!

February’s End

Tags

bluebell, clematis montana, crocus, ditches, Elder, gardening, herb garden, herbs, hyacinth, mole hill, ponds, snowdrops, stinging nettles, viburnum bodnantense, vole hole, winter aconite, witch-hazel

Part of our garden as seen from near the house. This photo was taken on Sunday afternoon when it was still quite breezy. We had great plans for our garden when we first moved in nine years ago but because of a number of reasons we have had to delay doing most of the work. Maybe, once Richard is retired and not travelling away from home so much, we can get on with it!

I am surprised at how quickly this year is speeding past.  Christmas was a bit of a non-event – I can’t remember much about it at all – and since then the days and weeks have merged together into a bit of a blur and here we are at the beginning of March!

We seem to have been alternating between days of sun and days of gloom and/or rain recently.  Friday began with frost and continued with bright sunshine and white clouds all day.  Elinor has yet another streaming, heavy cold and took the day off college. Richard has started taking every Friday off work as he has been given extra pre-retirement leave.  I went with him to Bungay where he called in at the barber’s shop for a haircut while I went to the bank and then to the post office.  We then drove to Harleston which is just over the border into Norfolk, where we bought an enormous 25 litre container of de-ionised water for my iron, steam mop and steam cleaner.

My Witch-hazel in a pot by the front-door. Cynthia Reyes asked me to describe the scent of the flowers. I have had great difficulty trying to think of an adjective to describe the scent. It isn’t a floral smell at all and only smells slightly like the smell of the astringent made from the leaves and bark. I then remembered a book I loved reading as a girl and also read to both my daughters when they were small – ‘The Children of Green Knowe’ by Lucy M Boston. In it someone says Witch-hazel flowers smell like something to eat and I think that is a good description. I would say that the scent is like that of warm, spicy yeast buns or bread.

After lunch I went into the garden and stayed out there until just after 5.30 pm!  Heaven!  I have been doing a little garden tidying whenever I have had a moment and so far I have reduced the size of a few perennial herbs and taken out completely a lot of tired and woody plants from my herb garden.  When the chance of all frost has gone I will replace them with new ones.  I took some cuttings from my elderly thyme last year so those will go in and there are some little seedling chive plants coming up in the wrong places which will be transplanted to the right places.  Other herbs will be replaced when I get the opportunity.  I tend not to grow perennial herbs from seed (in fact I haven’t grown anything from seed for a long time – lack of time mainly).  I only usually need one plant of each herb so I buy them from the garden centre – I find taking cuttings from perennials easy if I need more.  I love basil and one day will grow some more from seed along with parsley and other annuals.  Meanwhile, supermarkets sell pots of annual herbs for cooking which can be re-potted and grown on and garden centres sell them quite cheaply too.  I hope to get a drying cabinet to dry my herbs one day.  Herbs attract so many lovely insects so I let them flower.  Birds visit the herbs to eat the insects and the seeds too.

My rather sad-looking herb garden at the front of the house. I am hoping that by the summer it will be full of lush, green growth with mauve and cream and yellow flowers visited by bees and butterflies.

More recently I have been clearing weeds and moss from the paths and trimming the lawn edges back away from the paths.  A tiring, back-breaking job but very satisfying because all looks so neat and tidy when it is done.  I finished the job on Friday!

Stepping stones through the grass that we haven’t been able to cut since early autumn. The grass hasn’t stopped growing but the ground is too sodden to put a lawnmower on!

Path at the side of the house

I also cut right back an enormous Clematis Montana ‘Rubens’ which was not only growing well along its trellis but had spread across to the shed and was trying to smother it and was also growing in the other direction towards the greenhouse.  I realise that this is the wrong time of year to prune Clematis Montana but I had attempted it last summer and failed miserably.  It grew so fast because of all the rain we had had and any attempt at pruning seemed to encourage it to grow faster.  It won’t flower this year I know, but Richard will be able to re-paint the shed and we have regained about 3′ x 10′ of garden!

The bald and diminished Clematis. Not a very professional job but I didn’t want to take any more away in case I killed it!

 

My mother got a lift to her church yesterday!  I spoke to a lady about it a month ago and had almost given up on her remembering or doing anything about it.  However, we have a result at last!  I had begun to find that I was being expected to give other people lifts home as well.  I don’t like to think of elderly people being stranded but it was adding quite a bit to my mileage and driving time and, well, who was taking them there?  Couldn’t they take their passenger home again?

Snowdrops at the top of the bank of the front ditch.

Richard went back to see the clinician at the hospital two weeks ago and was given the bad news that he has osteoporosis.  He should have been told before Christmas but the doctor in charge forgot and had also forgotten to arrange a meeting with the surgeon at Addenbrooke’s hospital.  (Addenbrookes is a hospital in Cambridge affiliated with Cambridge University.  It specialises in neurosurgery, transplants and cancer treatments among others).  Richard was a little disappointed.  His GP (General Practitioner/local doctor) has been comforting and supportive however, and Richard feels a little more positive about it all.

A vole hole – we have lots of these.

A mole hill – we have lots of these too!

Prosaically, I have had a sore and bleeding nose for the past month and I had it cauterized on Thursday with silver nitrate.  I have also a dry patch in my throat which may be connected to the nose infection and may be something else.  The GP thinks it may be burning from reflux acid and has doubled my prescription of gastro-inhibitor which I take against the side effects of ibruprofen etc!  I know that I don’t get heartburn and told the GP so but he wants to rule it out as a cause of the throat problem so I have to take the tablets which have caused upset stomach!  Life (and doctors) can be extremely tedious sometimes.

Bluebell leaves just emerging.

My sister, who is a paramedic and has recently got a degree from university which makes her a practitioner (she can now prescribe drugs and treatment), has been presented an award at work for leadership skills.  I am very proud of her and the award is well deserved.

A single solitary Winter Aconite flower

My brother stayed the night with us on Wednesday and visited Mum on Thursday.  He has obtained a transfer at work and starts his new job in three weeks time but still hasn’t got a buyer for his house.  He has seen a new house he would love but is afraid he won’t be able to have it if he can’t sell his old house very soon.

Viburnum bodnantense flowers

Alice, my eldest daughter, still hasn’t got a full-time job, not through want of trying.  She has the date of her Viva – the spoken part of her PhD  – which will be on the 23rd April.  She is nervous about it but it will be such a relief to get it all over and done with.  She is very poor at the moment and I know is not eating enough.  I sent her some money the other day but I realise it won’t go very far.

Rather stunted pink Hyacinths

Saturday was very gloomy and windy with occasional drizzle during the day which developed into rain by evening with very strong gusts of wind.  I ironed for most of the day.

The corner pond

The front ditch that flows into the corner pond.  We have ditches circling most of our garden – almost like a moat!

Sunday was very bright and sunny again but the wind was still strong.  We went to our church at Rumburgh for Morning Prayer.  Unfortunately, there were only five of us there including Maurice who took the service.  We discussed everyone’s ill health – as one does!  Our Rector has had his heart operation but there have been complications and he is still quite unwell; we pray for his speedy return to full health.

The big pond with its little island on which greylag geese nest each year.

The big pond – looking towards the house

I did some more tidying in the garden during Sunday afternoon.  I had discovered some daffodil bulbs a couple of days ago that I had removed from a flowerbed last autumn because of over-crowding and then forgotten about.  The poor things were trying to grow so I have planted them alongside one of our hedges.  Fortunately they are late flowering bulbs and as tough as old boots so they should do well.  I also tidied up lots of pots and tubs full of spring and summer bulbs that I had stored behind the greenhouse.  They were a bit weed-covered and the voles/mice and birds had been having fun with some of them.  Stinging nettles were starting to invade the area where the pots had been so I pulled quite a few out and will keep my eye on any new shoots appearing in the next few weeks.  Nettles are easy to pull out at this time of year especially with our saturated soil – thick gloves are necessary though!

Elder leaves coming out

Today started with frost and clear skies but by mid-morning we had had a couple of showers of rain and the wind had picked up again so much that the top of my bird-table was blown off.  It flew through the air and embedded itself in the lawn.  I am glad no-one was in its path!  Elinor went back to college today but only has classes during the morning on a Monday.  I shopped in Bungay and just had time to put the groceries away and put some laundry in the washing machine before I had to return to Norwich to collect her.  This afternoon we had hail, sleet and wet snow showers and then more sunshine.  March has come in like a lion – will it go out like a lamb?  The forecast is for cold nights and windy weather for the next few days and then warmer weather with the winds coming up from the Azores instead of from Canada for the weekend.  We shall see!

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.

 

 

 

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.