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!

Some More Visitors to my Garden : Birds

Tags

birds, blackbird, chaffinch, coal tit, Garden birds, Great Tit, greater spotted woodpecker, greenfinch, house sparrow, moorhen, Muscovy duck, pheasant, pied wagtail, Robin, rook, Suffolk, wren

During this summer and early autumn I managed to photograph a number of animals, birds, insects and other creatures in my garden.  Some of these photos are of very poor quality but I will include them as a record of what I saw.  This post will be of the birds I’ve seen in my garden.

This Great Tit has an insect in its beak and was fluttering its wings very quickly (hence the blurring). It was waiting for me to go away so that it could feed its chicks in a nest box we have in the garden.

I quickly took another photograph and then walked away

Here is one of the pair of Great Tits using that same nest box nearly two weeks later. I am fascinated to see how carefully they hold the insects in their beaks so as not to crush them.

This is a Greenfinch. There are always plenty of these in the garden. The feeder pole is always leaning and covered in mud because of the squirrels and rooks that use the feeder too.

I didn’t quite get all of this cock Pheasant’s tail.

Cock Pheasant

Cock Pheasant

A female Blackbird collecting insects for her chicks.

Another female Blackbird searching for food.

And again.

My daughter came running to me one day saying that there was a strange bird in our garden.  She described it as being half duck, half chicken.  I had to have a look and discovered that one of our neighbour’s Muscovy Ducks was visiting us.  If you have ever seen a Muscovy Duck walking you will know that they move their head and neck back and forth while walking just like a chicken does.

Female Muscovy Duck

Walking like a chicken

I thought I would post this photo of a Wren again as I was quite pleased to get it.  Wrens are quite shy birds and fairly small (3.75″) but have very loud voices.

Wren

I’ve posted this photo of a Robin before too

Female Greater Spotted Woodpecker

Male Chaffinch

Pied Wagtail

Rook

Rook.

Coal Tit. These birds are very slightly smaller than Blue Tits at about 4.5″. You can see the mud on the feeder that the Rooks put there with their dirty feet and beaks!

Male House Sparrow

The usual rear view of a Moorhen as it runs off down the garden

A male Blackbird at dusk

 

 

 

A Miscellany Part 1

Tags

Bee, Damselfly, Dragonfly, Flesh Fly, Franciscans, House Martin, house sparrow, Robin, Santiago de Compostella, smoke, Swallow, Thurifer, white doves

I usually take a number of photos of the things I see each day but don’t manage to include them in a post.  This post is a mixture of those photos, a few memories of my father and a mention of a couple of things I have done during the last two weeks.

The weather during the last few days has been pants (to use one of R’s expressions).  When it hasn’t been raining it has been very dull and chilly, and with a strong easterly wind blowing it hasn’t been pleasant out-of-doors.  I have a slight cough as well and no energy: this post will have photos I took when the weather was better.  The children are on their half-term holiday this week.  They can’t be having much fun unless their parents have taken them abroad.  As I look out of the window this morning there is a steady drizzle falling and I am not looking forward to going out to feed the birds.

R spent a couple of days in Manchester the weekend before last.  His poor Mum is finding it very difficult getting used to having more carers coming into her home.  She feels as though her life is now out of her own control and is quite depressed.  She knows she needs the help and is pleased to be able to stay in her own home but all the same….  R was able to give her a hug and some sympathy.  His brother is doing all the duties I do with my own mother plus some, and is finding it all extremely trying, so R got a couple of rants from him too.  R feels bad that he can’t help more but I think he does very well considering he has a full time job with lots of travelling away from home.  He phones his Mum regularly and is in constant touch with his brother.  He visits every month or two and provides equipment and other financial aid.  R went on the train so wasn’t able to drive them about when he was in Manchester but they did have an enjoyable walk in the local park in the sunshine.  The sun shone brightly and it was very warm so my mother-in-law was cheered by the flowers, the other people in the park, the ice-cream R bought and the coffee in an outside café sitting in her wheelchair under a tree.

After dropping R off at Diss station on the Sunday to get the train to Manchester, I drove back to Fressingfield to pick up Mum and took her to church in Eye.  I do spend quite a lot of my time in the car it seems!  The retired priest who has been looking after Eye church had just returned from a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella and spoke movingly about his experiences.  He started walking from the border between Portugal and Spain with crowds of other people from all nations and walked about twelve miles a day through beautiful countryside.  He said he was fortunate to have his luggage sent on each day to the next hotel and only needed to carry a few necessaries with him.  Many of the other pilgrims had to carry all their belongings with them in large packs and either camped or stayed in hostels along the route.  Poor man!  He retired and moved to this area to be near his family and almost as soon as he arrived he was asked to look after churches in two different benefices and has therefore worked an extra year already with lots of driving to do.  He decided to go on the pilgrimage (organised by the diocese to celebrate its centenary) before he realised he’d be so busy at home.  He also directed our attention to the scaffolding in the church across the whole Rood Screen.  He said it was ‘Holy Scaffolding’ – there to remind us of the scaffolding God provides for us in our journey through life – the props and supports He gives us out of love.  Being in Eye church always reminds me of my father as there is so much that he made there.  He was a cabinet maker and above all loved working in churches.  He left school at the age of fourteen and became an apprentice to a joiner/cabinet maker.  His parents were too poor to allow him the luxury of staying on at school.  He had to do his National Service in the RAF and hated it and shortly after leaving he decided he would become a friar.  He joined the Friary at Hillfield near Cerne Abbas in Dorset and was known as Brother Dunstan.  He was also known as the laughing friar as he was always cheerful.  He worked as a joiner/cabinet maker while there and also ran the local scouts.  He eventually started to have doubts about whether he should stay in the friary as I think his parents put a lot of pressure on him to leave.  They thought it strange for a young man to stay celibate and not to marry and have children.  He left while he was still a novice friar but always hankered after the life he had led there.  He certainly never gave up his vow of poverty – we were always poor and Mum is still struggling to find money to look after her house from her own small pension.  We often visited the Friary when I and my brother and sister were small and loved these jolly, kind men who played games with us and were so happy.  We went to the seaside once taking one of Dad’s friends who rolled up his habit and paddled in the sea much to everyone’s amusement.  We often had friars staying at our house when I was young; one I remember who thundered about in his sandals and got up noisily very early in the morning.  One day we got up to find water and blood all over the bathroom and no sign of the friar.  He had fallen over while getting out of the bath, cut his head badly and taken himself off to the local hospital.  By the time Dad had died only one of his old friends was left and he kindly came and spoke at Dad’s funeral  Mum loves being in Eye church too, as she likes to see all Dad’s things about her (he never had much time or money for improving his home so there are few pieces of his furniture there!).  Both my mother and mother-in-law find great comfort from their religion.  I try my best to get Mum to her own church where she is so happy.  It is unfortunate that there are not enough people in her church willing or able to give her a lift as I miss going to my own church with R.  Mother-in-law is more unfortunate than Mum in that her own church has changed so much and has side-lined all the elderly members in favour of its younger ones and has virtually stopped using the set services.  Even if she could get a regular lift from someone who could manage the wheelchair she wouldn’t come away from church feeling refreshed and comforted.  I think rural churches like mine appreciate their elderly members more than town churches do – I don’t think the churches in the country would exist at all without all the old stalwarts!

Another conversation R and I had before he went off to Manchester recalled my father.  R was saying the containers he has for screws and nails and such like are starting to fall apart and he was wondering what he could replace them with.  He said his father used to use old tobacco tins, St Bruno ones, and I said that was what my father used too but his ones were Balkan Sobranie.  My father began smoking at the age of fourteen when he started work and continued until shortly before his death from lung cancer four years ago.  He preferred smoking a pipe and my memories of him are with a pipe in his mouth working in his workshop or sitting in his garden in the evening.  He was a careless smoker, throwing matches about and leaving smouldering pipes in places he shouldn’t, including the back pocket of his trousers.  You can imagine the damage done to trousers, underpants and flesh that ensued.  I am amazed he didn’t set fire to his workshop too with all the heaps of wood shavings and sawdust about.  He was never happier than when enveloped in a cloud of smoke.  His pipe or cigarettes of course, and then bonfires were a favourite with him too.  His excitement on finding that a fire was still alight next morning!  He loved a good blaze and couldn’t be done with an incinerator.  He got through tons of firewood and coal in the house.  He was given the job of thurifer at Eye church.  The thurifer is the person who swings the thurible or censer full of smoking incense during the service and he was very good at it.  I remember my mother telling me of an incident one Palm Sunday when they were to process through the town from the Town Hall or the school, I can’t remember which, to the church.  They all started to sing the processional hymn, my father began swinging the thurible and next minute the fire alarm started wailing!

I had been thinking how fortunate I was to have four different types of warbler singing in my garden, Blackcap, Chiff-chaff, Garden Warbler and Willow Warbler and another one, the Lesser Whitethroat, singing in hedgerows four minutes walk away when all of a sudden they all stopped a week ago.  I hear the Garden Warbler and the Chiff-chaff every now and again but the others have gone or just stopped singing.  Ah well, it was very good while it lasted.  I heard a Turtle Dove briefly last Wednesday but it didn’t stay around.  I don’t know that it is warm enough for Turtle Doves at the moment.  I can only remember them singing on warm and/or sunny days or is that my memory playing tricks on me?  We have lots of other birds about with their fledglings demanding to be fed.  The woodpeckers are so grubby looking from their constant feeding of young in the hole in their tree.  Instead of white markings they have beige feathers now.  As I type I can see a large group of young greenfinches on the telephone cable fluttering their wings while the parent birds stuff food into each one in turn.

White doves visiting our garden

What a wonderful thing it must be to own some doves!  You provide them with a dovecot and pamper them to your heart’s content.  You don’t need to feed them much as all you do is let them fly off each morning to gorge themselves, with other pigeons and doves, on farmers’ crops and other peoples’ peas and beans and bird-table food!

A male House Sparrow

Swallows on the electric cable.

House Martins on our roof.  They land in large groups and sun themselves and then fly off and return quickly- flitting about.  Their song reminds me of budgerigars.

In a post last week I included a blurred photo of a damselfly.  I managed to take a few more pictures last week before they all disappeared.  The red females went before I could photograph them but a different type of damselfly arrived with green and brown females and these are my photos.

The damselflies have all gone now but I managed to photograph a dragonfly which had just emerged from the pond at the front of the house and was drying its wings.

A Black-tailed Skimmer

Another not so pleasant insect I saw in the garden last week was a Flesh Fly.

A tiny bee on a Welsh Onion flower.

In the second part of this post I will include the flower photos I have taken recently.

 

Unphotographable

Tags

chiff-chaff, clouds, hare, house sparrow, nesting, phalaenopsis orchid, ploughing, skylark, spring, sunset, terrier, woodpecker, yellowhammer

Spring is definitely progressing quite nicely.  We have had some really glorious weather recently – blue, shining days and mild, moonlit nights.  Today we had some very heavy showers – the first real rain for some time.  In fact, the mud on the roads has been drying out and cars have been causing dust clouds as they travel along our lanes.  Most of the recent signs of Spring and many of the things I have seen in the past few days I have not been able to photograph.  Either they are unphotographable like birdsong, or my camera is unable to take a decent picture of them – birds in the garden (can’t zoom in far enough) and the moon –  or I am driving somewhere and can’t stop.

More and more different types of birds are singing each day and I have noticed more pairs of birds in the garden instead of either solitary birds or flocks of birds.  The house sparrows have started building their nests under the eaves of our house.  They sound as if they are wearing hob-nailed boots as they busily sort out the old nesting sites under the roof tiles and they clatter about in the gutter chattering and arguing.  R and I look forward (I don’t think!) to the mornings when we are awoken by the sound of a happy sparrow singing at dawn -( ‘cheep!’ (two, three) ‘cheep!’ (two, three) ‘cheep!’ (two, three) ‘cheep!…..).  When R and I went out for our walk last Thursday evening we listened to many birds singing including a yellowhammer.  These birds are getting quite scarce now and this makes me sad.  The woodpeckers are starting to drum.  I heard a chiff-chaff warbler yesterday – our first summer visitor – and above my head a skylark was singing.

On Sunday evening at dusk I looked out of the kitchen window to see a large hare run along the road to the end of our drive and stop there for a minute.  It then raced across our grass at the front of the house then out of sight in the direction of the big pond.  On the way to Mum’s house on Sunday morning I had to slow down as a very small terrier dog was running up the lane keeping pace with a tractor ploughing the field next to the road.  The little dog belonged to the ploughman who waved an apology to me as I drove very carefully and slowly past.  This evening, on my way to Mum’s house again, the sky looked quite dramatic -a thick black cloud-covering which had rents in it with the pale blue evening sky showing through like silk beneath the slashes in Elizabethan clothes.

I will end this post with, first of all, some photos of my Phalaenopsis orchid which I won in a church coffee morning raffle on 5th October last year and which has been in continuous flower since then.  (Apologies to friends on Facebook who have seen this already today).  I will then add some photos of today’s sunset.