Spring Days

20 Sun Mar 2016

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, Insects, plants, Rural Diary, weather, wild birds

Tags

cherry-plum, daffodil, Emmaus, garden improvements, greylag, heron, ladybird, Mallard, new furniture, primrose, rook, rook's nest, spring flowers, sweet violet, wild birds

There isn’t much of interest to report – we have been busy and we are all very tired but there isn’t much to show for it all.

We have had a new suite of furniture delivered for our living room and the old sofas and reclining chair have been donated to Emmaus a charity that helps and supports the homeless. They have a second-hand retail shop at Ditchingham, a village a few miles to the north of us which is where our furniture was taken. The new furniture is very different but extremely comfortable. It is also less bulky than our old furniture so our living room seems a little bigger.

Our old shed has been demolished and we have had a concrete pad laid next to the tool shed where we will put a new potting shed. Getting rid of the old shed, which really was an eyesore, has opened up the garden at the north side of the house. Richard has dug over the soil which was underneath the shed and will add organic matter to it to help rejuvenate it. Eventually, he would like to plant flowering shrubs there. He has also added compost to and dug over the soil in the vegetable beds. The potatoes are ready for planting and Richard will begin sowing pea and bean seeds in pots soon. The weather has been much too cold recently for anything to be planted outside and as we have an unheated greenhouse we daren’t sow seeds there just yet either.

Last week we saw quite a lot of sunshine and even though the wind was from the north-east and very cold everything seemed very spring-like. This week there has been increasing amounts of cloud and a lot of drizzly rain so with the cold wind it feels like a return of winter. The daytime temperature has stayed between 5 and 6 degrees C all the week.

I walked round the garden last week and took a few photographs in the sunshine.

A Mallard swimming on the big pond

Mallard drake

Primroses in one of the ditches round the garden

Daffodils flowering on the bank of the big pond

A Rook’s nest being built in the Ash tree.

Greylag pair on the pond

Greylags on the pond

I have seen the heron in the garden a few times.

I tried to sneak up on the heron as it stood at the side of the pond but it saw me and flew into the field behind our house. This is a poor photo that has been severely cropped.

I found a half-eaten fish on the path round the pond which could have been left there by the heron or by the otter which is causing owners of ponds in our area to wish the otter was living many miles away!

Ladybird

Mallards in the front ditch

Sweet violet

Cherry-plum

My choice of music for this post is Emmanuel Chabrier’s ‘Suite Pastorale’. As soon as I hear it I think of spring days in the countryside – cool breezes, sparkling streams, flowers and singing birds. I hope you like the music as much as I do.

Thanks for visiting!

A Mild Weekend

10 Tue Mar 2015

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized, weather, wild birds

≈ 33 Comments

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.

IMG_1925Garden with fruit trees (640x427)

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. 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.

IMG_1914Chaffinches and Goldfinches (640x460)

Chaffinches and Goldfinches feeding under the crabapple tree.

House Sparrows on fat feeder

Chaffinches

Robin

Just a few of the birds in our garden.

Thank-you for visiting!

Monday’s Garden

31 Mon Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in amphibians, churches, cooking, Gardening, Insects, plants, Rural Diary, trees

≈ 4 Comments

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.