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A Suffolk Lane

~ A diary of my life in rural north Suffolk.

A Suffolk Lane

Tag Archives: marsh marigold

Spring Odds and Ends – April

12 Wed Jun 2019

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, trees, wild flowers

≈ 78 Comments

Tags

amelanchier, blackthorn, bullace, cuckooflower, Damson, garden, garden plants, ground-ivy, horse chestnut, Lady's Smock, lesser celandine, lichen, Mallard, marsh marigold, mining bees, montana clematis, pasque flower, Pear, pond, Suffolk, trees, wild cherry, wild flowers

Blackthorn ( Prunus spinosa) in flower

This was the view from our front door on the 1st of April.  The rather untidy Blackthorn trees growing on the verge on the other side of our hedge looked like they were snow-covered; the blossom was so plentiful.

A mining bee nest-tunnel

Just over a week after I took the photo of the Blackthorn I was finding bee nests all over the garden.  Some were plain ones like the photo above….

Mining bee Nest -burrows

…and these ones.

Mining bee nest-burrow

But this one (the burrow is in the shadow of one of the seed-pods) has been decorated with twigs, bits of wood, stone and seed-pods! I wonder if this is just by chance or if not, were these to make it easier to find or, is the bee just more of an individual, more artistic than most other bees?  I have found other nest-burrows seemingly marked with twigs and stones.

Wild Cherry ( Prunus avium)

This is one of our wild cherry trees just coming into blossom in the middle of April.  The house on the left of the photo is that of our next-door neighbours and this long thin strip of land, in-between their garden and our leylandii hedge on the right, belongs to us and is where the former owners of our house used to park their combine harvester, so we are told.  We have planted a few trees on this strip of land; you can see a couple of hollies and another cherry has decided to grow here too.

Wild cherry blossom from one of our other cherry trees.

The first Pasque Flower

The same plant a week or so later

The flowerbed on the south side of the house. As you can see, it is very stony.

Amelanchier in flower

Marsh Marigold or King-cup ( Caltha palustris) next to the pond

The same plant a week later

I have posted photos of this lichen-covered tree-trunk before

A closer look at the different lichens

Abandoned goose nest on the island

For the first time since we have lived here we had no nesting geese on the island on our pond.  They built a nest and I am sure they began laying an egg each day prior to incubation but something happened and the nest was abandoned.  The water level in the pond was very low and it would have been easy for a fox to cross the water and get to the nest.  There has always been danger from mink and otters but up til now the geese have coped with them.  A fox is different and much bigger.  This is only a guess – there may have been other reasons; I don’t know.

Cuckooflower/Lady’s Smock (Cardamine pratensis ) next to the pond

New Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum ) leaves and flower buds

We have a couple of spindly Damson or Bullace (Prunus domestica ssp. insititia ) trees growing in the scrubby area near our pond. This is a photo of the blossom and new leaves.

Pear blossom. We recently pruned and topped our pear tree as it was getting enormous. We should still get quite a lot of fruit this year, if all goes well.

Lesser Celandine ( Ficaria verna) and Ground-ivy ( Glechoma hederacea)

The Montana clematis flowered at the end of the month

A drake Mallard swimming on the pond.

I have a few more April photos I would like to share but I will save them for a separate post.

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A Few Things I’ve Seen in my Garden.

21 Tue Apr 2015

Posted by Clare Pooley in amphibians, fish, Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, trees, Uncategorized, wild birds

≈ 38 Comments

Tags

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

IMG_1999Mallard drakes (2) (640x439)

Two very handsome Mallard drakes (Anas platyrhynchos).

IMG_2001Ground-ivy (640x427)

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

IMG_2002Primroses (640x427)

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

IMG_2003Cowslips (640x427)

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

IMG_2004Primula hybrid (2) (640x459)

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

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

IMG_2005Sweet violet (640x427)

Sweet Violet (Viola odorata)

IMG_4348Parcel box with nest (640x480)

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

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

Lichen and moss-covered wall

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

Lichen on top of wall

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

IMG_2016Marsh Marigold (640x427)

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

IMG_2017Marsh Marigold (427x640)

I love its shiny yellow petals.

IMG_2024Daffodils (640x427)

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

IMG_2019Hazel (640x427)

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

IMG_2021Hazel (640x427)

New Hazel leaves

IMG_2022Mint (640x427)

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

IMG_2025Horse Chestnut (640x427)

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

IMG_2030Horse Chestnut (640x427)

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

IMG_1997Frogspawn (640x427)

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

IMG_1998Frogspawn (640x427)

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

IMG_2032Tadpoles (640x427)

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

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

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

Thank-you for visiting!

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Catching Up

15 Tue Apr 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Gardening, Insects, plants, Rural Diary, trees, wild animals, wild birds

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

amelanchier, bluebell, cow parsley, cuckoo flower, early spotted orchid, fruit trees, garlic mustard, greylags, Holy Week, honesty, mallards, marsh marigold, pasque flower, rooks, St Lawrence, St Mary Homersfield, stock dove, thrift, tulip, wood pigeon

We spent last week, 5th to 12th April, away in the Lake District staying in a rented cottage with no phone signal and no internet.  As I don’t have a smart phone I wasn’t able to send or receive messages or post anything on my blog.  It is very nice to be away from home and duty and all other pressures but there is so much catching up to do on one’s return!   Lots of e-mails, lots of interesting posts to read and such a lot of housework!!  As I am still working my way through two weeks worth of washing and ironing I don’t envisage that this post will be very long – but I may be fooling myself and will ramble on at length as usual!

It took us five and a half hours to get home which wasn’t at all bad as it had taken us over seven hours to get there on the 5th.  The roads were dry and it was cool and cloudy – ideal driving conditions.  We unpacked and had a hot drink and phoned our mothers.  R’s mum was fine but was worried about her new home help who will be coming to her twice a week.  Her old help recently retired and mother-in-law doesn’t want or like change.  It doesn’t seem fair that at 88 years of age she has to constantly make concessions and put up with unwelcome changes and interference in her way of life.  But, if she wants to stay in her own home for as long as possible, that is what she has to do.  My mother seemed fine and had had a visit from my brother, who lives in Surrey, on Friday which had pleased her very much.  She had not been able to go to church the previous Sunday so my brother was the only person she had seen and spoken to since I had taken her out the Wednesday before that.  Nine days with only her cat to talk to!  I arranged with her that I would take her to church on Sunday as I knew she wouldn’t want to miss the Palm Sunday service.

R and I then did a tour of the garden and there were some pleasures and a few disappointments.  The most noticeable thing was that the goose was no longer on her nest but there was no sign of any goslings.  What had happened while we were away?  Had the goslings hatched out and subsequently died?  Had all the eggs been infertile?  In which case wouldn’t we be able to see them still on the nest on the island?  Had the goslings hatched out and then been taken off somewhere else after a couple of days?  When we first lived in this house that is what the pair of geese did then but after three years they began to stay until the goslings fledged.  We had a change of geese nesting on the island last year after a bit of a battle between two or three ganders, so perhaps the new pair don’t feel this is a suitable place to bring up their young.  There is still hardly any grass round the pond and we have got rid of all the willow cover on the bank which might be another reason why they didn’t stay.  We had no goslings last year either, but we put that down to the terrible weather in the spring and also the goose wasn’t good at sitting on her nest.  The goose this year was very good on the nest and only left it twice a day for very short periods and always covered the eggs well with down.  We will never know what happened but I would like to think that one year we will get goslings in our garden again.

A lot of damage had been done by rabbits.  A hole had been dug at the back of my border against the house.

027Hole dug by rabbit (640x480)

A number of my plants had been eaten – probably by rabbits perhaps by deer.  We did find a dead, fully grown rabbit near R’s flowerbed.  It had been dead for a couple of days and R couldn’t see any obvious reason why it had died.  No scavenger had fancied eating it either.  Moles had been making lots of molehills.

005Mole hills (640x480)

A blackbird had been killed and plucked next to the greenhouse.  I have seen a female sparrowhawk flying about a lot since our return, strafing the small birds with fear, so I suspect her or her mate were responsible for the blackbird’s demise.

We were pleased to see that the pear tree was in full blossom.

004Pear tree (480x640) 006Pear blossom (640x480)

The greengage and the bullaces had lost nearly all their petals and we hope that we may have a little fruit.  The bird cherries were still in full blossom.  R decided that he ought to start on the mowing.  We have well over an acre of garden and most of it is grass so we have a tractor mower.  It is some years old now and makes R infuriated when it keeps blocking up – I think we will be getting a newer better model soon and then I will see R in his element again, racing round the garden, weaving in and out the trees just like at Le Mans!

019R mowing grass (640x480)

The rook chicks have hatched out in the rookery as I can hear them squeaking and squawking all day.  Here is a rook looking for tasty morsels.  Notice its glossy black feathers and feathered breeches.  I have included the second photo even though it is blurred as you can see the shape of the beak and the bald scaly skin at the front of the face.  The older the rook, the balder the face.

001Rook (640x480) 004Rook showing beak (640x480)

The duck and drake mallard are still happy in the pond at the front of the house.  A couple of common crows are also nesting in the trees on the opposite side of the lane.  Wood pigeons abound and so do Stock Doves.

003Duck and drake mallard (640x480)

Duck and drake Mallard

003Wood pigeon (640x480)

Wood Pigeon

009Stock dove (640x480)

Stock Dove

The marsh marigold in the big pond is flowering well.  The flowers are more than two inches across.

008Marsh marigold (480x640)

The marsh marigold in the little pond is flowering well too.

006Marsh marigold in small pond (640x480)

I have found a cuckoo flower by the big pond.  This flower belongs to the cabbage family but is much nicer than cabbage.  John Gerard, the 16th century herbalist said this pretty flower was called cuckoo flower because it blooms ‘for the most part in April and May, when the cuckoo begins to sing her pleasant note without stammering’.

007Cuckoo flower (640x480)

Cow Parsley is coming into flower.  In East Anglia it is called Sheep’s Parsley as well, because in olden times this area was a wool producing part of the country.  Another name for it is Queen Anne’s Lace which is a lovely name and describes the frothy whiteness of large quantities of the plant along the hedgerows.

011Cow Parsley (640x480)

Bluebell spikes are just appearing under the crabtree at the front of the house.

012Bluebell (640x480)

The crabapples are also coming into flower.  Pasque flowers and Thrift are blooming in my flowerbed.

021Pasque flower (640x480) 024Thrift (640x480)

As are miniature scented tulips.  I used to have more colours than this orangey-red but they have gradually disappeared over the years.

026Miniature scented tulip (640x480)

The Amelanchier is in flower.  It was planted in the garden a few years ago but then got damaged so I dug it up and I’ve tended it in a tub.  It will no longer grow to be a tree as I had hoped but will look alright as a shrub.  Once it has stopped flowering I will plant it out in the garden again.

 

007Amelanchier (480x640)

An Early Spotted Orchid is coming up in one of the tubs containing jonquils.  We are fortunate to have a lot of these orchids in our garden and they like seeding themselves in flower tubs.

025Orchid coming up in tub of jonquils (640x480)

One of R’s cacti is in flower in the conservatory.

039Cactus in flower (480x640) 040Cactus flower (640x480)

This is a Bee-fly.  It is harmless to humans despite the nasty looking proboscis.  Its larvae live as parasitoids in the nests of mining bees.

009Bee-fly (640x480) (2)

In driving about during the past few days I have noticed Alexanders and Stitchwort in flower in the hedgerows.  I have also seen Orange-tip butterflies flying.  The food for their caterpillars is Garlic Mustard, another member of the cabbage family and the only one to smell of garlic.

013Garlic Mustard (480x640)

I found some perennial Honesty at the entrance to one of the farm yards down our lane.

015Perennial honesty (640x480)

Oil-seed Rape is everywhere this year and is in flower at the moment.  We are surrounded by it.  We see it to the left of us…

017Oil-seed rape field to the left (640x480)

and to the right.

016Oil-seed rape field to the right (640x480)

It has a strong distinctive smell both when in flower and when left to set seed.  I don’t like it very much and it gives me hay-fever.

It is now Holy Week and we start, on Palm Sunday, by celebrating Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey.  At Mum’s church we gathered in the church-yard and processed into church carrying our palm crosses.  Mum and I enjoyed the service, both having a bit of a cry during a favourite hymn.  Poor R went to St John’s church on his own but met our friends there.  I went to Compline on my own on Monday night as R had a migraine.  (I had woken with a migraine myself early on Sunday morning!).  The service was at St Lawrence church but sadly there were only four of us there.  As I drove to the church the sun was setting on one side  and the almost full moon was rising on the other side of me.  The church door was left open during the service and even though the church is up a lane off quite a well-used road the sounds of the few cars driving along it at 8pm faded away and the silence enveloped us.  Now and then we heard the evening warning calls of blackbirds and robins but most of the time it was absolutely quiet.  St Lawrence church is built on an ancient site.  The Romans had a building yard there, I think, and a Roman carved face is set into the wall of the church.  The road from which the lane to St Lawrence church turns off is called Stone Street and is a Roman road.  If one comes from Halesworth it is known as the Bungay Straight and if one comes from Bungay it is known as the Halesworth Straight.  On my way home the sky was apricot on the horizon where the sun had disappeared.  Above that the colours changed from yellow to turquoise to dusky blue and the enormous moon was shining brightly.  I saw a couple of hares and some tiny rabbits, only about four inches long – probably on their first night above ground.

Tonight R and I went to Compline at St Mary’s Church at Homersfield.  Another lovely church which has been in danger of closing for some time.  There were eight of us there tonight and the church was lit by lamps and candles as there was no electric light.

As I thought it would, this post has got to be a long one again and I haven’t done all the housework I should have!

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Wild Flowers? or Weeds?

20 Thu Mar 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

bumble bees, chickweed, dog violet, flints, greylag, marsh marigold, narcissus, red dead-nettle, sunset, sweet violet, weeds, white dead-nettle, wildflower

Our garden is too large for us to keep every part of it neat and well manicured and I wouldn’t like it half so well if it was.  I love gardening – digging, weeding, tending plants, but there is always risk, responsibility and pressure to do things properly and at the right time.  The wild, untamed, untidy parts of the garden are just pure pleasure to me.  I have no yearning to tidy them though I realise that some management is necessary which is why we had the work done to the big pond a few weeks ago.  The ‘weeds’ I assiduously pull out of my flower beds I love to look at in the wild garden.  Flowers at this time of the year are a wonderful source of nectar for insects, especially bumble bees, just out of hibernation.

The red dead-nettle, Lamium, a member of the mint family, grows all over our garden and is a very common plant in Britain and flowers for most of the year.  Both it and the white dead-nettle were boiled and used as pot-herbs and as pig-swill in the past.  They had many medicinal uses, most notably against the ‘King’s Evil’ – scrofula, a type of tuberculosis that caused skin eruptions.  Culpepper says ‘The herb bruised and with salt and vinegar and hog’s-grease laid upon a hard tumour or swelling, or that vulgarly called the king’s-evil, do help to dissolve or discuss them’.  It also ‘makes the heart merry, drives away melancholy, quickens the spirits’.  If you look at the photo below carefully you will be able to see the dark anthers under the hooded upper lip and the darker purple markings on the lower notched lip.

003Red dead nettle

 

The white dead-nettle’s flowers are bigger than the red’s.  It relies on bumble bees to pollinate it’s flowers and they (the flowers) are custom made for bees.  The lower lip is a landing stage for the bee and has two small lateral lobes and a notched middle lobe.  The anthers are black and are under the hooded upper lip.  As the bee enters the flower seeking the nectar the top of it’s abdomen brushes the stamens and gets covered in pollen which is then transferred to the style of the next flower it visits.

005White dead nettle (480x640)

 

We don’t have as much chickweed in this garden as in other gardens we have had probably because we get so many ducks, geese and chickens passing through.  They love the plant, which can also be eaten by humans as a salad vegetable.  The flowers are so small that most people hardly notice them but looked at closely they are quite lovely.  The botanical name is Stellaria, little star, and the name is quite apt.  The styles are white and the stamens are such a pretty pink.  Chickweed is a member of the pink family.  It has a single line of hairs which run the whole length of the stem and if a drop of dew lands on the plant it runs down the stem by way of the hairs until it gets to a pair of leaves.  Here some of the water is absorbed by the hairs and the rest carries on down the stem to the next pair of leaves and so on.  This water is reserved in the plant in case of drought.  It flowers almost all year round and is widespread and prolific, which is why most gardeners hate it!

006Chickweed (640x480)

 

This marsh-marigold plant is in our small pond and is the only decent plant in there.  It flowers and flowers and looks so bright and cheerful.  We have another plant in the big pond but I have never seen any flowers on that.  I also discovered a very small plant in the ditch by the big pond with much smaller flowers.  I posted a photo of it a few days ago.  Another name for marsh-marigold is Kingcup and according to one of my flower books this is derived from the Old English ‘cop’ meaning button or stud such as kings once wore.  Apparently, farmers in many parts of the British Isles, used to hang marsh-marigolds over the byres of their cattle on May Day to protect them from the evil doings of fairies and witches.

008Marsh-marigold (640x480)

 

We not only have dog violet in our garden but also sweet violet which is the only violet flower to be scented.  In olden times they were strewn on the floor to sweeten the air.  Their scent is lost almost as soon as it is noticed and this is because the flower produces a substance called ionine as well as the scent.  Ionine dulls the sense of smell so that not only does the violet’s scent disappear but any other odours too.  Clever!  In the verge near to my mother’s cottage are many white violets which are very pretty.

011Sweet violet (640x480)

 

Our garden is full of flints and some of them are enormous.  Trying to make new flowerbeds has taken so much time and energy as these great stones have to be levered out all the time and more and more keep appearing.  I quite understand the old folk thinking that stones grew in the soil.  This is our Lindt flint as we think it looks like a Lindt chocolate rabbit.

012Lindt flint (640x480)

 

A pretty narcissus has just flowered.

013Narcissus (640x480)

 

The dear goose sleeping on her nest.

002Sleeping goose on nest (640x480)

 

And lastly a few pictures of last night’s sunset.

014Sunset (640x480)

015Sunset (640x480)

016Sunset (640x480)

 

 

 

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Meanderings and More March Flowers

11 Tue Mar 2014

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

blackthorn, daffodils, fish, frogs, hyacinths, lesser periwinkle, Leycesteria, marsh marigold, miniature iris, nesting, oak, pond, primrose, primula, rooks, rose, spirea, tawny owl, Twilight, viola

I went outside in the twilight this evening to collect my two sunflower seed feeders and bring them indoors.  I’ll tell you why later.  It was very cold – approaching freezing I should think – but so beautiful.  The sky above, a deep blue with stars and a gibbous moon.  The western horizon a strange mixture of misty yellow, pink and grey – a typical cold, wintry sunset.  The strong NW breeze that had been blowing all day had dropped and everything was almost still and quiet, except for a few blackbirds singing and some pheasants calling across the fields.  The largest feeder is hanging from the silver birch tree near the big pond and as I walked down the garden towards it a tawny owl sitting in one of the trees at the end of the garden gave a couple of loud, quavering hoots.  I went to look at the pond.  It was shining and the surface was a little puckered by the light breeze.  It looked like pewter and reflected the trees nearby.  Every now and then a ‘plip’ sounded as a fish leapt and rings appeared on the surface –  frogs were croaking from the reeds at the far end.

Unfortunately, it was getting too cold to stand out there for much longer and I had the evening meal to prepare so reluctantly I returned to the house.

The rooks have definitely started nesting now.  They no longer fly off to their night-time communal roost towards Beccles but are staying with their nests in the rookery.  At nesting time they use a different call – almost a bleating sound – and as soon as I hear it I know that spring is here.  The reason I collect the sunflower seed feeders in at night is because of the rooks.  They descend on the feeders ‘en masse’, just at dawn and any seed left overnight disappears very quickly.  I have known them unhook the feeders and take the lid off to get at the seed more easily.  The smaller feeder is hanging from a pole stuck in the grass at the front of the house.  At this time of year dawn is still quite late, but by May and June with dawn at 3.30am it is not pleasant to be awoken by twenty or more squabbling rooks just outside the open bedroom window.  Until I decided to bring the feeders in I was having to get out of bed and shoo them away every few minutes.  They soon realised that the noise they were making attracted my attention so they started eating in (almost) silence.  Their rookishness always eventually got the better of them and some little ‘whispered discussion’ invariably got out of hand and there I was at the window again.  I am a very light sleeper and I began to wake up at the slightest noise outside so something had to be done.

This morning started very overcast and cold but by 10am the clouds were breaking up and the sun coming out.  I had some shopping to do so drove to Bungay.  Bungay is a little difficult to get around at the moment as it is having lots of new pavements put in and the centre of the town is shut off to traffic.  My ankle has been painful recently and I found walking through town difficult.  Added to this, I was called ‘dear’ twice within about five minutes and I really object to being called ‘dear’ by strangers.  I got home again at 11.30 and put the radio on while I had a cup of tea.  Lisa Stansfield was choosing her favourite records tracks I mean (showing my age there!) and one of the ones she chose today was by Sylvester.  Listening to this took me back to my youth.  My friend W will remember that I used to go out with her brother who had a mobile disco which he ran with a friend.  I used to go with them to gigs and help them set up and get the dancing going if it was a bit slow.  I could dance for hours without tiring!  (This also reminds me of a really good spoonerism I came out with at the time, when telling a friend what I did.  I intended saying that I was ‘a roadie and a groupie’ but what I actually said was ‘a rudie and a gropie’).  I thought a lot about this while drinking my tea.  It didn’t seem that long ago when I was dancing all night with no aches and pains and now, here I was hobbling through town carrying my shopping bag and being called ‘dear’!  What would be next, I wondered?  Mowing passers-by down with a mobility scooter?  Elbowing my way through shoppers to the freezer cabinet in the supermarket and running over their toes with my shopping trolley while they tut-tut and raise their eyebrows to each other over my head?  Hmmmm….

To cheer myself up I went out into the garden and took a few photos.

We have a blackthorn tree at the back of the house.  It is now in full blossom.  The blackthorn at the front of the house is still covered with small tight buds.  The temperature at the front of the house is very much lower than at the back and there is often about a weeks difference in flowering times.

002Blackthorn tree (480x640)

Blackthorn tree

003Blackthorn blossom (640x480)

Blackthorn blossom

004Blackthorn blossom (640x480)

Blackthorn blossom

005Blackthorn (640x480)

Blackthorn

006Bumble bee on blackthorn (640x480)

Bumblebee on blackthorn

 

 

 

 

 

This oak tree was given me by my father a year after we moved into this house.  He had dug it up from his garden and at the time it was only about nine inches tall.  I call it Dad’s oak tree.  He died nearly four years ago.  A wood pigeon nested in the tree last summer and the shallow nest is still there.

007Oak tree (480x640)

 

I think this is a marsh marigold.  Please correct me someone if I’m wrong.  I found it today at the top of a shady ditch near the big pond.

009Marsh marigold (640x480)

 

This is of of my newest miniature iris ‘Natascha’.  I only planted the bulbs last autumn.

010Miniature iris 'Natascha' (640x480)

 

Early daffodils with pretty hanging heads

011Daffodils (480x640)

Early pale daffodils

012Daffodils (480x640)

 

 

Perhaps these photos of my Delft Blue hyacinths show up their lovely colours better.

013Hyacinths (480x640)

Delft Blue hyacinths

014Hyacinth (480x640)

Delft Blue hyacinth

015Hyacinths (480x640)

 

 

 

New leaves on the Leycesteria or Pheasant Berry

016New leaves on Leycesteria (480x640)

 

A self seeded primula in the grass

017Primula (640x480)

 

A yellow viola

025Yellow viola (640x480)

 

Lesser periwinkle

021Lesser periwinkle (640x480)

 

New leaves on R’s spirea

022New leaves on spirea (640x480)

 

Deer damaged daylilies

020Deer damaged daylilies (640x480)

 

New leaves on one of R’s roses

023New leaves on rose (640x480)

 

Primroses

024Primrose (640x480)

 

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I talk about what it's like living in a quiet part of Suffolk. I am a wife, mother and daughter, a practising Christian and love the natural world that surrounds me. I enjoy my life - most of the time!

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