• About my Blog
  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) and This Site
  • My Life in a Suffolk Lane

A Suffolk Lane

~ A diary of my life in rural north Suffolk.

A Suffolk Lane

Tag Archives: ploughing

High Summer Walk Part 1

06 Wed Aug 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Insects, plants, Rural Diary, walking, weather

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

agrimony, bindweed, common knapweed, common ragwort, Gatekeeper butterfly, hoary plantain, hogweed, hop trefoil, oil-seed rape, peas, pineapple weed, ploughing, poppy, Ringlet butterfly, seagulls, silverweed, thatched barn, thrips, thunder-flies, walking

I had been shopping in Norwich with E two weeks ago and the weather had just changed for the better.  We had had a lot of very humid weather, with heavy rain and thunder and lightening.  We had had the usual accompaniment to humid weather of flying and swarming ants and thunder-flies.  These are tiny little thrips with feathery wings; a millimetre long and thread-thin.  They get everywhere – in your ears and eyes, up your nose, in your hair, crawling on your skin until you feel like screaming. They come in the house and die in heaps on every surface; they even get behind the glass in your picture frames.  And then, after a storm at the weekend, we woke on the Monday to fresh air, warm sunshine and a gentle breeze. As we were driving home I had such a longing to be out of doors, walking in the fields that instead of having lunch I found the camera and my hat and went off down the lane.  The verge at the side of our lane had just been cut but there were still a few flowers hanging on there.

001Bindweed

Beautiful pink and white bindweed.  The flowers are almond scented.

The harvesting had begun.

003Stubble field

Oil-seed rape stubble.

The stubble is almost a foot high and so hard and sharp like knives; it is almost impossible to walk through.

017View

You can see for miles from here

018View with UFO

There is a UFO in this shot. Is it a bird?  Is it a plane? No!  It’s…. you tell me!

004Ploughing

Ploughing had started in one of the fields.  Seagulls love to follow the plough as it turns up lots of worms and grubs.  Black-headed, herring and lesser black-backed gulls.

007Ringlet

A rather tired and tatty ringlet butterfly

012Agrimony 009Agrimony This is agrimony and there has been a lot of this about this year.  Apparently it has a scent reminiscent of apricots; I haven’t noticed this but then I don’t have a very good sense of smell – at least not for nice smells!  The ancients found this a very versatile plant as it was held to be a remedy against snake-bite, poor sight, loss of memory and liver complaints.

011Silverweed leaves

Silverweed leaves. Potentilla anserina

016Common Knapweed buds

Common Knapweed buds. These plants have been flowering for many weeks now; and for many to come if these buds are anything to go by.  Also known as Hardheads.

019Hogweed with insects

We have had lots of hogweed too

020Hoary plantain

Hoary plantain. This is an unusual plantain in that it produces a delicate scent which attracts bees and other insects.  All other British plantains are wind pollinated.

021Field of peas

A field of peas.

For many years, peas were grown everywhere in this part of Suffolk as there was a frozen food factory in Lowestoft on the coast.  We were all used to the enormous pea harvesters and the smell of burnt peas wafting on the air.  Then the factory was closed.  Many people were made redundant and the farmers here had to find a different crop to grow and had to sell their harvesters.  In recent years peas have started to be grown again.  Some farmers are working together as a collective, sharing harvesters and have found other customers for their peas.  This field is being left until the peas have dried.  I don’t know if the plants will just be dug into the soil as a source of nitrogen or if the plants are used for animal feed or the dried peas sold to a processing factory.  Perhaps someone can tell me. 027Poppies in the wheat Red is so difficult to photograph.  This photo looks as though I’ve done some careless ‘photoshopping’. 029Poppies in the wheat You will recognise this photo from my previous post.  This works better as the poppies take up more of the photo but they still don’t look ‘real’.

030Snail on a seedhead

A snail hiding in a hogweed seedhead

037Gatekeeper (f)

A female Gatekeeper butterfly

038Thatched barn

An enormous thatched barn

040Hop trefoil 041Hop Trefoil This is hop trefoil.  The stems are downy and the seed-heads are covered with dead petals making them look like hops.

There was a lot pink and yellow.


043Pineapple weed

Pineapple Mayweed

This smells of pineapple when crushed.

044Common ragwort

This is Common Ragwort, a poisonous plant and the food plant of the Cinnabar Moth caterpillar.

I will continue this walk in Part 2.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Tumblr
  • Print
  • Pocket
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...

Unphotographable

19 Wed Mar 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in domestic animals, plants, Rural Diary, Uncategorized, wild animals, wild birds

≈ 2 Comments

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.

001Phalaenopsis orchid (480x640)

002Phalaenopsis orchid (640x480)

003Phalaenopsis orchid (480x640)

004Phalaenopsis orchid (640x480)

005Sunset (640x480)

006Sunset (640x480)

007Sunset (640x480)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Tumblr
  • Print
  • Pocket
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...
Follow A Suffolk Lane on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 688 other followers

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!

My Posts

May 2022
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Feb    

Pages

  • About my Blog
  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) and This Site
  • My Life in a Suffolk Lane

Archives

Blogs I Follow

Posts I Like

amphibians art Arts and Crafts churches cooking Days out domestic animals family fish Folk Traditions Gardening Historic Buildings holidays Insects Landscaping literature music Norwich plants Rural Diary seashore theatre trees Uncategorized walking weather wild animals wild birds wild flowers woodland

Tags

architecture autumn beach berries birds blackbird blackthorn butterfly church clouds common knapweed cow parsley crocus daffodils Diary dogwood family field maple flowers fungus garden gardening geese greylags ground-ivy Halesworth Hawthorn heather holiday Holly Holy Week horse chestnut Hoverfly insects ivy Lake District Lent lesser celandine lichen Lords and Ladies Mallard mallards Minsmere moorhen moss music Norwich Peak District pheasant plants pond ponds primrose primroses Rain rooks Rumburgh Rumburgh Church sheep Sheffield snow snowdrops spring Suffolk Suffolk Wildlife Trust sunset the Beck trees viburnum bodnantense walking weather wild cherry wild flowers winter-flowering honeysuckle witch-hazel

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Goodreads

Blog at WordPress.com.

Interesting Literature

A Library of Literary Interestingness

naturechirp

Celebrating God's creatures, birds and plants...

Sophie Neville

Writer and Producer

Going Batty in Wales

Developing a more sustainable lifestyle in SW Wales

Paol Soren

A bit of this and that

Our Lake District Escapades

Exploring the Lake District and beyond

Making Book

All sorts of stuff about books and book manufacturing

Julian Hoffman

Notes from Near and Far

Short Walks & Long Paths

Wandering tales from around the coast of Wales

Dukes and Princes

History, heritage and genealogy about Europe's highest ranking aristocrats

The Biking Gardener

An English persons experience of living and gardening in Ireland

Nan's Farm

A Journal Of Everyday Life

Walk the Old Ways

Rambling Journeys in Britain with John Bainbridge. Fighting for the Right to Roam. Campaigning to Protect Our Countryside.

Writer Side UP!

Waking the Writer Side...and keeping it "Up!"

Meggie's Adventures

Travel, thank you notes and other stories from Meg King-Sloan

amusicalifeonplanetearth

Music and the Thoughts It Can Inspire

lovefoundation.co.uk

Traveling Tortuga

Simply Living Well

Pakenham Water Mill

Historic watermill in the beautiful Suffolk countryside

Take It Easy

Retired, not expired: words from the after(work)life. And music. Lots of music!

Secret Diary Of A Church of England Vicar's Wife

Public Rights of Way Explorer

PROW Explorer

thanksfortheadventureorg.wordpress.com/

The Beat Goes On

#TBGO

PLESZAK

Frank Pleszak's Blogs

John Bainbridge Writer

Indie Writer and Publisher

roughwighting

Life in a flash - a weekly writing blog

Walking the Old Ways

Rambling in the British Countryside

A Voice from Iran

Storytelling, short stories, fable, folk tales,...

CapKane

thoughts on social realities

SkyeEnt

Jottings from Skye

jodie richelle

embracing my inner homemaker

Skizzenbuch/Blog

Just another WordPress.com weblog

Author Kevin Cooper

Life, Love, Tears & Laughter: Then, Now & Hereafter.

Have Bag, Will Travel

The Call of the Pen

Flash Fiction, Book Reviews, Devotionals and other things.

Book Jotter

Reviews, news, features and all things books for passionate readers

John's Postcards

STADTAUGE

Ailish Sinclair

Stories and photos from Scotland

Art in Nature

The ‘Beauty of the Moment’

The Strawberry Post

Here to Entertain, Educate & Inspire!

You dream, I photographe it !

Smile! You’re in Barnier World......

theinfill

the things that come to hand

Dr. Mary Ann Niemczura

Author of "A Past Worth Telling"

Provincial Woman

LIFE IN MUD SPATTERED BOOTS

A Quiet Celebration of Life on a British Farm

The Pink Wheelbarrow

The Mindful Gardener

The sensory pleasures and earthy delights of gardening.

Luanne Castle's Writer Site

Memoir, poetry, & writing theory

  • Follow Following
    • A Suffolk Lane
    • Join 688 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • A Suffolk Lane
    • Customise
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
    %d bloggers like this: