The Young Visitors

Tags

hedgehog, lily-pads, mallard duck, mallard ducklings, rooks, sunset, tawny owlets, watering plants, Young birds

We had a fabulous sunset last night.  After yet another cloudy start to the morning things gradually improved so that by early afternoon it was bright and much warmer than of late, though still with a stiff northerly breeze.  I spent the whole day at home – a real luxury – household chores in the morning and a little gardening in the afternoon.  Because we haven’t had much rain recently I decided to water everything very thoroughly yesterday evening so went outside again after our evening meal.  I started off with lots of watering cans filled from our water-butts which I used in the greenhouse, on plants in tubs in ericaceous soil and on as many of the other plants and flower beds as I could manage.  I then used the hosepipe for the rest of the thirsty plants.  We have a water meter so are careful not to use the garden hose any more than we have to.  We save as much water as we can in water-butts but carrying lots of filled two-gallon cans round the garden is tiring work.

As I watered the plants I listened to the birds calling to each other as they do in the evening.  Gradually the day-time birds fell silent and the night-time sounds began.  One of the sounds we have been listening to for the last couple of weeks is the calling of a couple of Tawny owlets in the trees opposite our house.  It started with just one owl calling on its own but a few days later another one joined in.  They call every few seconds for the whole night from about 8.30pm until dawn the next morning.  They become very noisy every now and then, clamouring and squeaking and I assume that is when they are being fed.   They must be getting quite big by now as their voices are louder and they are moving through the trees.  Sometimes they are near the end of the lane where they started off and sometimes they are in the ash tree opposite our house.  I am used to the noise they make now but at first it was difficult to get to sleep.

The sunset picture I took yesterday evening was at 9.30pm and it was still light enough for me to see round the garden without a torch at 11pm.  It starts to get light just before 3am and by 3.30am to 4am most of the birds are singing again.  I have to collect all the bird feeders that are near the house if they still have food in them and bring them into the porch or greenhouse.  This is because of the rooks who descend on the feeders at the crack of dawn and have loud arguments among themselves just under our bedroom window.  Unfortunately, we are still being woken by a rook despite there not being any food outside the house (there are other feeders further down the garden that we leave out).  This rook is a young one who doesn’t seem to want to learn to feed itself.  It follows its parent about calling loudly and not watching the adult bird as it shows its fledgling where to find food.

Young rook

Young rook

The fledgling has just noticed its parent has arrived.  The parent hopes it hasn’t been noticed!

The fledgling is calling and fluttering its wings and the parent resignedly goes to join it.

Off they go together to look for food under the tree.  Poor parent rook – all the other rooks’ fledglings have gone off a week or more ago and only this one is left, unable to feed itself.

Another young family we have in the garden are three mallard ducklings with their mother.

We have been watching this little family grow from tiny little balls of fluff to these young ducks.

An over-exposed photo of them on the 9th of June

And here they are on the 12th of June.

Here they are resting on lily-pads.  The smallest one on the right is fast asleep.

 

They visited the ground feeder the following day.  Only the smallest one can get through the mesh now.

We briefly had another family of mallards that same day.  This time there were eight ducklings.

We had another visitor last night but it was an adult this time.

A hedgehog.

Catching Up

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Duck and drake Mallard

Wood Pigeon

Stock Dove

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

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

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’.

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.

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

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

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

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.

 

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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…

and to the right.

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!

Wednesday 12th to Sunday 16th March

Tags

alder, ambulances, brimstone butterfly, chaffinch, church, cowslip, daffodils, dog violet, Eye, fields, figs, greylags, Harleston, hazel, heartsease, Lent, mallards, moon, moorhen, nesting, pond, prayer, pussy willow, quiz night, rooks, Rumburgh, silverlace primula, sunset, tortoiseshell butterfly, trees, Wissett

Wednesday began with frost and mist.  This soon cleared and the weather was then lovely for the rest of the day.  I did my usual shopping trip with my mother with a detour to a free-range chicken farm at Eye where Mum buys her eggs.  I had a little shopping to do for myself, so called in at Harleston on my way home.  I arrived home just after 2pm for a late lunch and had time for a few household chores and a quick walk round the garden to feed the birds, tidy up a couple of things and take some photos before R came home.

A moorhen and a chaffinch at the front of the house.

 

The moorhen again.

 

A couple of photos of the daffodils that have come up round the big pond.

Some violet leaves that have struggled up through the dried mud round the pond.

 

And some cowslip leaves too!

 

Reflection of trees and cloud in the pond.

 

Afternoon moon.

 

I had decided what we should have for an evening meal and was about to start it when R offered to cook and I gladly accepted his offer.  I didn’t have time to eat anything as I had to go out at 6.45pm to collect Mum and take her to Eye to attend a Lent course.  The course in her area is a deanery course.  A deanery is a collection of benefices and a benefice is a collection of parishes.  In rural areas to have benefice and or deanery meetings or courses means that there will be more people attending and any speakers kind enough to visit will have a good audience.  The only downside is that the distances to be travelled by many parishioners is very great.  This year’s course is on prayer and Wednesday’s talk was on ‘Prayer with Words’.  The speaker was the Precentor from the Cathedral at Bury St Edmund’s; a really pleasant man who gave an interesting talk.  He introduced us to poets and poems that were new to us as well as reading from old favourites.  My journey home was very difficult because of thick fog.

Thursday.  I was woken just before 6.00am by the rooks!  I had remembered to bring in the sunflower seed feeder but the rooks were trying to get the remains of yesterday’s seed off the bird-table and were tapping loudly on it with their enormous beaks.  I have a cage round the bird-table which is supposed to prevent large birds from getting on it. However, it doesn’t stop the birds from clinging on to the edge of the table with their claws, flapping their wings for balance and pecking food through the mesh!  Another lovely day.  Went in to Halesworth for a haircut and to get yet more shopping (I always manage to forget something each time I go!)  My usual hairdresser is on maternity leave so her Mum did my hair and we chatted about babies.  Both her daughters are having their first babies in the next two weeks and they are getting a little apprehensive.  On the way home I saw a tortoiseshell butterfly and an enormous brimstone butterfly.

I spent the afternoon gardening as well as having a short (for us!) conversation with my sister who was planning to visit Mum at the weekend.  The geese have been very argumentative this week.  The gander of the pair who have claimed the island has been spending most of his time swimming in the pond and seeing off any other goose/gander who dares to come anywhere near the pond bank.  He must be exhausted as he doesn’t seem to have eaten anything either.

A couple of photos of the mallards in our front ditch.

Miniature daffodils in the grass.

 

Goat or Pussy Willow.  Salix caprea.

 

When R got home he wanted to go out for a short walk across the fields.  The wind had got up a little and it had got cloudy but R managed to take some decent photos while we were out.

Alder catkins and cone-like fruits from last year.

 

Hazel catkins.

 

More fog overnight.

Friday.  A cooler, cloudier, breezier day.  I did some more gardening and lots of ironing.  The geese seemed to have resolved their differences.  The resident pair came to sit near me while I gardened and whenever I looked up they gave gentle honks.  I knew they were asking for food so when I had got to the end of my weeding I fetched some special goose and duck feed I have for just such an occasion (to quote Foghorn Leghorn) and cast it on the grass near by them.  Of course, the gander then hissed at me while the goose ate the food.  He is a very protective mate and even though I have provided the food he has to warn me off and so I do keep my distance!

Saturday.  A quiet morning and another beautiful one.  Still very breezy but much brighter than yesterday.  Did some housework and spoke to A on the phone.  We drove to Mum’s in the afternoon to see my sister F who was visiting with her eldest son and her dog Ben.   We had a lovely couple of chatty hours and we then had to leave to get our evening meal before going to yet another quiz night.  This one was in aid of Rumburgh village hall.  I think it was the noisiest event I had been too since going to dances when I was young.  The hall had just been insulated and redecorated but there were no curtains or blinds at the windows yet and I think this was the reason it was so noisy.  The two farmers on our team were both a little deaf (caused by driving noisy farm machinery) and they were finding it really difficult to hear anything above the hubbub of loud chatter.  Our local Member of Parliament was taking part too.  He lives in Wissett, the next village along on the way to Halesworth, and is very good about taking part in local events and is a truely supportive MP.  He had been out all day on the ambulances as there has been an enquiry about the time it takes for ambulances to get to emergencies.  He was talking to R and one of our farmer friends and said he was very sympathetic towards the ambulance crews, as he had seen for himself the great distances they had to travel and also how many wasted journeys they had to make.  R told him about my sister’s job as a paramedic in Kent and some of the problems she has to put up with too.  Unfortunately we came ninth today but R won a picture of a tree in the raffle.

Sunday.  There was a Morning Prayer service at Rumburgh today but I couldn’t attend as I took Mum to her church.  She hasn’t got anyone to give her a lift at the moment and as she doesn’t usually see anyone at all during the week except me, and all her friends are at her church, I think it only right that I take her there.  I got back home at 1.00pm and had lunch before doing some chores, putting a loaf on to bake and then back out into the garden.  I fed the birds which took nearly an hour – all the feeders were empty, I have a number of them scattered about the garden and the garden is well over an acre in size.  I had noticed this morning when I looked out of the window that the goose has started sitting on her nest on the island.

 

A dog violet in flower.

 

A silverlace primula.

 

A heartsease flower.

 

Figs are starting to swell on the tree.

 

Lots of pictures of this evening’s sunset.

The rookery in the sunset.

 

Meanderings and More March Flowers

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.

Blackthorn tree

Blackthorn blossom

Blackthorn blossom

Blackthorn

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

Early daffodils with pretty hanging heads

Early pale daffodils

 

 

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

Delft Blue hyacinths

Delft Blue hyacinth

 

 

 

New leaves on the Leycesteria or Pheasant Berry

 

A self seeded primula in the grass

 

A yellow viola

 

Lesser periwinkle

 

New leaves on R’s spirea

 

Deer damaged daylilies

 

New leaves on one of R’s roses

 

Primroses

 

Apologies

Tags

geese, mallards, marriage etc, moorhens, rooks

I feel I must apologise for last night’s sentimental outburst. There is no real excuse for it, but the night was so lovely, and, a little bit of soppiness (within reason, of course) never did anyone any harm – yet.

Not much to report so far today.  The day started cold and frosty with ice on the ponds.  This quickly disappeared as the wind got up and it is now raining hard – again.

The rooks have started fiddling about with their old nests in the rookery.  Mark Cocker in his book ‘Crow Country’ says that they dismantle the nests each year and start again.  I am not sure about that, though I am no expert.  The rooks pair for life but they still feel the need to court each other again each year – bowing and nodding and lifting the feathers on the back of their necks.  Human couples, in the main, don’t seem to continue to woo each other after they have decided to get married/live together.  Perhaps they should (I don’t mean bowing and nodding etc. – they’d get funny looks from passers-by) but perhaps try to remember what it was that attracted them about their partner in the beginning/make an effort to listen to each other or spend more time together/try not to take each other for granted – I’m sure you can think of lots more.  (What has got into me?! It must be Valentine’s Day!)  R and I decided some years ago to forego sending each other cards and giving presents on this day (at my instigation if I remember rightly) and what a relief it was not to have to sort through hundreds of simply awful cards trying to find something appropriate to us and our marriage.  We ended up with cards with no message and scenic views or gardens or flowers on the front and then wrote our own rather restrained messages.  I’m not usually a sentimental person (last night was an aberration) and I found it an uncomfortable experience.  It all seemed very silly.  As a girl I would have loved to have received a card from an unknown admirer but as a middle-aged woman….. No, ridiculous!

The geese don’t have the big pond to themselves any more.  The moorhens are very busy, paddling about doing moorhenny things and a group of five male mallards have arrived.  They are stalking one lone female – waiting for their chance!

Lunch break over – I must get back to the ironing and then I’m off to Diss to pick A up from the station.  She is coming home for a long weekend and I am looking forward to it very much.

Gardening and Feeding Birds

Tags

Mark Cocker 'Crow Country', Norwich Cathedral, Rain, rooks, weeding, wild birds

A beautiful red sunrise this morning and some frost on the grass.  We had a lot of heavy rain yesterday evening with high winds and thunder and lightening but during the night the sky cleared and the wind dropped.  Yesterday afternoon I managed to work in the garden for a few hours.  There has been so little cold weather that the weeds are growing very well and so I decided to try to clear the worst affected flower bed.  It was hard going as the soil in our garden is clay over chalk and flint and with all the rain we have had the soil had become very sticky mud.  It is not recommended that work is done with the ground so wet but if I had left the weeds, mainly red dead-nettle and thistles, they would have totally engulfed all the miniature bulbs coming up.  I wasn’t able to finish the whole bed before it got dark and began to rain but most was done and I was quite pleased.

This morning we decided to go to Norwich Cathedral and have lunch in the city.  The drive was pleasant (especially as R drove not me!) and I noticed all the catkins on the trees and in the hedges.  The sky was very overcast as more rain was forecast but the roads were fairly empty and we quickly found somewhere to park.  E loves coming with us to the cathedral:  she enjoys listening to the choir and the wonderful organ playing and also being part of a large congregation.  We left the cathedral in pouring rain.  Only then did R realise he’d left his hat in the car and didn’t have his umbrella.  E had her umbrella but the wind kept blowing it inside-out.  We went straight to the café where we had some lunch and then did a little shopping.  I left E in Waterstones where she chose some books to buy with some of her birthday money, and went to buy her a new umbrella, some re-proofing spray and a couple of things from the chemist.  R went to buy himself some underclothes and a hat!

We got home at about 2pm and had a hot drink.  The rain eased off soon afterwards so I went out to feed the birds.  The amount of black sunflower seeds I use is amazing.  I have two sunflower feeders the larger of which is about 20″ tall and both need refilling every day.  I know that a lot of the seeds are taken by rooks and I haven’t yet found a way to deter them.  I admire them as they are very intelligent birds but when they descend on the garden in large numbers they eat most of the contents of a feeder in a very short space of time and that becomes expensive.  I have a squirrel deterrent on the larger feeder which is weight sensitive.  When it detects something heavy on the feeder an alarm sounds and then the feeder spins round quickly for a few seconds.  This has put the squirrels off but not the rooks!  I think they enjoy the challenge and seem to play on it.  One rook hangs on the feeder as it spins round and shovels out the seeds to friends waiting on the ground below.  Most infuriating!  A couple of years ago I was becoming almost bitter about this so I read the book by Mark Cocker called ‘Crow Country’.  He used to live not far from here and studied the local corvids as well as those in other parts of the country.  His book taught me to understand them and even to like them!  I now have to limit the amount of food I put out (to save my pocket) and if I think the rooks have been on the feeder too long I go out and shoo them away.  (They then wait for me to go out then gorge themselves until I return!).  Other unwelcome guests are next-door’s free-range chickens free-ranging in our garden and of course, the moles, the rats, the deer, the rabbits, the pheasants which peck off and discard! all buds, growing tips etc. of all the plants in the garden, other people’s cats and dogs and so on.
  It is now time to cook the evening meal.