May Flowers

27 Tue Aug 2019

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

Tags

Astrantia, Californian lilac, Clematis, cowslip hybrid, euphorbia, flowers, garden, glaucous sedge, Goat Willow, gooseberry, Hawthorn, horse chestnut, iris, plants, Ribwort Plantain, rose, scabious, Spindle, Suffolk, thrift, Thyme-leaved Speedwell, trees, Welsh onion

Let me take you back in time…again….

A selection of photos of plants and flowers seen in May, this year. Please click on any of these images to enlarge them.

A flowerbed on the south side of the house

The temperatures began to improve during May and the leaves on the fig tree (on the right of the photo) began to come out. The perennial plants also put on a lot of growth and flowers appeared.

Iris

Astrantia

Astrantia have interesting flowers

Thrift

Scabious

The Montana clematis continued to produce plenty of highly scented flowers from where it grows on the trellis next to the garden shed.

‘Canary Bird’ rose

Such a lovely yellow rose!

When we had the garden room built last year I had to move many of my plants out of the way. They ended up here on the edge of one of the vegetable beds.

These are wonderful pale lilac iris. I failed to get a decent photo of them.

Another attempt to catch the beauty of this iridescent flower.

A couple of days later more iris had appeared in the bed near the house.

I might move this iris away from the purple and blue ones in the autumn. It is an interesting colour but is a little overwhelmed by its neighbours.

It was a good year for iris.

Euphorbia. This is a small perennial sub-shrub with interesting colours in its leaves and bracts.

All around our garden are hybrids, like this one, between the wild cowslip and garden polyanthas and primulas. This plant decided to grow in a gravelly area next to a drain and one of the water butts.

Richard has a Californian Lilac in his shrubbery. It was glorious this year! The bees loved it and I think there are a few in this photo.

Gooseberry. If you look carefully you will see many tiny gooseberries. Unfortunately we didn’t protect the bush from the birds and we got no berries at all. One day they were all there and the next they weren’t. We have never needed to cover the bush before.

The welsh onion in the herb garden went crazy this year!

As well as the plants I have in flower and vegetable beds, there are the wild ones that I love to find.

Thyme-leaved Speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia )

This is a minute-flowered speedwell I find in the lawn and in the grass path round the pond. It forms patches of flowers as the stems lie flat along the ground and send out roots from nodes. The flower stems are upright.

Hawthorn

Country people think it very bad luck to bring hawthorn blossom indoors and woe betide you if you destroy a hawthorn!

Goat Willow ( Salix caprea) with its fluffy seeds.

The wood of the Goat Willow is very soft and used to be made into clothes pegs, rake teeth and hatchet handles.

Horse Chestnut ( Aesculus hippocastanum) blossom

Horse Chestnuts were introduced to Britain from the Balkans in the 16th century. ‘Conkers’ weren’t played with the fruit of the tree until the 18th century. Before that, the game was played with cobnuts from Hazel trees or with snail shells. The name ‘conkers’ derives from ‘conqueror’.

Sedge

I am not very good at identifying sedges, reeds, rushes and grasses but I think this might be Glaucous Sedge (Carex flacca).

Ribwort Plantain ( Plantago lanceolata)

I wonder if children still play the old games with Ribwort. In one of the games, the stalk is held between the thumb and forefinger and the bottom of the stalk is wrapped round the flower-head in a loop. When the loop is tugged sharply the flower-head is ‘fired’ and often travels a long way. I read that a form of ‘conkers’ can be played with Ribwort by keeping the flowerhead on its long stem and using it to attempt to knock a rival’s flower-head off. A couple of local names for Ribwort are ‘fighting cocks’ and ‘kemps’ from the Anglo-Saxon ‘cempa‘ meaning ‘a warrior’.

Spindle (Euonymous europaeus )

The wood of spindle is very hard and dense and pale coloured and from ancient times was used for making spindles. The wood is also known as skewerwood and pegwood and also makes high quality charcoal. The tree has an unpleasant smell if bruised and the fruit is an emetic. In olden days, the leaves and seeds were powdered and this powder was dusted onto the skin of children and animals to drive away lice.

With apologies for the length of this post.

A Suffolk Garden in July – Cultivated Flowers, Fruit and Vegetables

25 Fri Jul 2014

Posted by Clare Pooley in Gardening, plants, Rural Diary, trees, Uncategorized

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Asian lily, begonia, blackberries, borage, college acceptance, dahlia, English mace, erodium chrysanthemum, fennel, fruit trees, fuchsia, hydrangea, mint, morning glory, peas, rose, runner beans, sempervivum, untidy garden, water lily

We returned on 9th July from our short holiday to find a very over-grown garden. I must admit to loving the green lushness of the garden when it hasn’t been tended lately. There is so much to be seen – wild flowers (or weeds if you prefer), insects, birds and wild animals have had the place to themselves for a while and have made themselves comfortably at home.

As soon as I could, I went out for a quick tour of the garden. There had been a lot of wind and rain so the garden flowers were a little battered. R’s dahlias had grown very tall during our absence and a couple had lost a stem or two. R quickly did some tidying up and we admired the blooms on plants, some of which were already over five foot tall.

The runner beans were doing very well and we were able to start harvesting them a few days later. I read fairly recently that when runner beans were first introduced to this country it was as ornamental plants; no-one thought to eat the beans themselves for some time. Many people say they don’t like runner beans but I am sure this is because they have eaten old and woody beans, and I don’t blame them! Horrible! The beans have to be picked before they get too big and should be eaten straight away. Our first beans were very juicy but didn’t have much flavour, probably because we hadn’t had much sunshine. The ones we have eaten most recently which have had the benefit of a little sunshine have tasted much better.

The peas were ready to pick too and were the best peas we had tasted in a long time. They have all been eaten now!

Because of the rain, the mint had grown very well.

Variegated apple mint

This is a lovely mint grown from a rooted cutting Mum gave me. She has always had it in her garden and doesn’t know what type it is.

Just before we went away the blackberries had started to ripen. We picked a few and took them away with us and delicious they were too.

Unfortunately, while we were away quite a few were lost to the bad weather, birds, mice, wasps etc. They have only recently started cropping again and they are soooo good!

This is English Mace, achillea ageratum, and as you can see it is a member of the same family as Yarrow. The leaves actually do taste mildly of mace, the outside shell of nutmeg. The leaves can be made into a tea or just added as they are to culinary dishes.

This is feverfew, another one of my herbs. I bought one small plant a number of years ago and its seeds have spread all over the garden. This one I found growing in a crack in the path. The insects love it especially black-fly so it is useful as a companion plant attracting good insects and also keeping black-fly off broad beans etc.

Feverfew is a febrifuge; it induces perspiration which lowers the temperature in fevers. It is a useful herb to use during childbirth as it regulates contractions and recently has been found as an effective remedy for headaches and migraine. A tincture can be made from the leaves and then applied locally to relieve the pain and irritation of insect bites. The tincture can be made into a lotion by adding it to distilled water. This can be applied to the body as protection against attack by flying insects. A wonder-herb! It does smell a bit odd though!

My bronze fennel I have already spoken about in a previous post. I love the aniseed smell which pervades the front of the house on rather damp evenings. It is a useful flavouring herb for use in cooking but also the seeds can be eaten to ease indigestion and disperse wind/gas etc. Usually fennel grows to a height of about 4ft but the one growing at the front of the house is over 6ft tall.

I found this self-seeded borage plant near the hedge

A shiny white water lily

Purple Morning Glory

I had such difficulty getting the original seeds to germinate in a heated seed-tray as recommended on the seed packet. If I had known that I would still be benefitting from self-seeded plants seven years later I wouldn’t have worried and just chucked the lot out on the gravel round the garage. The seeds survive through extremely cold winters with rain, ice and snow. Admittedly I planted the first young plants up against the house and in very well-drained soil.

This Hydrangea has a strong pink colour

A newly purchased fuchsia was doing very well.

All our fuchsias died in the severe winter of 2012-13. After a year without them I felt the need of another plant. This is one I have had before. It is fairly hardy and it is easy to take cuttings from.

I didn’t think I liked begonias until E bought me this one last year.

A new Asian lily was flowering

Some beautiful deep-red roses were flowering in R’s border

Pretty pink and green flowers of the sempervivum or houseleek were already past their best

The delicate flowers of erodium chrysanthemum were just beginning to flower

All the fruit trees, the apples, crab-apples, pear, damson and hazelnut were doing very well and the fruits were swelling. We hadn’t lost many in the June drop.

We were all very pleased on our return to get a letter telling E that she had been accepted at City College Norwich and would be starting there in September. She is so relieved and believes she will be getting her life back again now. We sincerely hope and pray she will.

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.

Blackthorn tree

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.