No Time to Stand and Stare

Tags

busyness, cataract operation, crocus, Diary, driving, gardening, horse brasses, iris reticulata, medical appointments, muddy lanes, Plough Sunday, Plough Sunday service, pulmonaria, rosemary, Rumburgh Church, snowdrop, sparrowhawk, storm damage, Suffolk, the plough, wintertime, witch-hazel

Both our cars are covered in mud all the time; they are in a worse state now than in the photo! Most of our lane is inches deep in sloppy mud and it is hardly worth our while to wash the cars.

This year has been crazily busy so far and there has been no time for even a short walk since the new year.  At last, I have managed to catch-up with all my blog reading, I’ve sorted out all my bank statements and receipts and have got rid of large amounts of paper.  I have even spent a little time in the garden weeding and tidying-up the flowerbeds; there has been very little cold weather and the weeds have grown and grown!

Rosemary ( Rosmarinus ‘Miss Jessup’s Upright’) in flower in January

Witch Hazel; the stems covered in lichen.

Crocus

Crocus

Snowdrops. These and the crocus above grow under the crabapple tree. It has got somewhat weedy there in recent years!

Iris reticulata

Iris reticulata

Pulmonaria

I have taken a Morning Prayer service at church and attended a meeting with others in our Benefice who take church services.

Plough Sunday Service 12th January. Richard took this service very nicely. Much of the congregation is made up of members of ‘Old Glory’ the Molly Men and their friends and supporters

The decorated plough; the star of the Plough Sunday service.

Look at these beautiful horse brasses!

Most of my time has been spent in the car, taking Elinor to the station on her university days, taking Mum to her many hospital appointments, taking myself to hospital and doctor’s appointments, dental appointments, eye clinic appointments and grocery shopping trips.  Mum has had both her cataracts removed and such a load has been lifted from her and my shoulders!  She has so much more sight than we thought and the fear that she may not be able to look after herself and live alone as she wishes has receded for a while.  She is approaching her 90th birthday and though she tires easily and is somewhat twisted and stooping because of arthritis, she is still able to cook and look after herself.  Richard and I had to visit her the week before last to repair her hedge and fence, damaged by the first of our storms.  Mum hadn’t been able to do any gardening for some months because she couldn’t see, and the garden has become overgrown with brambles and nettles, thistles and other unwelcome weeds.  I had done a few jobs for her and so had Richard but the weeds had taken over and the fence that broke in the storm was covered in enormous brambles.

A rather beautiful female Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus ) who observed me taking her photo

This coming week I only have three appointments to keep and none for Mum except for taking her to church on Ash Wednesday.  I’m at the hospital all day on Tuesday having eye pressure tests, I have a hygienist appointment at the dentist on Wednesday and a hair appointment in Norwich on Thursday.  Housework has been a bit hit-and-miss lately and I hope to be able to catch-up with all my chores at home very soon.

This is just a short post to let you know what has been happening.  My next post will probably be about one of our days out last year, or even the year before that!  I have plenty of old photos but hardly any new ones!

Yet More Things!

Tags

amelanchier, Ash, ash keys, bristly ox-tongue, clematis montana, crabapple 'Harry Baker', euonymus, garden, greylag, pasque flower, pieris, red-legged partridge, rosemary, saxifrage, spring, Suffolk, tulip, viburnum bodnantense, white dead-nettle, wild cherry

I was surprised to see two Red-legged Partridges (Alectoris rufa) in my garden one morning as I opened the kitchen blinds.

This one had obviously had a bad night.

Please ignore the weedy flowerbed – I have since tidied it up.

Shortly after I took this photo they both flew away.

The variagated Euonymus is looking bright with new leaves.

The Pieris ‘Forest Fire’ has tiny new pink leaves

The Clematis montana ‘Rubens’ I cut back a few weeks ago is showing me that it won’t be beaten.

The Rosemary is still flowering beautifully

The Ash trees (Fraxinus excelsior) are flowering.

The flowers are very small and a warm purple colour. Ash trees have separate male and female flowers, mainly on separate trees but there are a few trees that have both male and female flowers but on separate branches! The trees around us are all females and produce thousands of Ash ‘keys’, winged seeds that hang from the trees in bunches in the autumn. My mother has plenty of Ash trees near her house but all hers are males – so no ‘keys’.

A reflective Greylag!

A bumblebee on White Dead-nettle (Lamium album)

A very over-grown corner of our garden. This ditch doesn’t belong to us but is part of the common land between our garden and the road. I expect that no-one will take responsibility for looking after this but if there is a problem with it in the future we will no doubt be asked to deal with it!

The Amelanchier is blossoming.

The Viburnum bodnantense produces dark pink flowers in the spring and pale pink or white flowers during the winter

Wild Cherry blossom (Prunus avium)

Wild Cherry

Pasque Flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris)

Red Saxifrage

A soft pink Tulip

It looks so different depending on the angle from which I photograph it

Tulips

The new leaves of Bristly Ox-tongue (Picris echioides).  Another member of the Daisy family.

Crabapple ‘Harry Baker’ flower buds

I had an on-line conversation with a member of the WordPress team a week or so ago and asked about my missing posts.  The person who dealt with my enquiry was extremely helpful but was unable to retrieve them.  He would have been able to retrieve three old posts I had deleted on purpose but was unable to find the ones that had disappeared!  Fortunately, a very dear friend who is an e-mail follower has been saving my posts and has sent all the missing ones to me.  When I have the time I may post a page with them on for anyones information.

Thank-you for visiting!

A Mild Weekend

Tags

chaffinches, Coffee morning, daffodils, euonymus, gardening, goldfinches, grass-cutting, green woodpecker, hedge-cutting, honey bees, honeysuckle, ladybird, primulas, Robin, rosemary, weather

These daffodils are only about 8″ tall – I like their delicate yellow colour.  The clay soil in the flowerbed had already formed a hard crust when I took this photo.

We had hardly any rain last week and as a strong breeze was blowing most of the time, the ground at last started to dry out and we weren’t sinking into the lawn at every step.  We had a few frosts that disappeared very quickly and the temperature rose progressively through the week until at the weekend we had temperatures in the mid teens (Centigrade).

A honey bee on honeysuckle. We have some new neighbours living near us who have bee hives. On Thursday I saw that their bees had ventured out and were enjoying our honeysuckle flowers.

Both Richard and I worked quite hard in the garden this weekend, trying to catch up with the tidying chores that should have been done in the autumn and make a start on the jobs that need to be done in the spring.

Rosemary in flower against the front wall of our house.

Rosemary flowers.  Whilst weeding on Sunday I found a number of rosemary seedlings.

The job that Richard was most pleased about was getting the grass cut at last.  He has cut it long to start with and next weekend (weather permitting) he will cut it shorter.  He had also not been able to finish cutting the Leylandii hedge last autumn and on Sunday he worked on that too.  There is only the top to cut now and if the ground continues to dry out he will be able to get on the stepladder without it sinking in a couple of feet and finish that next weekend as well.  Hopefully, before the birds start to nest in the hedge!  Richard wondered if gardening counts as exercise.  The nurse always looks at me in a sceptical way when I suggest that gardening should be classed as exercise.  I expect she imagines I wander about doing a little pruning and weeding – no raised heart-rate there, she thinks.  However, as most gardeners know, gardening can be very strenuous at times and I do my fair share of digging, raking and other heavy work.  Richard worked out that he had walked almost a mile and a half yesterday taking six barrow-loads of hedge clippings to the bonfire heap.  We have a large garden.

Richard mowing the grass. The building on the far side of the hedge is the old school house. It is now a private dwelling.

This is where we have planted our fruit trees at the front of the house. The school house beyond the hedge, the corner pond to the right and you can see our grey septic tank cover to the left. You can see from the tracks in the grass, Richard must have been practising his slalom driving.

Elinor didn’t have a good day on Friday and wasn’t able to get out of the car when I took her to college.  I brought her home again and she slept for a few hours and felt a little better when she woke.  She has had three out of four results for her mock GCSE exams so far.  Psychology A, English A and Maths E.  An E is only just a pass but we are pleased that she did as well as she did with only having attended half a dozen classes at college.  She is determined to do better and really wants to get at least a C grade.

Richard and I went to the church coffee morning on Saturday which was held at the Rector’s house.  The Rector is still recovering from heart surgery and was pale and thin but gamely hosted the gathering.   We won a picture frame in the raffle and I bought a delicious sticky tea bread and some more of the Rector’s home-made marmalade.  We indulged in the usual chat and gossip.  There are a few events coming up soon.  Cordelia is holding her annual Daffodil Day (on Palm Sunday this year), when we admire her beautiful garden and buy food and goods from stalls in aid of church funds.  Our other friends, Pam and Ian are holding an Open Garden on Easter Monday also in aid of church funds and their garden is always a joy to visit too.

Ladybird on Euonymus

I had a migraine on Saturday so wasn’t able to take advantage of the fine weather.  Sunday started very fair but by the time we left church it was starting to cloud over and we had a little drizzle then rain showers during the afternoon.  The weather didn’t stop us working outside as it was so mild.

The churchyard at Flixton where we attended the service on Sunday.

Green Woodpecker

Green Woodpecker

Green Woodpecker. I am glad we have these visiting our garden because they enjoy ants eggs and our garden seems to be one enormous anthill!

I think the woodpecker is a female as the males have a crimson centre to their moustachial stripe.

Chaffinches and Goldfinches feeding under the crabapple tree.

House Sparrows on fat feeder

House Sparrows on fat feeder

Chaffinches

Robin

Just a few of the birds in our garden.

Thank-you for visiting!

More Flowers in my Garden

Tags

Christmas box, crocus, daisy, grape hyacinth, iris danfordiae, iris reticulata, lichen, rosemary, Scilla sibirica, snowdrops, tete a tete narcissi, viburnum bodnantense, winter aconites, winter-flowering honeysuckle, winter-flowering jasmine

Scilla sibirica.  Brilliant blue flowers like miniature bluebells, they start to flower as soon as they emerge from the ground and continue elongating until they are about 10cm/4ins tall.  As you can see, mine have started to spread and the young ones are just coming up around the original group.

 

Winter Aconites.  Eranthus hyemalis.  Hooray!  At last!  A member of the buttercup family.  I can’t get rid of creeping buttercup and these won’t spread – most confusing!

 

Yellow crocus in the grass under the variegated sweet chestnut tree.

 

Yet another picture of my miniature iris, iris reticulata – I love them.  Look carefully at the bottom right of the group of flowers and you will see a bloom that has been nipped off and discarded by one of the kind animal visitors to the garden.  Towards the bottom left of the photo you can see some yellow iris danfordiae just about to come out.  I am really feeling quite smug about these as they are notoriously difficult to get to survive in this country.  The bulbs break up after flowering into bulblets which take a few years to mature and then flower.  One has to recreate the conditions where the plants originally came from – danfordiae from Turkey, reticulata from Turkey, the Caucasus, Iraq, Iran.  Good drainage; baked in summer, cold in winter.  As you can see, my soil is very stony in this bed and it is south facing so gets sun for most of the day in summer.

 

A tub containing snowdrops and tete a tete narcissi.

 

A rosemary flower.  Rosemary grows very well in our garden.  I have two large plants one of which is next to the front door in the herb garden.  Rosemary under the pillow wards off bad dreams and nightmares; rosemary next to the front door keeps witches away!  Rosemary for remembrance.

 

Daisies growing in the grass.  I couldn’t be without daisies.

 

Viburnum bodnantense flowers.

 

And again!  I found it difficult to get the right angle to photograph them from.

 

Winter-flowering Honeysuckle flowers.  Again I found it difficult to photograph these.  Gorgeous scent.

 

Christmas Box flowers.  These tiny flowers emit the most lovely scent – best on still, mild winter days.

 

A really pretty tiny grape hyacinth.

 

Mauve crocus under the weeping crabapple.

 

More mauve crocus.

Winter-flowering Jasmine.  This has been in flower since the beginning of November.

 

Two types of lichen on cotoneaster horizontalis.

 

And again.