Autumn in a Suffolk Lane – Part 2

11 Sun Oct 2015

Posted by Clare Pooley in churches, Days out, Gardening, music, plants, Rural Diary, trees

Tags

Acorn, ash keys, Astrantia, autumn, Bantam Cock, beach, chickens, Chrysanthemum, conker, dogwood, Dunwich Heath, dwarf gorse, eating apples, Elderberries, fungi, gardening, GERANIUM, Grove snail, Hibiscus, Jake Thackray, Knopper gall, leaf colour, Linstead Magna, Linstead Parva, liverwort, Michaelmas Daisy, moorhen, Pyracantha, rough sea, Salvia, silver birch, Suffolk, sunset, Tansy, viola

The beach at Dunwich Heath.

We visited yet another of our local beaches on a very windy, cool afternoon recently. We only stayed on the beach for a short while because the wind was so biting; Elinor and I both got earache.

The mist in the distance is sea-spray.

The waves were quite rough but the tide was going out.

Foam was left on the sand and was blowing about.

This little fish must have come too close to the shore.

This Grove Snail (Cepaea nemoralis) attached to its bit of bracken was swinging about in the wind.

My ID guide suggests that the Grove Snail “is used to demonstrate the survival of the fittest in evolution, because Thrushes eat the snails which are least well camouflaged against their environment.”

The Heather (Calluna vulgaris) was past its best but the Dwarf Gorse (Ulex minor) was looking wonderful

Another sunset.

In a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the bright yellow of the Perennial Sow-thistle was not common at this time of year. I will have to eat my words because most of the flowers I have seen since then have been yellow!

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) seen on the roadside between Linstead Magna and the village of Linstead Parva *(see below)

The Tansy has very aromatic leaves and the little button flowerheads are made up of disc florets only.

The genus name ‘Tanecetum’ and the name Tansy are both derived from the Greek word for immortality. The plant was believed to give eternal life to the drinker of an infusion made from it.

Tansy used to be used as a flavouring in food until fairly recently. Egg dishes especially, were enhanced by the use of finely chopped tansy leaves. Tansy was also used as an alternative to expensive imported spices such as nutmeg and cinnamon and Tansy Cake at Easter was very popular. Because of the strength of its scent, Tansy was also used as a repellent, keeping mice from corn and flies from meat.

Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea)

Close to where I photographed the Tansy I found this hedge of Dogwood. It was covered in large black berries – the largest I have ever seen on a Dogwood – and most of the leaves had turned a beautiful red. Dogwood leaves are usually a much darker, duller maroon in Autumn.

What also surprised me about these Dogwood bushes was seeing flowers in bloom at the same time as the berries and the red leaves.

It isn’t easy to see them in this photo so I cropped it.

One of the flower-heads is in the centre of this picture. The couple of weeks of warm and sunny weather we have had recently had fooled the bush into thinking it was spring again.

Richard and I have been working in the garden, getting it ready for winter. I only seem able to get out there a couple of days a week but I have managed to get quite a lot done. One of my jobs has been tidying behind the garden shed and round the back of the greenhouse. Behind the shed was rank with weeds, mainly stinging nettles, which I was able to pull out fairly easily as the soil is quite damp there. I had stored lots of pots and tubs full of spring bulbs behind the greenhouse so these have come back out to be smartened up and got ready for next spring. I discovered other flowerpots that should have been emptied and cleaned ages ago.

IMG_5783Marchantia polymorpha liverwort with snail

This pot was covered with liverwort Marchantia polymorpha. It has little green cups on the leaf-like structures (thallus). Do you see the baby snail?

We have a lot of fungus all over the grass in our garden. Nothing exciting or colourful, just brown and cream-coloured toadstools. These had been nibbled by something.

Two other unidentified types of fungi.

I have had this Hibiscus for about 26 years. It was a gift from my ex-mother-in-law who brought this with her when she came to see us when Alice was a tiny girl.

I love these double flowers – the peach petals have dark crimson bases.

Richard has a new Chrysanthemum flower

My Geraniums are still flowering

I like this pretty Viola

Three different Michaelmas Daisies

Salvia

The three ages of Astrantia

Elderberries from the bush at the end of the drive.

Acorn This is the first time in years that these acorns aren’t affected by Knopper galls.

This is a photo I took last year of Knopper gall damage on acorns

‘Conker’

Ash ‘keys’

The trees in our lane

Our Silver Birch is changing colour

Birch leaves

I pruned our Pyracantha recently

We not only had a lot of aphid damage to our apple trees in the spring and early summer but the apples on this tree are now being eaten by Moorhens! It is odd seeing water birds wobbling about in the trees gulping down our apples as fast as they can.

We are getting a little tired of next-door’s free-range chickens in our garden all day. They kick about in the flower beds and damage seedlings; they peck off flowers and generally make a mess of the paths, beds and compost heaps in the garden. We have spoken to our neighbours about it a few times but they don’t appear to have any intention of keeping their chickens on their own land. They have a constant supply of chicks too.

Linstead Magna (large/greater Linstead) is now a small collection of houses and farm buildings. The church no longer exists but I spoke to someone some years ago who remembered the church and used to attend it. For more information about this church see here.

Linstead Parva (small/lesser Linstead) is a pleasant little village with a pretty church. In spring the churchyard is covered in snowdrops and other spring flowers.

Thanks for visiting!

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.