St Mary's Church, Willisham

 Simon Knott creator of the Suffolk Churches Index has been here twice and never found it open and it wasn't open for me either but he wrote  a good story about it HERE

The church sits high and can be seen from half a mile away through the little lanes of this bit of Suffolk. Just a shame that it's always locked apart from the occasional service.

That's Parish Church  number 142 that I've visited (out of approx 500 in Suffolk), thankfully only a handful have not been open to see inside.

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Thank you for comments yesterday.

Sad?

 I had a phone call from an unknown number last week, it told me my first husband who I'd been briefly in contact with a couple of years ago, after a gap of nearly 50 years, had died in hospital. He  lost his driving licence due to drink driving at the end of 2024 and I only heard  from him a couple of times after that, but he must have kept my phone number in his phone. His current and third wife, who he'd also split up from, said he had been ill since February. He was 71 - same age as me........

He didn't remember anything about our 7 years together, was as hopeless with money as he'd been 50 years ago and having left wife #3  was living in one rented room with a shared kitchen and bathroom, he had very little contact with his two sons and grandchildren (from the wife after me),  told me several lies and didn't have many interests. We had even less in common than we had in the 1970s. 

So why do I feel sad to hear of his death?

Into August

 I wonder how much rain we'll get in August? There's not much in the forecast for the first 12 days - maybe just one thunderstorm if we are lucky.......... Seems so odd to say that.

 Usually it's  a mixed month but this first old bit of folklore is so wrong this year as harvest has more-or-less finished. The combines, balers and grain carts were backwards and forwards "making speedy carriage" past the house through much of July.

Dry August and warm

Doth harvest no harm.

If weather be fair and tidy thy grain,

Make speedy carriage, for fear of rain.

Grain lorries from farms further afield also go through the village (although they aren't supposed to) to the huge grain drying and storage facility nearby.  Flour prices are sure to rise again...........

"During the extreme European heatwaves and drought of harvest 2026, intense heat and parched soils have caused cereal crops to dry down rapidly—sometimes below 10% to 12% moisture. This creates severe financial loss from reduced crop weight, high physical brittleness, and commercial rejection by mills"

Looking back at previous August posts, I found all this post about one of my books from 2021....... five years ago and long forgotten!

The lady who painted all the wildflowers did it for a friend who wanted to learn the names of the flowers she saw. She started in 1943 and carried on painting even after her friend died, until 1999, traveling widely and painting wherever she went. She then donated 150 pages of paintings to the Kendal Natural History Society who published the collection as this small book in 2016 - such lovely paintings.

She was a Modern Languages Graduate before WWII when women studied for degrees but were not awarded them but was finally awarded her degree 40 years later. She taught Modern Languages in Kendal and died in 2009 aged 94.

Looking through the book there are so many flowers that I've never heard of. On the August pages above I puzzled over the Ploughman's Spikenard - such an unusual name and something I'd not come across. It should be around everywhere except the North of England and Scotland but only grows on chalky soil. So maybe  not  growing much in our Suffolk clay soils.

Then I looked up the word "Spikenard" and it's also called Nard, an amber coloured essential oil from a flowering plant of the honeysuckle family from the Himalayas.

It's even mentioned in the Bible...............

 

And being in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman  having  an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious; and she broke the box and poured it on his head. Mark 14:3

There's lots more about this plant on the Wiki pages here.

Now, how about this for a weird coincidence...........I wrote this post several days ago, copying over the piece about Spikenard from 2021, a word I'd never come across before or since. Then on the evening of writing the post I'm reading  the British Library Crime Classic book "Puzzles of The Parish" a collection of short crime stories featuring members of the clergy. One of the tales in the book is a Cadfael (the medieval Monk) short story by Ellis Peters, and it says........ 

Brother Jerome was scandalised "Has he not given them to Our Lady herself?" he lamented indignantly. "Beware of the sin of those apostles who cried out with the same complaint against the woman who brought the pot of Spikenard.............

 Coincidences seem to happen more often than you'd think!