Another Week Rushes By

January has 31 days and March has 31 days but somehow the March days whizz by at a faster rate than the January days!

Last Sunday I had a lovely Mother's day meal out with the Suffolk bits of the family and lovely gifts too. Cards and flowers, a book and a cool feel  pillow .

On Monday, instead of bread, my machine made a couple of pizza bases. Not round and neat but at less than 20p each that doesn't really matter.

 

After the machine mixes the dough they are shaped, left to rise and baked for 5 minutes to dry them and then into the freezer.

I'm right out of homemade pizza topping so that's a batch make for next week.

Ian, the heating engineer came and got the boiler permanently repaired so now if the pressure drops I can fix it myself, (the bill will arrive next month) on the same day my car went in for it's annual service and MOT and to have the clutch sorted too. Tom, Nathan and Ashley got all that done, the bill arrives on the same day......it was large!

This week I've been grateful for

• My lovely family
• The bread machine
• Sunshine
• Being able to afford to have things repaired!

Hope you have a good weekend - the forecast here in Mid Suffolk is fine and daytime temps between 11 and 15 ℃ right through to next Wednesday, which is not too bad at all.

Spring Has Sprung

 

The Vernal/Spring Equinox is today, the moment with equal hours of daylight and darkness, so whether you think Spring starts on the 1st of March or at the Equinox, either way..............it's definitely here.

Spring has sprung

The grass has riz

I wonder where the birdie is? 

The birdie is upon the wing,

No, that's absurd

The wing is on the little bird

This is the segment from the wheel of the year for Spring from my book 'Ceremonies of the Seasons'.

 The day was once known as Ostara, the Pagan festival celebrating Eostre, Saxon or Germanic Goddess of Spring. There is a story that Eostre found a wounded bird and to save it's life she turned it into a hare, but even though the bird looked like a hare it was still able to lay eggs. As a thank you to the goddess the hare decorated the eggs and gave them to her as gifts. Eostre was often depicted as having a hare's head on a human body. 

The word Vernal comes from the Latin vernare meaning To Bloom

(Resorting to repeating blog posts from past years!)

Horse Chestnut

 After cutting out this page below from last years Folklore Diary for my scrapbook I decided to do some 'Following a tree' posts through 2026.

Horse Chestnut trees (Aesculus hippocastanum). Were introduced to Britain in the late C16 and native to the Balkan States, they can grow to over 120 feet tall. They were often used for ornamental avenues of trees in parkland.

It says

 "in folklore the horse chestnut is associated with bringing wealth and carrying conkers in your pocket would ensure you will always have money. The beautiful large flowers on a may time horse chestnut tree were known as 'Mary's candles' due to the Catholic association of the Month of May and Mary, Jesus' mother. The tree's name may derive from the base of a plucked leaf looking like a hoof or horseshoe shape."

The only Horse Chestnut I know of locally is in the car park of our village health centre where doctors and pharmacy serving this and several other villages  are based. I still have lots of conkers from this tree on my window sills - and no spiders all winter.

The older Horse Chestnut in February

And there's a ditch between the edge of the car park and the tree so I couldn't get close enough for photos of the trunk.

Then I remembered there's a young Horse Chestnut on the playing field of the village hall where we do the Keep Moving Group, much easier to get to. 

Below is the young Horse Chestnut tree in March 

The trunk of the young Horse Chestnut, the bark is grey brown and scaly.

A not very good close up of one of the 'sticky' buds - I need to take my proper camera

I'll follow this tree through 2026, taking pictures around the middle of each month.....remind me!

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