Debenham Church Art Exhibition

 This exhibition from local artists is always well supported, according to the catalogue there were 102 artists showing 524  paintings. Lots of people visiting too.

Hopeless for good photos due to all the light flooding into the church from outside, where it was actually sunny for a change, so I only took a few photos of some I found interesting.

Mixed media collage by Jackie Dommet

Gorgeous colours in these abstract trees by Barry Fox in acrylics 

Linocuts by Gill Thornton

The four small prints in black frames below are by Deborah Key. I have two by her  -an owl and a hare - on my Picture Wall, which weren't framed when I got them and seeing these in black I wish I'd had mine done in black frames too, they look better.

I liked these birds made of sea glass and perched on corks, someone had bought it already. Artist is Donna Jackson. 

These two below are by Penelope Conway and are glass and glass powders on a ceramic tiles. Really lovely but I think they way they are mounted on a piece of rough white board spoils them. £75 each and again  one is sold, the others hadn't.

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Sue

Two Sides of June

The lightening flashed, the  thunder crashed, the rain came straight down in torrents and the wind blew the trees every which way.

But I'd got the first bowlful of raspberries from the garden and some long life cream in the fridge so summer was inside even if it wasn't outside.

Good job I picked the raspberries before the storm.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Saturday 15th

 Flowers on the bookshelf this week have been a few of the smaller side-spikes from a Foxglove, a couple of pieces of the Spirea and the tall purple spikes are something that popped up un-announced in the shingle bits of the pathway down the side of the bungalow. I think it's Toadflax, which can be invasive in some places but OK where it is now.

Luckily I picked these before the weather changed for the worse on Monday - blimey it was rough, wind and rain - awful weather for June. Also remembered to add the Ladybird book "What to Look for in Summer' to the bookshelf seasonal display.

During the week I had a man out to do a measure of the living/dining room as I want to get rid of the horrible brownish carpet, that sucks the light out of the room and replace with some wood veneer hard flooring. Then I'll get a nice big rug for the living room half of the room. I've lived with the carpet for 3 years and had enough of it.

I'd originally planned to have the patio sorted out this year but the man I got a quote from in October has dropped out of sight and uncontactable so I'll spend the money on the living room instead. I'll have to live with the odd patio slabs and the weeds coming through the joins and the rough bit where the old heating oil tank stood, for a while longer!

I was pleased to find more tennis on TV this week as the grass court season in this country got started with the Nottingham Open on BBC red button (although it kept having to stop for rain of course) while at the same time I enjoyed reading more library books one was the Persephone book  - The Village by Marghanita Laski. An interesting look at the class system that clung on in village life just after the war. The details from their website is HERE. Then I whizzed through The Last Word by Elly Griffiths - one of her lighter crime books but still a good read. She's got a new series on the way about a time travelling detective, sounds curious.

Interesting election stats heard this week..............

70% of American voters don't want to vote for either of the Presidential candidates

58% of British voters think all politicians lie to get themselves out of a tight corner 

Oh Dear.

Back Next Week

Sue

The Chutney Cupboard Was Nearly Empty

 Nothing ready in the garden yet for chutney making so I bought some red onions and a bottle of red wine vinegar from Aldi  for a batch of red onion 'marmalade' chutney. The 3 large red onions didn't weigh much so I added some ordinary onions too - just under 2lb total. That's about as many as I can peel at once without dissolving into tears. 

This is an easy chutney. Once the onions are peeled and sliced - and I do the slicing in the processor attachment to my Kenwood - then it's just dissolving sugar in vinegar, adding the salted, rinsed and dried onions, some caraway seeds and cooking until thickened but not until all the liquid had gone.

3½ jars made. Only problem with making this is it somehow tends to leave bits of onion all over the kitchen!

Cucumber Sweet and Sour Pickles next..............there are 4 cucumbers in the greenhouse that will be ready all at once very soon.

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Sue

The Church of the Assumption, Haughley

 Haughley is another village I know very well, I lived just a couple of miles from the village centre and  spent many evenings hanging around there and going to youth club when I was 13 and 14. Oddly though, because I didn't go to primary school there, I'd never been in the church until Son and DiL moved there and I went with them to Christmas Fairs and other fund raising events held in the church..

This time I remembered the camera to take some photos, but  because of the flower arrangements and teas and cakes being served and many people inside I didn't take as many photos as usual.

 Haughley church dedication is  to The Assumption of The Blessed Virgin Mary, usually just known as St Mary's as are so many in Suffolk and is one of a few in Suffolk with a the tower on the South side where it acts as a porch and entrance too.

Most of the church dates from before the C14 although money was left in wills for improvements later including some for a north aisle that was never built.

It has a tall and wide nave, full of light with no stained glass in the main nave windows and a south aisle too, which may have been a chapel.

The ceiling of the chancel is barrel vaulted and this was done apparently to improve the acoustics when a new organ was installed. It is thought this covers an older beamed ceiling.

The beams of the south aisle ceiling have angels playing instruments. Luckily these didn't get destroyed in the C16 when many others had their faces removed 

Only the two windows in the south aisle have stained glass

Just a couple of the flower arrangements that were in the church at the same time as the open gardens event around the village

The war memorial has been refurbished and cleaned recently with new paving all around

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Sue

Small Car-Boot Sale Finds

 Car boot sales recently are either cancelled due to rain or waterlogged ground or if they do happen I walk round, see the same old stuff and come home with nothing - or half-a-dozen eggs if the lady who sells some of her own lovely fresh eggs has any ...........but mostly nothing.

So it was quite unusual to find this vase in one of the boxes from a house clearance person. I don't enjoy rootling around in their boxes down on the ground - not good for my back at all, but spotted this and it wasn't cracked or chipped. It's a Portmeirian vase in the Botanic Garden collection and features a Cistus. I've got a tatty looking Cistus or Rock Rose in the bed out the front of the bungalow. I keep cutting back dead bits so it is getting smaller.

This companies' pieces were once quite popular and expensive but less so now. I only paid £1 and saw another but straight sided vase on a stall a few weeks later. One Portmeirion vase is enough so I didn't buy it. My other pieces from this company are a planter pot with sweet peas (second- hand local table top sale many years ago) and my Holly and Ivy things of course.

I also found this tin of 20 blank notelets or greetings cards. I've popped them away for a Christmas present. These were £2.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Another Cheese Taste Test

Exercise group is at a village hall just a few minutes away from the new butchers/deli that's opened in a unit at our hardware/garden/ allsorts place. Makes it simple to pop there for trying their different cheeses.

This is what I found out about the most recent test purchase

Montagnolo Affine is a blue, creamy soft cheese made in the Allgau region of Germany by Kaserei Chamignon . It has a natural grey crust and is marbled with blue veins. Aged at a low temperature it matures slowly and has an aromatic and spicy flavour. It won the supreme champion award at the 2013 International Cheese Awards

Can't say I noticed any spicy flavour but it was extremely delicious.

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Sue

Reading The Seasons - Book 1 For Summer

 I put 'summer' in the library search page and up came all sorts of books I really don't want to read - with twee titles like 'Summer at the Little Cornish Cafe' -not my favourite sort of reading. Luckily there were a few that were more appealing and I reserved three.

While I was waiting for them to arrive I read a book with Summer in the title from my own shelves. This was actually finished while it was still Spring - but as a Spring book was slow to get to me from the library it doesn't really matter anyway - I'm not being judged!

So this was my first for Summer. One of the Dean St Press/ Furrowed Middlebrow collaborations (and hooray that there may be more after all) reprinted in 2022.

Molly Clavering was a writer living in Scotland and a neighbour and friend of D.E.Stevenson. Clavering's  books are very similar to DES, family stories where nothing much happens but interesting for a look at the people of the time (1930's to 1950s).

 

Mrs Lorrimer's Quiet Summer was written in 1953 and may be slightly biographical.

 Miss Douglas and Mrs Lorrimer are friends  in a busy village in the Scottish Borders, both are writers but Lucy Lorrimer is more well known. However, during the summer in question she is having a break from writing. Grace(or Gray) Douglas has never married but Mrs Lorrimer is married to The Colonel, retired but very active in The British  Legion and caring for his old dog Lucy, and has four children and 5 grandchildren who all hope to gather at their mother's home for the summer holiday.

Once she has sorted out where they will all stay she then has to be involved with sorting out their problems. One daughter doesn't seem happy in her marriage, a daughter in law is bored after flying planes through the war and her youngest son seems to be in a terribly bad mood after the break up of a relationship.

In the middle of the organising of meals with housekeeper Nan, tennis parties, sherry parties and calling on newcomers, an old flame of Lucy's turns up in the village.

A gentle story of it's time.

Scott of Furrowed Middlebrow blog has written several times about Molly Clavering, HERE, especially when Dean Street Press published several of her books along with this one.

These are the three that arrived on the mobile library for me, which I'll be reading in between all the crime fiction that arrived at the same time .

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Sue

The First Week in June

 Summer is on the book-shelf. These are the things that have come out of the box for every summer recently. The 'Summer Haze' Lilliput lane cottage and two old flowery jugs. Plus the June plate of course. 

Thank goodness for a bit more warmth this week and much less rain.

I've enjoyed watching the French Open Tennis on TV all week, some good matches and Djokovic, who I'm not a fan off, dropped out due to injury. Wonder if he will be fit for Wimbledon? That will open the tournament right up. Interesting to see the difference in the crowds watching - at Wimbledon usually all seats are pretty full up for all matches - not so much at Roland Garros.

Where did I get the details of the Globe-Watch Airplanes Live website? Thank you whoever mentioned it. I now know that one of the huge planes that goes round and round above the village every Monday and some other days is a U.S Military Boeing Strato-tanker flying out of USAF Mildenhall in West Suffolk and going across to Hungary and back. Although why it goes round and round so much before landing is a mystery! Most of the other larger heavier and lower/slower aircraft are USAF military too.  I'm very glad I don't live anywhere near a busy airport, so many holiday companies in and out all day they are quite high when they come over here so not a noise problem, most are coming or going to Birmingham or Luton.  Where we lived on the Suffolk coast we saw many more because there were also planes from London airports and Stansted.

This website is great fun until you zoom out and see just how many planes are in the air at any one time  - more than 11,000- scary stuff! 

On Wednesday morning I met up with Rachel-in-Norfolk at the restaurant in the garden centre not far from Diss, although most of the huge building is full of 'stuff' - nothing to do with gardening. Walking through all the 'stuff' made me feel quite sick at what a incredible consumer society we live in (and who buys all those patio seating sets for £2,000 each). It would be a good place for people watching as it was very busy in the restaurant with old people going in for huge cooked breakfasts and later queueing for carvery lunches. It's not a place to go if you are in a hurry, I think they need more staff. I had my usual cheese scone and cappuccino.

I finished the week having a haircut - a proper trim and much thinning with the thinning scissors this time, not a six all over with clippers. I want to keep it a bit longer to cover my ears as they seem to be getting bigger - thought that was just an 'old man' thing!!

Hopefully the weather will be dry this weekend for boot sales and I'm visiting some open gardens in son's village (although they are busy with other things so they won't be coming round with me). Maps of which gardens are open are available in the church which oddly, I've not done a post about for the blog, so I'll  remedy that while I'm there.

Have a good weekend

Back Soon

Sue

 

The First Homegrown Food of 2024............

........was a small courgette from the greenhouse. I could have let it grow but cutting it will encourage others.

Later there will be plenty for all the courgette recipes but this time  it was grated and added to some part cooked and mashed frozen peas,  plus flour and an egg to make fritters - very green and colourful food again! I served them up with bacon and my home made tomato relish.

Also in the greenhouse the tomatoes are setting and there are cucumbers on the plants that will be ready in a few weeks - they grow like crazy once they get going. I need to check that recipe for the Sweet and Sour cucumber pickle so I'm ready for the glut.

This week I found a few raspberries off the canes that were here when I came. I cut them back each year and they seem to fruit at random times, producing a handful now and again from now until September. The row of summer fruiting canes that I planted are buzzing with bees all the time and looking hopeful for a good crop in July. My first three strawberries were ready from the small plants my sister gave me,  I added to some picked from BiL's strawberry bed - his are really getting going now.

The basil cuttings finally had enough roots for me to pot them up - 4  plants from my 79p pot bought from Aldi in the first week of May. 

Next door neighbour's cat is still causing me problems, there is one area of the three veg. beds unplanted. Does she use that bit? No - she pushes her way under, in and around all the fences, covers and barriers and digs up the leek plants instead!....again. I thought even a mouse wouldn't be able to get in but she managed to find a weak spot. I've used even more metal pegs to hold the netting down now - hopeful that the remaining leeks will be ready in the autumn.

Thank you for all the comments about Foxgloves yesterday - seems they are popping up in gardens everywhere and bees love them. Must be the only good thing to come from all the rain we have had.

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Sue

A Good Year For Foxgloves

Despite me never intentionally growing or sowing them here, a couple of years ago one foxglove appeared in a strange spot, right outside the shed door. This year there are a dozen in various places all around the borders. I'm so pleased to see them as they grow wild in many places but not so often in (usually) dry Suffolk. Most are traditional dark pink/purple but a few are a lighter purple and white. Self seeded  don't have as many small flowers on the stem as those grown specifically but they are still very good for bees.

Common Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) have lots of local and traditional names around the country - Witches or Goblins fingers, Our Lady's gloves,  Dead Mans bells, Ladies fingers. They are native to Europe, Western Asia and Northwest Africa.

Foxgloves are one of those plants that are both poisonous and also used medicinally and were used in connection with heart failure and slowing excessive heart rate. There is a long description on Wikipedia. HERE 

And of course Cecily Mary Barker has a Foxglove Flower Fairy for Summer 

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Sue

The Church of St Andrew, Bramfield

This is the milestone of 100 churches I've now visited and one of the most interesting

Bramfield church is actually one of the churches in the 100 treasures in 100 Suffolk Churches book, the book I found not long before Colin died, and the reason I got started on the tour of Suffolk Churches and now I've visited nearly 70 from the book and 100 in total.............only 600+ left!

The very unusual thing about this church is that it has a round tower that isn't attached to the church. The only one in Suffolk although there is a similar one in Norfolk.

There is nothing to say that the church ever had a tower attached and this tower is earlier -  possibly from the C12 - than the thatched church which is mostly from the C14. It is known that there was a timber framed church  somewhere here before 1086.

Inside also has many interesting things to see. 

The nave windows give the body of the church a green tinge as all the windows have these unusual stained glass in one colour

Although the east window is multi-coloured glass

But it is the screen, dating from the early C16 that is noticeable straight away as there remains enough colour and moulding to show what it would have looked like 

Some of the panels of saints on the dado have gone but these remain

These two seem to have been repainted in Victorian days

Bramfield might have been the site of an important medieval pilgrimage shrine, and below is a painted recess  that survives in the north wall of the nave. Simon Knott says on the Suffolk Churches website that it was the Shrine of the Good Rood, but another history of the church doesn't mention pilgrimage or shrine at all. There are records that in 1507 Edmund Clarke of Walberswick bequeathed 10 shillings to the amending of the Good Rood and his angels in Bramfield Church.

There are descriptions of what it looked like at the time

Unusual for a small church is this rather grand memorial for Arthur and Elizabeth Coke . Arthur died in 1629 and his wife had died in childbirth two years earlier. Her effigy is life size with her infant daughter in her arms.

There are also some other memorials on the floor of the church going into great detail. One is the ledger stone to Bridgett Applethwaite and says......

. This is the ledger stone to Bridgett Applethwaite, formerly Bridgett Nelson, who after the fatigues of a married life bravely born by her with Incredible Patience for four years and three quarters bating three weeks; and after the Enjoiment of the Glorious Freedom of an Easy and Unblemish't widowhood, for four years and upwards, She resolved to run the risk of a second Marriage-bed. But DEATH forbade the banns, and having with an Apopleptick dart (the same instrument with which he had formerly dispatch't her Mother) Touch't the most vital part of her brain. She must have fallen Directly to the ground (as one Thunder-strook) if she had not been catch't and supported by her Intended Husband. Of which invisible bruise, after a Struggle for above sixty hours, with that Grand Enemy of Life (but the certain and MercifulFriend to Helpless Old Age) In Terrible Convulsions, Plaintive Groans or Stupefying Sleep, without recovery of her speech or senses, She dyed on ye 12th day of September in ye year of Our Lord 1737 and of her own Age 44.

It's also interesting to see a couple of pieces of medieval armour fixed high on the wall so not good for a photo

And on the way out I remembered to turn round for a photo of the Lych gate in very good condition.

Back Soon

Sue