I took these photos about 4 weeks ago when the young apple trees in the garden were covered with blossom and I thought how wonderful it would be if all the blossom turned into apples.
Somewhere in one of my books is an old saying about not being able to count the apple crop very soon in the year but I've searched and can't find it.............It's a bit like chickens, eggs and hatching.
There must have been lots of pollinators because this years flowers to fruit percentage is good and the Falstaff - above- is looking hopeful for a good crop, so much so that I'm going to need to do some thinning out and there's the 'June Drop' too which is the way the tree copes with dry weather and too many fruit.
I looked in labels and found the Apple Blossom Fairy from Cicily Mary Barkers books hasn't been on the blog before although 36 others have appeared. She painted 168 in total so there is a way to go.
When i googled to find out how many Flower Fairies there are, up popped an ad from Oxfam Shops Online where they have for sale a 1950s copy of three of her books together in one volume. They want £140 for it!!
I know charities need the money and charge the same as on line sellers but £140 for a book donated to them seems a bit excessive. If no one is willing to pay that much what will they do with the book?
World Bee Day is celebrated on 20th May each year, marking the birthday of Anton Janša, a pioneer of modern beekeeping. The event is designated by the United Nations to raise global awareness of the importance of bees and all pollinators.
There are now lots of websites about bees, spotting, identifying and recording. This was one website that popped up........... The Bumblebee Conservation Trust
This information sheet I've had around for ages and now it's stuck in a scrapbook to keep
This photo below is from May 2024 when the Ceanothus (Californian Lilac) was buzzing with all sorts of bees, this year the flowers are just as blue and beautiful but with the colder spring and chilly wind there are very few bees about.
I picked up this leaflet about spotting Yellow Legged or Asian Hornets from somewhere last year, thankfully not established in this country yet, although they are spreading. They are predators of honey bees and other pollinators and were first spotted in the UK in 2016. Thank goodness for monitoring and eradication but still 120 sightings were recorded up to summer of last year. All sightings must be reported . This is a link HERE
Unusual to find two books at a boot sale that look interesting.
I dithered over the 'Back of Beyond' as the man was insistent on wanting £2 - hate paying that much! I wasn't 100% sure that I'd not read it but knew there was an interesting, old book about trees by this author on my shelves and thought that on Amazon for 'Back of Beyond' it would be more than £2 for sure.
Thank goodness it wasn't listed in my book of books read and would be between £5 and £22 on Amazon so £2 was OK after all.
The other book was in a house clearance box so just 50p and is also about someone who bought an old cottage but this one is in Australia - that's a bit different.
The 50p scoop is for the greenhouse for compost - had one just like this but it split last year, which I only remembered after spending ages looking for it a few weeks ago.
Very odd things happening with google here - it kept signing me out of the blog over the weekend. I managed to sign back in twice after a lot of faff with passwords etc and having to get number codes sent to my phone. It didn't last long as I was signed out again on Sunday! I tried to find out why but the answers were a bit vague. Eventually I got back in again long enough to write this and I think my comments on other blogs may have popped up as anonymous, so apologies for that.
It was not just google who didn't know who I was but also outlook (hotmail), BBC iplayer, Facebook Groups and Wordle although I would have lost my streak anyway - the word was BYLAW. I only got the A!
It's looking lovely with the white flower 'candles' and the leaves fully open but fresh still Spring green.
And who knew all the ways the bark is/was used............
Horse chestnut bark (Aesculus hippocastanum) is a traditional herbal ingredient, rich in aescin and tannins, used to support circulatory health, specifically targeting vein health, reducing leg heaviness, and treating vascular issues. Primarily prepared as a decoction or tea, the bark is used for its astringent properties and can be used in topical preparations.
I'll not be trying it!
I'm scheduling this post for Monday morning and will see what happens, will I be signed in or not - that is the question.
I'm an idiot.......... you'd think I'd been growing stuff long enough to know not to plant things out before late May so why did I put the 2 courgette plants out in the garden in early May? Without covering them.
Monday morning there were two very frost damaged plants sadly drooping and turning black. It was cloudy Sunday night and I wasn't expecting temps to drop so low..........but they obviously did. Thank goodness there are plenty of courgette plants for sale at car-boots. On Monday night and the rest of the week I made sure to put fleece over the tomato, cucumber and other mini plants and seedlings in the greenhouse, the forecast was for more chilly nights. Two new courgette plants will be coddled in the greenhouse until 'all danger of frost is past'. Daytimes this week have been cold too with a N.E wind, not very nice after the warm weather.
The gumpf with all the information about the new Recycling system starting in June arrived in the post this week. A more detailed look at what can go in which bins and a calendar so we know which week is which bin.
At the moment I have a basket in the under-the-sink cupboard for all the dry recycling which can just be tipped straight into the bin, but now paper and card need separating from cans and plastics so either I stand outside sorting or I find somewhere in the kitchen for the different things.
I know this is a government initiative but I can't help thinking that some people won't be able to manage to sort or remember the correct days and will worry about the dire warnings that bins won't be emptied due to putting 'the wrong thing in the bins' and more stuff will end up in the general rubbish bin and landfill than there is at the moment.
I've had a week of restocking the freezer with batch made meals after realising that there were just 5 boxes of Quorn korma curry and 3 boxes of pizza topping left- don't like getting that low on choice.
I started with 8 boxes of salmon, brocolli,sweetcorn and pasta bakes while the bread machine made two more pizza bases but before finishing off the pasta bakes I had to turn a bag of bits of crusts into dried breadcrumbs for the cheese/crumb topping.
(Note to self - if you keep adding bits of crust to a bag in the freezer you do actually need to dry them and turn them into crumbs before the morning you want to use them)
Next up was two nut loaves using the recipe on the recipe page and I remembered to use the jar of cranberry sauce that was still in the fridge - after being unopened at Christmas.
I squashed the mix down in the tins a bit more and gave it a bit longer in the oven than last time so it all held together rather than falling apart. I cut into 8 chunky pieces as they turned out to be not very deep for slices.
Finally several servings of Bolognese sauce using Quorn mince, cans of tomatoes, onion and a red pepper will be made today or tomorrow.
There's nothing in my diary for anything happening to visit this weekend except for a small craft/plant fair in the village.
I was looking to see where on TV I can watch the French Open Tennis which starts next week and discovered that Jack Draper is out through injury and so is Carlos Alcaraz. So no big Sinner/Alcaraz final then.
It's on TNT Sports and £30.99 for the month again. Last year I decided to afford it by not going to the big Suffolk Show or the 1940s weekend at the Middy Railway. I'm undecided this year - £30.99 for a month goes against the grain..............but I do love tennis.
Although no Suffolk Show for me this year either - it's just too big, exhausting and expensive (£33 pre paid for concessions or £40 on the day - £48 for other adults - Good Grief!! ). Much as I enjoyed going and watching the show jumping and everything else a few years ago.
But I think I will go to the Middy Heritage Railway 1940s thing over late May Bank Hol weekend as I want to see the new extra quarter mile of track which takes the railway to within one field of where I used to live.
After watching several sessions of the 17 days of the World Snooker Championships on TV which finished on the early May Bank Holiday Monday I discovered the Seniors Snooker Championship was on from last Wednesday to last Sunday. Good to see 24 of the 'oldies' - actually they only need be over 40 - so still young. Then they were plugging a snooker tournament called the 900 which started on Pluto TV on Tuesday. It has a very different format to proper snooker, had to google it to see how it works- not a fan.
In between all the sport I've been watching episodes of Bull. This has just appeared on the 5 catch-up channel arriving from the US and starring Michael Weatherly who was in NCIS when I watched that back in 2022. This is the precis if you haven't seen it..........
Dr Jason Bull, a psychologist and a trial science expert, heads a consulting firm that helps its clients choose the right jurors and aids them in deciding the best argument that can win the case.
Makes a change from police/special agent things. Looks as if it had six series from 2017 to 2022, so it's taken a while to get to watch for free here. What I like about US dramas is that they make so many in a series - here we're lucky to have six!
Then of course there is the World Cup Football which starts on the 11th June and finishes 19th July - I'm not much of an international football fan so when it overlaps with Wimbledon (29th June to 12th July) The tennis will come first.
We seem to have crept around to the Eurovison Song Contest this year (tomorrow night) and I'd not even heard what the UK entry was. So I looked on line..............Oh Good Grief! What a weird one.
Lots of Countries are boycotting the Eurovison this year after Isreal were allowed to enter.
So much for trying not to let politics into what was meant to be a song contest .........now it's just a weird music/fancy dress show!
I shall probably half watch.
Maybe I watch too much TV, but it's good company in a very quiet home alone.
Going back a couple of days - thank you to everyone for comments on the post about SS Nevasa. It was good to hear from other people who'd heard of these Educational Cruises. Not common knowledge!
It took a while but the basil cuttings finally produced some roots.
I've put them into compost in pots in the greenhouse now - 7 had roots good enough - hopefully they'll get going to make decent plants. Fingers crossed.
A group of us from Stowmarket Grammar School went on an Educational School Cruise on board the SS Nevasa in October 1969 but I have nothing left to remind me of it - and very few memories .
So spotting this among the house clearance stuff at last Saturdays car-boot sale was a Huge surprise.
It's a scrapbook by Sally-Ann Rogers, a Bury St Edmunds Silver Jubilee pupil (a girls Secondary Modern school that amalgameted with the boys school in 1971 and no longer exists) who went on an educational cruise on the SS Nevasa in 1966.
She had kept a lot of the brochures they must have been given - I don't think we had any of these.
I kept my log book - like Sally's below for many years but don't have it now.
Her cruise was two weeks and they went to different places to our cruise (except for Gibralter). She even received letters from her mother and a friend sent to the ship and they did lessons everyday too. I don't think we did and certainly no one sent letters to the ship. From what I can see there were also other adult independent passengers on the cruise apart from the various school groups and their teachers, that's something I don't think happened on our cruise.
I'd not thought about my 1969 cruise for ages - I have no photos. My dad was into slides for photography and so any photos I took were made into slides and I don't remember seeing them. I do remember my camera going wrong somewhere so maybe I didn't get any photos at all.
I googled SS Nevasa to see what I could find online and discovered a facebook group HERE just in case you are curious! By the time of our cruise there were just two ships doing Educational Cruises - The Nevassa and the SS Uganda.
I spent £2 on the scrapbook and it's been interesting looking at all the pages and finding things online about the ships and the cruises.
You just never know what's lurking in boxes at boot sales!
It was the small Art Exhibition in a nearby village at the weekend. I called in to look on my way to Son and DiL's house where I'd been invited for a Sunday roast - very good it was too. Hadn't seen the Grandchildren for a couple of weeks so it was good hear that 6 year old MGS had started Beavers after all - a few weeks ago he was adamant that he Wasn't Going! And YGD has started Brownies, she used to go to Rainbows until they ran out of leaders but wouldn't start Brownies when she was 7 for reasons only known to a 7 year old, so it's good to hear that a year later she's now at Brownies.
Anyway..............the art Exhibition was smaller than some years and I only took a few photos.
Some interesting pottery
Local Artist Reg Siger always has paintings in exhibitions and had 10 on show this time
including 'Derelict Cottage' .
And this below is Gipping Church (one of the first I visited in 2018)
Acrylics by Susan Baldry ( I think as I missed the label)
I thought this was interesting - an etching by Hilary Evans
Three Pen, Ink and Watercolour paintings by Linda Seager
Apologies to the artist - but I didn't like these at all - even though I can see they are very good
I took a few other photos but there was a bit too much reflection on them.
Purchased a couple of greetings cards - Southwold Beach by Diana Kearsley and this fun one by Les French, a guy who paints imagined pictures of how things might have been years ago in places round about and puts them on local Facebook pages where he often adds in people and animates them.
Thank you to everyone for comments on Saturday, I hope that will be the one and only time I'll be swearing in a blog post and not a lot more about politics either!
I'm not really worried about what will happen with Suffolk County Council - nothing works as well as it did 20 years ago (or is that just my rose tinted glasses looking back like a silly old woman!) and probably won't be any better or worse whoever is in charge!
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8 Years today - It still hurts like crazy - they're wrong when they say Things get Better and Time Heals. They don't and it doesn't. The years just pass and you just have to cope.
Apologies but I have to swear!.......... Bloody Hell!! Reform are now in control of Suffolk County Council. We all thought that the end of SCC after Local Government Reorganisation in April 2028 was going to cause problems but it's now a Very Good Thing as at least Reform have less than two years to B****r Up Suffolk.
The councillors elected this week will serve a foreshortened mandate. Suffolk's two-tier system is being replaced with three new unitary authorities, including the new Ipswich and South Suffolk council — known to many as Greater Ipswich. Elections for those bodies are due in May 2027, with the new councils running as shadow bodies for a year before formally taking on power in April 2028.
Here are the final seat count results for the Suffolk County Council election:
Reform UK: 41 seats
Green: 13
Conservatives: 9
Labour: 3
Liberal Democrats: 2
Independent: 2
The bottom line: A party that did not exist locally five years ago now controls Suffolk County Council. How it intends to use that majority remains to be seen.
This is what we have to cope with............
The party refused to engage with the media at today's elections, having been instructed to only speak with GB News. They also declined interview requests throughout the campaign, with the chairman of Ipswich Reform instructing all of the party's candidates not to take part in our Meet the Candidate interviews. Only Tony Gould, who stood in Whitton, responded.
The Green party won enough seats here to be the opposition party on SCC and our little bit of Suffolk voted Andrew back in for the Green Party. A County that was Conservative for as long as people can remember is now in the charge of a whole lot of unknowns.
Image source,Louise Parker/BBC
Image caption,
Andrew Stringer (right) is also on Mid Suffolk District Council, which is controlled by the Greens
Andrew Stringer, the group leader for the Greens in Suffolk, has been re-elected for the Upper Gipping division.
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And Now for something Completely Different............
Tomorrow Is Rogation Sunday
" It is celebrated as the fifth Sunday after Easter (or the sixth Sunday of Easter), serving as a day of prayer and blessing for the land, crops, and the community, often marked by the tradition of "beating the bounds" "
Rogation isn't a word used very much. It means " a solemn supplication, prayer or request. Used in Christian contexts to ask for God's blessing during the rogation days, the three days before accension day to bless crops."
Accension Day is 40 days after Easter, a Christian festival celebrating Christ's Accension to heaven. It's a holiday in some European countries - not here - we have fewer Public Holidays than many other countries.
The church in my village says prayers for farmers on the day and for many years the villagers would 'Beat the bounds' on Rogation Sunday. Many villages did this - it was a walk around all the Parish boundaries, stopping for prayers at various points.It was important for churches as I believe the income for the vicar was once based on the size of the parish.
This old photo from 'East Suffolk in Old photos' facebook page is of the villagers here gathering sometime in the 1800's to walk around the village.
Somewhere I've seen a more recent photo from 1975, which has a very young vicar - and 51 years later he is still the vicar today, which is probably why they don't head out from church to beat the bounds now he's over 80!
Beating the Bounds Illustration from the book The English Year by Steve Roud .Illustration by George Cruikshank Comic Almanac 1837.
.............that I didn't have a few years ago but now wouldn't want to be without.
The filter jug that fits in the fridge door . Bought in 2023 it came with 3 filters. The filters each last about 3 months.Filters come in packs of 3 and I bought replacements in 2024 and 2025 and I've just one left in the cupboard so will reorder again soon.
I drink more water than I used to as it tastes so much better than from the tap...........and I never thought I'd say that because the hard water from the below ground aquafers that we have in this part of the country is quite drinkable. Filtered water from the fridge is also nice and cold and seems more refreshing.
The bread machine.
I make loaves of bread and pizza bases. Mostly I use 250g wholemeal Bread flour and 250g white strong bread flour and for the white half I mix the expensive Allinsons strong bread flour (from Asda 3kg is around £3.20) with the cheaper Aldi bread flour 1.5kg for £1.09. Aldi don't always have wholemeal bread flour but when they do it's 99p for 1.5kg .
A loaf made from 500g of flour just needs 1tsp instant yeast, 1tsp sugar, 1tsp salt and a small chunk of butter about ½ ounce + 370ml water. Cost is around 70p.
No extra ingredients.
This is the label from online of what's in a Medium Sliced Wholemeal loaf from Aldi - quite a few 'extras'.
When the bread is made I cut the loaf in half and freeze. It doesn't slice well without freezing as it's so soft. One loaf a week is usually plenty, although I occasionally bake an extra loaf to freeze in case something happens and I miss a week.
One of Suffolk's 38 round tower churches, this has two huge butresses.
A newer vestry and hall for villagers use has been added to the side, built to match in rather well.
A very plain font
Through the nave to the chancel, it is a small church and has a north aisle
There are two newer stained glass windows. This commemorates a farmer who lived in The Grange in the village for 48 years.
The second is the memorial to those from the village who died in WWII.
There is also a First World War memorial
The East window is typical Victorian as is most of the church interior which was rebuilt in the 1850s, before that the church had been in a very poor state.
The reredos shows the last supper
There are a few carved bench ends in the chancel mostly from C18. I thought I'd taken photos of the others but it seems I didn't.
This is church number 137 in Suffolk that I've visited. I started linking the individual church posts to the A-Z Suffolk churches post. It's taking ages, I'm only back to 2024 and getting RSI!!
(And bother to Blogger which still isn't updating posts properly in my reading list in the sidebar - annoying)
