Where Beechmast Falls

White Fields and Footprints

2012-02-10T15:01:00.000-08:00

In the cold grey morning, a thin, slushy layer of snow lay over the fields.

Rabbits left sets of footprints, each resembling the tortured face in Munch`s painting The Scream .

Bird prints scattered over field and garden.........

....where a fox had trotted over to the fence and wriggled underneath.

Oak branches topped with snow.

Out in the lane, a "snow stilt" had fallen from the hollow of a Forest pony`s hoof.

A scattering of snow lay on hawthorn twigs, on bracken....

........and on flowering gorse.

A bleak, cold heath........

....where a group of ponies walked, so carefully, towards a gorse thicket and the chance of young shoots for breakfast.

The young grey mare will be five years old this spring. She was born on the Forest and still lives with her mother and a familiar family group.

She is the half sister of our own Grey One........

...who was breakfasting in more comfort beyond the field hedge.

Jay, his friend, followed me around, still chewing his morning hay, while I photographed footprints in the snow.

Woody was alert and watching in the still, white fields.

In the garden, camelias festooned with snow had browned and frozen in the cold morning.

Later, the thaw began. Water dripped off trees and rooftops all afternoon, but there is still frozen snow on the fields tonight, under a bright winter moon.

The New "Grandcats"!

2012-02-07T12:33:00.000-08:00

Grandcats....is there such a word?

There must be as I have just become the Cats` Grandmother!

Last week, our elder son and his partner adopted two lovely cats, so we drove over to see them at the weekend. The cats are two brothers who are around a year old. Their previous owners reluctantly had to find them a new home as circumstances caused them to move house into the centre of a town, to a rented house where pets were not allowed.

Since their arrival, the two new Boys have been neutered and microchipped. Despite a day of feeling a bit sore, they have settled in well. They are sweet natured cats who are happy to be picked up or to sit on a lap. At night, they sleep curled up together and they groom each other at least once a day. The Boys have kept their old names. They have had enough changes to deal with for now.

We took them a pair of toy catnip mice as a welcome present. Figgy, the black and white boy, was more interested in his new bed, which provides very good camouflage. He still has a scratch on his nose from a fight with a neighbouring Tom cat in his old garden.

The Boys will not go outside into their new garden for at least two weeks. When they do, they will have butter put on their paws in time-honoured fashion. That trick has always worked with our cats. By the time they have licked off the butter, the new garden feels like home!

Here is Gizzy, who is a a soft, pale fawn colour rather than the strong ginger of our own Ginger Man.

He rushed about, chasing his catnip mouse and having a wonderful play around the chair legs......

.....and then a good wash was needed after all that exercise.

Thawing Out

2012-01-31T03:53:00.000-08:00

In the middle of the morning, hoar frost still clung to leaf and bracken frond as we set off for a walk around the hill.

The bird bath, in a shaded corner of the garden, was still a solid disc of ice.

Out on the heath, the thaw had begun, but shadowed bracken still crunched frozen underfoot.

I found the old hidden clump of mistletoe in a hawthorn tree.

A group of ponies breakfasted on young gorse shoots.

The uphill lane was shaded. Puddles were criss-crossed with shafts of ice.

From the hilltop, mist rose from the wet, thawing heath and the lane snaked away towards the village road.

A little band of young Forest ponies rested in a sunny spot. One of them stood beside her companions, alert and on the lookout. The others dozed in the quiet morning at the edge of the wood.

Rainbow Monday

2012-01-24T13:56:00.000-08:00

An ordinary Monday afternoon. People in the supermarket car park looked up from their mundane tasks to see a perfect rainbow reaching its arc behind the trees, over the valley of the River Avon beyond. Total strangers exclaimed with awe and stopped in their tracks, talking to each other and pointing out the rainbow to those who were looking the other way. One or two cameras came out to catch the moment.

As I drove home along back lanes the bow of the rainbow faded, but I seemed to be following one end of it into the Forest. The colours deepened and the rainbow`s end thickened as it hovered over a hill. I stopped the car and found my camera again. Within minutes, the colours had softened and disappeared into the grey air.

Closer....

The small bright shapes on the hill were a group of New Forest ponies, grazing in the brown heather.

Behind me, the sun shone light beams from behind a mass of dark cloud. A weather front moved in from the Channel coast during the evening , bringing a night of rain.

A Wander Through Winter Trees

2012-01-17T06:58:00.000-08:00

Monday dawned with the land covered in a deep white frost. I waited for the sun to heat the air before Old Dog and I ventured out for a walk. These days, as he becomes slower, we wander more than walk.

Out on the heath, Jennie`s tree, the old wilding crab apple with deep red fruit, held just a few tiny apples on its bare branches. One had fallen to the grass beneath.

Fronds of lichen on its twigs and branches.

Old Dog, looking frail, enjoyed a sniff at the frosty bracken. A few moments later he was walking with a brisk step along the path, with his tail in the air and a keen, alert expression on his face.

Silver birch.......

....a wilding apple that produces bright green fruit enjoyed by Forest cattle.........

... and a lichen covered ash.

One of the wilding trees that produces the loveliest blossom, at the foot of the hill where oak, beech, silver birch and holly grow beside the old coaching lane.

Frost on oak leaves in a dried-up, shaded puddle.

Cattle had passed by in the night.

Along the lane, a log remained from a tree that fell in recent gales..........

....and the understory of the woods was littered with snapped branches after high winds.

Old Dog looked out for a Jack Russell terrier who lives in a cottage that we pass. His friend was not at home.

Oak buds against a cold blue sky...........

....and catkins in a garden, bringing hopes of spring.

A Picnic for Samuel Whiskers

2012-01-13T09:56:00.000-08:00

We had a crisp white frost this morning. By lunchtime, the ice had thawed but the air was bitterly cold and garden birds were hungry. I made a Bird Pudding from soaked wholemeal bread, currants and sunflower seeds and I stirred in the last crumbs of a Christmas Wensleydale cheese.

The peanut holder and the fat basket were busy all morning, feeding hungry blue tits and long tailed tits. A greater spotted woodpecker and a pair of nuthatches visited, but stayed away when I had time to wait with the camera.

Bird Pudding......

...and a long tailed tit arriving for lunch.

Two shy brown dunnocks waited around on the stems of the old climbing rose.......

....until one of them found seed and scraps on the ground beneath the bird table.

The cats were watching through the window. Suddenly, Lucy`s ears shot forwards and her whiskers began to vibrate. With body tense, she watched something climbing down a thick old rose stem.

Making his way past the fat balls and down towards the bird table was the reason we have recently heard scuffling and small footsteps in the space between the upstairs floorboards.

Mr Samuel Whiskers and his wife, Anna Maria, have come to stay!

The two sleek young rats climbed down and feasted on Bird Pudding. Each time I tried to photograph them , they moved, quick as a flash..... I need a more sophisticated camera with a faster shutter speed, but I don`t need rats in the attic!

Here you can see the plump, thick-coated abdomen of Samuel Whiskers. He and his grey mate are two beautiful young creatures. Their intelligence and their pair bonding behaviour are fascinating to watch. How we are going to move them on to pastures new is another matter. Maybe Lucy and the Ginger Man will take matters into their own paws?

I don`t think that Forest Cat will bother to go outside and help them.......

Quiet January Morning

2012-01-10T13:59:00.001-08:00

This morning was mild and still. No wind blew and the rainfall of last week had drained away, leaving the Forest dry again. Under the tall hedge of holly trees, a group of ponies came to browse on the lowest branches.

Through a path where gorse bushes are flowering again.....

...and through lichen covered branches, I caught sight of an old bay mare, dozing.......

.....while Spice, her friend, was breakfasting on tender young gorse shoots.

Back in the yard, Spice`s younger brother, Woody, had his hooves trimmed by the farrier........

....and breakfast was served while they worked.

Out of the Wind

2012-01-05T14:08:00.000-08:00

Gales blew in across the Forest today and whipped the trees into a frenzy. As I pushed against the wind to cross the fields, carpets of fallen brown leaves lifted into the rushing air. Hay refused to stay in neat piles and scattered across the grass. Hungry ponies had to work for their breakfast, following rolling wisps of hay until they caught up in the twigs of a boundary hedge. An old, dying blackthorn tree had cracked in the night and now lies, half broken , across a fence , waiting for its final journey to the bonfire pile.

As soon as I could, I gratefully came indoors. The sound of the wind rushing through bare branches and the rattle of roof tiles made an unnerving background to the hours. I spent several hours sorting out cupboards. A job I do not relish but something useful for a day not designed for outside things.

The dogs had the quickest of walks today. A brisk trot up to the heath for Old Dog. There were too many creaking tree branches in the lane to venture far.

The cats chose to stay inside. Lucy played chase with her catnip mouse but then decided to investigate a sweeter smell from the top of a bookcase.

All day the wind roared across the fields. It was a relief that the tall and spindly eucalyptus was no nearer to the house as it thrashed and swayed violently from left to right, hissing its silver leaves across the crazy sky.

A Stormy Walk at Hengistbury Head

2012-01-02T12:13:00.000-08:00

Today, January 2nd, was a Bank Holiday in England. An extra day off for many people, before they return to work after the Christmas and New Year festivities. When the day dawned clear and fine, we decided to drive down to the sea for a walk. We felt a need for the brightness of the sea after days of dull, grey cloud and hours of heavy rain.

Hengistbury Head is a hill of sandstone that forms the southern promontory of Poole Bay. On one side of the Head is the sheltered water of Christchurch Harbour, where the Rivers Avon and Stour meet to flow into the sea. The other side of Hengistbury Head is buffeted by winds and waves on the open sea.

We walked southwards along the lane that borders Christchurch Harbour. The bulk of the headland shielded us from the worst of the cold wind. It was a perfect afternoon for a brisk, invigorating walk. It seemed as though half the population of Bournemouth had the same idea as us. I have never seen the usually peaceful lane so crowded with families, dogs and children trying out new bicycles and scooters after Christmas!

Warren Hill, the sandy headland of Hengistbury Head.

Across harbour waters to The Run at Mudeford, where the water of two rivers rushes through a narrow gap into the open sea.

The traditional Noddy Trains were plying their way backwards and forwards along the harbourside lane. For local children, a ride home on the Noddy Train is a great incentive for a good walk down to the beach.

A new cattle pound and a crush have been built beside the meadows in the lee of the hill. A small herd of Shetland Cattle are being employed as conservation grazers , to try to retain the specialised salt meadow flora of this grassland.

The lane is a safe place for new Christmas bicycles and scooters to be put through their paces!

On the sheltered harbour mudflats, small wading birds gathered to feed.

A smart Mudeford Beach Hut, complete with solar panel.

A fenced-off area of fresh water pond and bog, where Natterjack Toads are said to breed.

Climbing up the hill onto the Head, we looked back along the line of beach huts on Mudeford Spit. The beach was thronged with people and dogs, all enjoying the wilder wind and a fine stretch of sand.

Away from the wind, a sheltered copse of mixed woodland is home to native birds and a welcome place to rest for migrating flocks.

The steps to the top....

...and views of the wild sea below the Head, where storm clouds were gathering over the English Channel. White horse waves leapt across from the west and breakers crashed against stone groynes.

At the western edge of the Isle of Wight, the chalk Needles jut out into the Channel.

Incoming storm clouds over the Purbeck Hills, across Poole Bay.

The flooded Victorian ironstone quarry on the top of Hengistbury Head.

"Precipitation within sight..." over the suburbs of Bournemouth.

Across the sea to Swanage Bay.

Christchurch and St Catherine`s Hill under threatening cloud.

Crashing surf, sizzling and rushing up the sand of Southbourne Beach.

We were buffeted by freezing winds as we walked down the path, between gorse bush and maram grass, towards the beach.

Sun, yellow sky and storm clouds over Poole Bay.

Eroded sandstone by the path.

A last look at wild skies and seas, just before sunset, and just before rain and hailstones pelted down from grey winter clouds and sent us rushing across the grass, inland and towards shelter.

Happy New Year - Snapshots on a Grey New Year`s Morning.

2012-01-01T05:12:00.001-08:00

Wishing all of you , wherever you are, a very Happy New Year!

Hoping that this new year brings you health, good times and peace.

On this grey New Year morning, we walked the dogs up on Stonechat Hill. They came home with wet paws.

The Ginger Man curled up on an old jumper, pleased to be inside.

In the mild, damp garden, a perlagonium flowers out of season.

A camelia flower shows splashes of brown damage from a morning rain shower.

Teasel tops wait to feed seed eating birds.

Woody munches his breakfast hay in a muddy field.

Bluebells spears spike early out of the earth.

A tight, white camelia bud will bloom tomorrow.

Arabis already in flower.

While back inside the house, Lucy crouches by her scratching post........

...and Forest Cat waits on the stairs, until Lucy comes to play.

Lucy and the Frozen Planet

2011-12-29T08:04:00.000-08:00

Lucy is sixteen months old now. No longer a kitten but still so curious about the world and full of energy. In the photo above, she was caught taking over the dog`s bed. Old Dog had been banished to the floor underneath the table.

Here she is, watching David Attenborough`s wonderful natural history series, Frozen Planet.

Investigating a baby seal.....

....and watching a polar bear who was waiting to catch a fish from beneath the ice.

Christmas Eve - a New Forest Sunset

2011-12-24T11:24:00.001-08:00

It was late before we walked the dogs today. Last minute preparations for Christmas took up the daylight hours. We set off across the heath, just as the western sky began to lighten into the pinks and golds of a winter sunset.

The sequence of photographs shows snapshot seconds of the sky as the colours changed so quickly. A glorious ending to a mild, grey day.

Wishing a very Happy Christmas to everyone who reads my blog and especially to Followers who leave comments and share their news and feelings. I know I`m not always good at replying to comments (I don`t know where the hours go every day) but I do appreciate your visits and I love making return journeys to your blogs across the world.

Hoping that this Christmas leads us out of an often difficult year, into a more peaceful world.

A Day or Two of Weather

2011-12-16T15:34:00.000-08:00

The last two weeks have been busy ones in our village. Various clubs and societies have held Christmas dinners and buffets. The annual Christmas Bazaar went well, raising money for local charities and recycling treasured bric-a-brac from one home to another. Cakes have been baked, mince pies have been shared and carols have been sung.

The weather has turned cold, with bitter, chilly winds. In the night there has been rain and sometimes frost. Tawny owls hoot across the dark heath beneath clear, starlit skies.

In these short winter days, when the light goes before four o`clock, time seems to speed into a higher gear as so much needs to be done while the daylight lasts. Sometimes, it is good to stop; to look at the sky and watch the clouds rolling in from the sea. To capture winter trees against cold blue skies.

Waiting for a friend at the end of a muddy lane, after a night of stormy rain.........

....I looked into a pool that the rain had left behind....

Later, by the side of the heath, I found new pools at the road`s edge where the ponies and cattle will be pleased to come and drink.

In Winter Fields

2011-12-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday morning, before the storm winds blew in, I walked around the field boundaries to check the fences and to see what changes the December frost had made. In the hedge bottom, a frosted toadstool had been nibbled by rabbits.

The beech trees are almost bare of leaves now, but their beechmast shows against the sky and the silvery buds of next spring`s leaves are waiting, tightly closed on slender, pointed twigs. Oak trees gradually lose their leaves, but so far there are still good coverings on more sheltered trees.

Fruit on the tree ivy is ripening from green to black. A rich food source for winter birds.

Through a tracery of bare branches in the hedge, dry, rusty brown bracken has been trampled down by ponies and cattle on the Forest heathland. There are more bright yellow blossoms on the gorse this week.

This field has been rested, ungrazed, for several months. The grass is a rich green and the ponies will need to be introduced to it gradually over the winter months.

The Chocolate Pony is coming into winter looking much too round! He and the Ginger Pony are having very little hay as there is still enough grass in their summer field. He wandered over to have a chat and to investigate my camera.

In the hedge bottom, I saw an old buck rabbit disappear down this rabbit hole before I had the chance to catch him with my camera.

The hawthorn hedge in Woody`s field was covered in berries this autumn, but only a few remain after flocks of migrating blackbirds and thrushes recently called in for a feast.

Woody was munching his breakfast hay while keeping an eye on our neighbour`s pretty young chestnut mare on the other side of the hawthorn hedge.

A companionable breakfast for the Grey One and his new friend Jay, who was glad to have his rug on when the rain and Arctic winds blew in later this week.

This year we had masses of holly berries and most of them have been eaten by birds. Thankfully, the berries on this tree seem less appetizing than the others in the hedge, so I cut down a few sprigs today and they have come inside, to decorate the house for Christmas.

Last Flowers and Insects in a Forest Garden

2011-12-05T04:54:00.001-08:00

I took these photographs two weeks ago, on a sunny autumnal day before the first frosts came.

Underneath a bird feeder, where Nyjer Seed had dropped last spring, some of the seeds germinated. Several tall, straggly plants grew there through the summer, looking like ungainly members of the willow herb family, until the flowers began to appear. Cheerful yellow, daisy-like flowers starred the plants for weeks, attracting bees and other insects. I think that the insect below is one of the false bees. A fly that mimics a honey bee.

Up in the hedge, yellow ivy flowers were attracting insects. An iridescent green bottle fly.....

.......a wasp sunbathing on a leaf....

....... and honey bees and false bees vied for position as they searched for nectar.

A small fly visited an open Peace Rose.

The Liquid Amber Tree`s leaves glowed in shades of red against a blue sky.

A late , pink cranesbill geranium opened its buds .....

....companion-planted marigolds flowered their last in the cleared, raised vegetable beds.......

Grandpa Dixon enjoyed the morning sun......

........and the last nasturtiums tangled over flower beds .

Yesterday, I cleared their wilting, frozen plants away for another year, but I know that seeds will have been sown and that another generation waits in the soil to begin again next spring.

A Woodland Walk in Autumn

2011-11-26T03:29:00.001-08:00

Thursday was a dry day. There has been no rain here for several weeks and temperatures are high for late November. I joined two village friends for a walk , new to them, around the ancient beechwoods . I have photographed this walk before, but every time it is different. The trees change with the seasons, the New Forest foals grow up, fungi and berries come and go.

Here is the hill on my header phototograph, with the two tall beech trees almost free of their autumn leaves. We followed the path and turned into the holly wood, where ponies were chewing on the bark of mature holly trees.

The Old Man of the Woods was still there, in his sentry post overlooking the stream.

Along the path, we crossed a stretch of moorland, where heather and bracken had dried to a rusty gold.

Into the beechwoods....

....where the older trees had shed their leaves but the understorey of holly thrived, dark green.

A bracket fungus on a rotting beech stump.

Some of the beeches and oaks in this wood are many hundreds of years old. When they die and eventually fall, their wood is left to rot. The tree becomes a habitat for invertebrates and a feasting ground for insect eating birds.

Little B, my companions` miniature Yorkshire Terrier, came with us on our walk. We were walking for two hours and he did not tire once. In fact he covered twice the ground that we did! The leaf carpeted woodland was a paradise of smells for a small dog and the occasional squirrel chase was the most exciting way to play. The photo is blurry because he would NOT keep still!

Crossing the stream that drains the peaty moorland.

Back towards the holly wood........

The light was low all day, but pinpricks of yellow gorse and scarlet holly berries brightened dull colours of autumn.

We crossed a carpet of crunching leaves....

....and climbed the hill, out onto the homeward track again.

Old Dog`s Sunday Walk

2011-11-21T08:27:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, morning fog slowly thinned under weak sunlit skies and a damp chill stayed in the air. On a family walk, Old Dog and his smallest human friend wanted to stay together. He had slept beside her on the living room floor as she played with a toy farm all afternoon.

Dog on a lead.......

.....in a bit of a tangle.....

......but soon sorted out and off for a walk with Granddad.

The moles had been busy, out on the Forest grass.

In woodland leaf litter, we found earthballs emerging....

...and what might have been an orange Fly Agaric.

Bonfire smoke, from a woodland garden, drifted across the valley.

On our way back home for tea, we passed Forest ponies cropping grass still silver with dew from the damp and misty morning.

Fly Agarics and Forest Friends

2011-11-18T06:26:00.000-08:00

Mid November. A mild, damp morning on the heath, where gorse is flowering again. At the woodland edge, deep red branches and shining white bark of silver birch trunks show that their foliage has gone. Oak and beech hang on to their leaves until the next strong winds blow through.

Old Dog still loves his daily walks, although progress is slower and the way is shorter now.

The yellow gold of beech leaves against a backdrop of dry brown leaves on an ancient oak.

By the edge of the woodland track, Fly Agaric toadstools are here again. Each autumn they grow in this spot, out of thick layers of leaf mould and amongst the bracken, bramble and grass.

The traditional Fairy Toadstools of childhood story books and folk legend, Fly Agarics are poisonous but beautiful. Roger Phillips writes in Mushrooms and Other Fungi of the British Isles (Pan Books, 1981) that the name derives from the medieval practice of soaking platefuls of the toadstool cap in milk, to stupify flies. He also tells of the use of these toadstools by the reindeer herders of Lapland, who might chew the dried cap to experience the dizzying and hallucinogenic effects of the toxins that the toadstool contains.

Bright moss and a foxglove for next spring.

An old Hazel hedge, showing signs of past coppicing, still shows green leaves beside the path.

Up on the hillside. a cow sleeps with her new born calf in a commoner`s farm field.

The Badgers Set, where local badger families would be sleeping beneath the bank, ready to emerge and forage for worms and insects in the woodland at night.

As we walked, we came upon a little group of New Forest mares who have lived around the village edge since they were born. This mare, Spice, is the sister of our New Forest geldings, Woody and Ginger. She knows us well and came across to greet us.

The New Forest colts have left their mothers now, to be kept on their owners` smallholdings or to be sold at the Pony Sales. The filly foals might stay with their mothers , to expand the family group. This bay filly is tall for her age and looks well after a good first summer on the Forest.

Spice`s grown-up daughter came over to join us.

The foal wandered away but kept a close eye on Old Dog, although the adult ponies are unworried by his presence and seem to know that he is old, frail and no danger to them.

Spice and her daughter followed us down the hill......

Holly berries, on bushes scattered amongst the gorse, are feeding migrant thrushes and blackbirds now.

Underneath the trees, on our way back home, we found clusters of unknown toadstools shining among dried leaves in the grey November light.

Mid September - Forest Fruits

2011-09-17T06:14:00.000-07:00

Out on the Forest this week, the fruits of late summer are ripening. Migrating birds are flying through, from north to south, towards their passage across the English Channel. Often, they will stop to feed in the woods, the heathland and over pastureland. The countryside is full of seed, fruit and insect life. Yesterday, I stood in the field watching swallows and housemartins, in a flock of a hundred or more, swoop over the old oaks in the hedgeline and skim across the wet grass, searching for food on the wing.

Out in the lane, blackberries, or brambles, are ripening late this year. Masses of red and black berries are high up on the hedgetops, out of human reach but in a perfect place for feeding birds and sucking insects. Red Admiral and Speckled Wood butterflies search out over-ripe , black fruit to sup the dark juice.

Lower down, the blackberries are small, hard and woody this year.

Late honeysuckle has scented the air on summer nights and shows a few bright flowers in the hedge.

Rosehips....

...and small, red wilding apples from a tree on the heath.

A rabbit or a squirrel has found this fallen fruit.

Some of the old wilding trees are covered with tiny, sour green crab apples.

The moorland heather, or ling, is over now, but bell heather still blooms in sheltered places.....

....and on a few grassy ridges in amongst the wilting bracken.

At the edge of the woods, silver birches are in dark, late summer green leaf.

Among the birches is the reddest, loveliest wilding apple, swaying its laden branches in the wind and dropping shining fruit for birds and animals on the woodland path below.

Shapes in the Woods

2011-08-30T07:07:00.000-07:00

Down in the beech woods, trees that have grown for hundreds of years are reaching the end of life. Others are thriving still, but have formed strange shapes as scars, or as side branches twined into sculpture beneath the bark.

By the downhill path is a beech, where the figure of a man hugs the trunk and seems caught in a spell, growing into the living tree.

A rhino- like beast watches over the woodland.

In the crumbling base of a great branch, severed by age and the storms, a benign old face, like the Old Man of the Woods, peers down over a forest stream.

Ponies have chewed the bark of a younger tree, patterning and damaging.

The wounded tree will form scars and survive malformed, mapped by strange lumps and lines.

Old, dead trees might stand for years as rotting stumps. This one has marked the turning of the path for as long as we have walked here. Suddenly, this summer, it has fallen to the ground.

An ancient neighbour grows bracket fungi in its rotten core........

....while another dead tree is peppered with the holes of drilling woodpeckers. Inside its rotting hollows, insects thrive and will feed the woodland birds for years before the stump finally falls.

Out of the woods, where the air smelled damp and tinged with rotting wood, we walked away onto the hills where heather bloomed purple and fresh after the morning rain.

Late Summer Harvest in the Garden

2011-08-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

The seasons have been strange and out of kilter this year. Summer days of warm sunshine came in April and May. By the end of July, summer seemed almost over. Now, as August limps out towards its last days, autumn is well and truly here. Trees are yellowing. Some of those most affected by the lack of early rain are dry, almost bare and may be dying. A huge old ash in our neighbour`s garden looks unlikely to survive.

Garden fruit is ripening early too. This week I have been picking pears before they drop. Today I harvested some apples from trees in the little wild orchard. I have cooked some and will give some away. The freezer is full.

These green dessert apples are crisp and juicy.

The first of the Bramley cookers.

I have been making jam in recent weeks. Small batches from fruit that needs using quickly. We have wholemeal toast and jam for breakfast, so this will be a good store for the months ahead.

Crab apples are falling fast, or being shaken from the tree by magpies and squirrels while rabbits and blackbirds feast on ripening fruit in the grass. There are plenty left on the tree, so I may try making crab apple and elderberry jelly this year.

Elderberry clusters are hanging heavy with their dark, jet-jewelled fruit.

There are still enough salad leaves for a fresh supply.

Runner beans....

...and broad beans are growing well..........

....but this is the only poor, sad little courgette of the summer!

A Backward Glimpse at Jane Austen`s Home

2011-08-25T04:57:00.001-07:00

Inside Jane Austen`s old home at Chawton, the rooms have been decorated and furnished to represent the homely but elegant interior that the Austen family knew so well. Many artifacts and pieces of furniture belonged to the Austens and were the intimate objects of everyday life.

On the range, above, a simmering copper kettle would have been ready to provide hot water for household tasks, as well as for a precious drink of tea.

Below, is a portrait of Edward Austen, Jane`s brother, who lived with his family at the nearby Chawton House Estate and who provided the village cottage as a home for Jane, Cassandra and their mother.

Here is the small, worn writing table where Jane sat to write some of her greatest novels. This little table has such significance, yet it remains a homely piece of furniture where one can imagine the seated figure of Jane, pausing to dip her pen into ink and to gaze out of the window while inspiration flows.

Upstairs, is the small bedroom shared by Jane and Cassandra. There is a view into the garden. There is a feeling of Jane`s hand upon the window catch as she lets in the scented air on a summer morning.

From a front bedroom, there is a view of the lane where thatched workers` cottages stand in small, flowering gardens.

From the landing, are outbuildings and the courtyard of the cottage.

A garden view.....

...and a posy of garden dahlias on the landing.

The stairs where Jane would have climbed her candlelit way to bed........

...and the beautiful, intricate patchwork quilt that Jane and Cassandra worked together.

After our visit to Chawton Cottage, we crossed the village street to have lunch in the pretty tea room opposite. Its name is Cassandra`s Cup. On the ceiling, hang a collection of old and dainty china cups. Survivors of treasured tea sets and silent witnesses to a thousand teatime conversations from years gone by.

In Jane Austen`s Garden on an August Morning

2011-08-19T02:22:00.001-07:00

Last Monday, on a warm August morning, I joined friends from our village Book Group for a visit to Jane Austen`s former home in the quiet North Hampshire village of Chawton. We drove up from the New Forest and through the chalk downland to the east of Winchester. Chawton is a small and pretty village, surrounded by farmland and set back from the main road to Alton.

Jane Austen came to Chawton Cottage in 1809, following the death of her father, and she lived there with her mother and her sister, Cassandra, until the end of her life. She died , aged forty one, in Winchester in 1817. During her time at Chawton, Jane wrote some of her finest novels. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Persuasion were written there, at her small wooden writing desk in a front parlour overlooking the village street.

Chawton Cottage , built in the late 1700s, was part of the nearby Chawton House Estate, which Jane`s brother Edward had inherited from a distant relation. He ensured that his widowed mother and his sisters were provided with a home for their lifetimes. The Austens were a large and close family, so Jane and Cassandra were favourite aunts to their nieces and nephews. They lived a quiet country life but Jane was a keen observer of the social hierarchies of eighteenth century rural England.

Today, Chawton Cottage is a museum , in which the comfortable but homely interior of Jane Austen`s home has been lovingly recreated. The house itself is charming. There is a feeling that Jane and her family are just in the next room. It still has the atmosphere of a much loved home.

Outside, the garden has been restored and planted to reflect the quiet spaces where Jane would have walked, or may have sat in the shade to read or write.

A side view of the cottage.

Billowing herbaceous borders with cosmos, phlox and yellow achillea......

The front door of the cottage is at the side. This is where Jane, Cassandra and Mrs Austen would have returned home after visiting their family at Chawton House, or after a walk in the lanes and green countryside around the village.

The wrought iron gate opens out onto the village`s main street....

...and still, there are roses growing around the door.

A Heather Walk on the Smugglers Track

2011-08-12T06:21:00.001-07:00

On a muggy, hot afternoon last weekend, we walked a few miles in the footsteps of long-ago smugglers, through swathes of flowering purple heather on New Forest moorland.

Wild honey bees droned and fed on nectar. By the woodland edge, we were divebombed by darter dragonflies. A soft scent of heather blossom hung in the drowsy air.

On the high plateau, where they burned the gorse last year, new grass and heather shoots attracted groups of ponies.......

...although this mare had a taste for bracken. Too much bracken can poison the ponies and give them Bracken Staggers, but most seem to enjoy a few leaves quite safely and then move on to grass.

A drift of pink heather on the valley slope.

Bell heather and wood sage was flowering beside the path.

Stands of silver birch and gorse gave shelter along the Smugglers` Track.

High on the top of a ridge that leads from the Crow road to Picket Post, is the old gravel track that smugglers used to bring contraband up from the coast. Boats would arrive in the night, down at Mudeford or Barton beach. Men with pack ponies brought the smuggled goods inland and would pass along these sandy tracks, making for the London Road where traders would buy the illegal drink and other goods, ready to move it on to the London markets.

Local people who remember WWII call this ridgeway "The Tank Track". Troops were stationed in this area of the New Forest for training, prior to D Day, and some remember the sight of tanks being driven along the ridge.

Across the valley, towards Castle Hill.

On the other side of the ridge, a path twisted down through the heather to the woods at Hightown , not far from Ringwood. The distant view into Dorset showed the Purbeck Hills on a misty horizon.

We walked down into the valley bottom and found the track leading back to our starting place.

Down there, in the shelter of hills , the ling was just coming into flower.

I used to ride along this sandy track.....

....and here, again, was the stretch where my old New Forest pony loved to canter along, through the soft sand.

At the head of the valley, we walked easily along pathways that can be deep in water during winter rains.

Only small ponds remained in the wide stretch of bog. So far, this has been a dry summer, following an even drier spring.

In a boggy place beside the path, carnivorous sundew plants opened their sticky leaves to passing insects.......

....while on the dry margins, yellow stars of Tormentil shone out of the grass.

We stayed by the marsh, watching crows mobbing a mewing buzzard in the sky above the valley. Walking back , up the gravel path to the top of the hill, we met the same group of ponies again, still feeding peacefully up in the sunshine, among the gorse and flowering heather.

Lucy Kitten and the Amazon Box

2011-08-10T05:57:00.001-07:00

According to her RSPCA records, Lucy Kitten will be one year old this month, so no longer a kitten. What could be a better birthday present for a cat, than a cardboard box?

Especially a cardboard box that holds a python sized, coiled up tube of packing paper......

Waiting to pounce....

...and attack with sharp white teeth.

Biting and tearing off scraps of the "snake"............

....with pointed claws out.......

....and all under the disdainful glare of Forest Cat, who has little time for kitten games.

A cross, hunting face.......

....and then she pounces on the cardboard, biting and worrying it to certain death.

Beach Huts at Mudeford Sandbank

2011-08-02T05:29:00.000-07:00

As we walked along the top of Hengistbury Head last Wednesday, we caught sight of the long spit of sand that divides the sea from the inner waters of Christchurch Harbour. All along the spit, known as Mudeford Sandbank, are small, brightly painted beach huts.

Descending the cliff steps, onto the beach, gives a view of a row of well tended roof tops. Some of the beach huts are now equipped with solar panels.

The huts used to belong, mostly, to local families who relaxed by sailing small boats and playing in the sand. Now, many of the huts belong to people from outside the area, who enjoy their time by the sea at weekends or during long summer holidays. The huts can be slept in between February and November, so people can use them as a second home. During the winter months there are heavy seas, storms and spring tides along this coast, so residence in a beach hut would be a bit of a risky adventure!

To the south, the beach huts have views across the western reaches of the Solent, towards the Isle of Wight.

To the north, there are views across the marshes and the harbour towards Christchurch. This is a wonderful place to watch seabirds feeding on the mudflats when the tide is low.

Below is one of the smartest beach huts. I loved the colour of this one. There is something almost Scandinavian about it.

I noticed that there is a Mudeford beach hut for sale on one of the specialist websites. For a mere £145, 000 you can have your own, state- of - the -art beach hut that can sleep up to seven people. Along the coast in Sussex, was a smaller, simpler beach hut for £12,000. Even that seems a lot for a wooden hut!

Those who stay in the beach huts can travel down on the Noddy Train, bringing their supplies with them. We took the train back on Wednesday evening and enjoyed the views of harbour and woodland as we passed along the inner side of Hengistbury Head.

I had to take a photo of the warning sign that appeared in every Noddy Train carriage!

Harebells at Hengistbury Head

2011-08-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday, I joined friends for a walk by the sea at Hengistbury Head, which is a sandstone cliff that protects the mouth of Christchurch Harbour from prevailing winds.

It was a grey, cool afternoon but a good temperature for walking.

Between the Double Dykes and Hengistbury Head itself, lies a flat field where an Iron Age town once thrived.

We climbed the Head and looked back towards Bournemouth, along quiet sandy beaches and across grey-green seas in Poole Bay.

The trig point and one of the many dogs we met, out exploring.....

The view towards the entrance of Christchurch Harbour, where the narrow strip of water, The Run, has deceptively deep currents and hidden sandbanks to test the sailors of small boats who are heading out to sea.

Northwards, is St Catherine`s Hill, with the town of Christchurch and the Norman Priory Church in the middle distance. New marinas have been built in front of the Priory Church, which many people feel have spoiled an ancient vista of marsh and church.

Walking along the clifftop path. The old coastguard station is boarded up and no longer manned.

Across the harbour lies the saltmarsh nature reserve of Stanpit Marsh, the village of Mudeford and the wooded hills of the New Forest in the distance.

The salty air and sandy soil on Hengistbury Head make it make a good habitat for heathland plants. Bell heather flowers alongside coltsfoot and harebell in rough grass.

Below the cliff edge, sand martins swooped and cried. Their young ones were learning to fly and feed before returning to their nests in holes burrowed into the steep sand cliff. Later in the summer, these lovely birds will fly south again, to winter in Africa.

Thrift......

...and a beautiful drift of harebells.

A hill of new gorse and heather overlook the harbour.

As we descended the path, the shining, almost ghostly, chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight loomed out of a misty sea. The chalk Needles and the Needles Light can just be seen to the right.

We walked down through dense undergrowth, a haven for migrating and resident birds.

Around a corner was the old Quarry Pond. In Victorian times, Ironstone boulders were quarried here. Now, there is fresh water where wildfowl swim , where dragonflies and damsels dart and where waterlilies bloom.

We were almost at the end of our walk. The old black house watched over The Run and a myriad of small boats were moored in the sheltered harbour mouth.

A last view across the clifftop heath, to a grey-blue sky and a milky blue sea........

...before we climbed down the old sandy steps towards the beach.

Wild Flowers of the Fields

2011-07-28T15:27:00.001-07:00

At this time in the summer, there are areas of grassland that are not being grazed. Sometimes a small field is allowed to rest until autumn. In the bigger meadow, we did not spray the buttercups this year. Nowadays, I hate to see the spraying of old pastures with herbicide of any kind. As the buttercups finish flowering, they gradually die back and grasses and other flowers begin to grow once again. We use an electric fence which is gradually moved through the pasture over several months. This is a good way to allow wild plants to grow and to prevent the ponies from getting too fat.

Above, is a small wild geranium, growing on bare soil at the edge of the meadow. The flower is smaller than Herb Robert. It may be Common Storksbill, but I`m not convinced about the leaves.

Below is Common Centaury, which is not common at all! I have occasionally seen it growing on roadsides in the New Forest, but one year it suddenly appeared in our field and the little colony has grown, year upon year. There is a legend that it was used by Centaurs ( half man-half horse creatures of Greek mythology) as a herb to heal the wounds of battle. I have noticed that the ponies and wild rabbits do not seem to eat it, so the taste must be bitter.

In the long grass at the end of the Golden Pony`s field, are a few tall Meadow Thistles. When her electric fence reaches the thistles, she will eat them with relish, prickles and all, For now, they are host to honey bees, bumble bees and ..........

....hover flies.

Living on the edge.

Meadow grasses are seeding now.

At the field edge there are Scarlet Pimpernels among the short grasses. They were known as the Poor Man`s Weather Vane. When the flowers are open, the weather is fine. If the flowers are closed, it is raining, or about to!

A single plant of Prostate St John`s Wort, with its tiny yellow flowers. A new arrival this year.

Self heal flowers against a backdrop of Ground Ivy leaves at the hedge bottom. The ground ivy flowered its small purple blooms in the spring.

Here it comes again....More Ragwort rosette appear. We dig out traces of this poisonous plant every week, but it always seems to be one step ahead. The roadsides of Hampshire are covered in its yellow flowers this summer, so more pasture will be seeded by its airborne seeds next year.

Smooth Sow Thistle in flower.

A wild mallow.

A Gatekeeper butterfly on white clover...

...and red clover growing as the buttercups die back.

In the bonfire patch, where the earth was scorched bare by a bonfire in spring, Yarrow is thriving.....

....and so are thistles. Small flocks of goldfinches have been feeding on their seeds this week.

Last, but not least, Redshank, with its dark spotted leaves, brightens a muddy corner where Fat Hen also grows.

July Evening Over Poole Bay

2011-07-24T13:25:00.001-07:00

It has been a week of rain, grey skies and blustery winds. A clifftop BBQ had been planned for months, so we were relieved to see the clouds clear by evening, when friends gathered at a small community hall, where the terrace overlooks Poole Bay.

Along the sandy beach towards the east, white buildings shone on the clifftops at Bournemouth and the main Pier jutted out over calm water.

The sun had sunk behind the Purbeck Hills and the sky softened to shades of pink....

.....giving a rosy tint to the chalk of Old Harry Rocks and Ballard Down in the west.

People walked , cycled and ran along beach and promenade. On the clifftop, we found formal beds of flowers...........

....and a backdrop of wild gorse, heather and bramble clinging to the cliff sides in the wooded chine.

On the western tip of the Isle of Wight, chalk on the Needles and the steep cliffs of Tennyson Down glowed pink.

The light began to slip away.........

...so we climbed down steep steps to the sandy beach.

Holes were dug, by hand ........

....as we heard sand martins twitter past on their way to roost in nest holes in the cliffs.

We found paw prints....

.......watched the pink sky darken to grey....

....while clear, shore water , still as a mirror, reflected the soft-wool clouds.

The Big Balloon, in the Winter Gardens, rose into the sky above the town. What a night to see the Bay from a basket on a tethered, gas filled balloon!

Sunset sky and waves.....

Reflections....

...of clouds.........

....as day ends........

...and the lights of the weekending town stretch away along the night-dark cliffs.

Foal in the Lane

2011-07-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

River of Stones

What is it in the foal that stirs something strong, a needing to protect? Soft fluff on the coat? Long, gangling legs and a half-grown, flicking tail? Ears, back and forth, searching sounds for hidden threat and the eyes, widened as I pass?

While her mother rested in the shade, a filly foal explored the gravel lane. Climbing out of a shallow ditch, she found sweet grass beneath a low bramble on the bank. Learning as she sniffed beneath barbed branches, probing with a muzzle soft as silk to search out young, wet shoots of green.

In a Surrey Hills Town - a Walk Between Showers

2011-07-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, we drove across country into Surrey. This was a day to meet new friends and to spend time in Haslemere Educational Museum, discovering more about the people of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century who began the Haslemere Peasant Arts and Industries.

I was born in this lovely old Surrey town, My father grew up there and my parents met there. Although I grew up near the Hampshire coast, we regularly visited my grandparents. The Haslemere lanes and heathlands became familiar childhood walks.

At the end of a busy afternoon, when the rain had stopped at last, we walked in a part of the town that was once so familiar to me. Just above the railway station in Haslemere, two almost parallel roads wind along the side of a hill. There are modern buildings now, including new apartment blocks and houses built in old meadows and gardens, but the old cottages and the beautiful Arts and Crafts houses still remain. In some areas, little has changed since the houses were first built in the mid to late nineteenth century, following the advent of the railway line from London.

Terraces of Victorian cottages look across the valley.

The Old Studio that was once the tapestry and embroidery workshop of the Haslemere Peasant Industries.........

....and the Dye House where natural dyes were prepared to colour the textiles.

The work buildings above and the houses below were built by politician Joseph King and designed by the Arts and Crafts architect, Francis Troup, so that this small area became a hive of craft industry in the early twentieth century.

The artist Godfrey Blount and his wife Ethel (nee Hine), working with Ethel`s sister Maude King, led this artistic and philanthropic community which promoted a belief in living a good, hard working life in the country, producing well made traditional crafts that reflected the beauty of the natural surroundings. This venture was undoubtedly a reaction to the mass urbanisation and the industrialisation of manufacturing in Victorian England.

The Haslemere Peasant Industries and their place in the Arts and Crafts movement are currently being explored in this well researched and interesting blog http://peasant-arts.blogspot.com

As we explored the lanes, I had a memory of a wooded footpath with steps climbing the hill. We followed a signpost and found the shaded path up to the road where my grandparents used to live. It must be almost forty years since I last walked on this hill, but I seemed to remember each twist and turn. So many of the old, pan-tiled houses were still familiar. This once loved place was still there, locked in my memory.

On the higher road, there were views across red rooftops and gardens, to the wooded hills of Weydown, on the other side of the valley where the railway runs.

A glimpse of a church across the valley.

We walked downhill towards the station. There on the high bank of the hill, stood the tall Victorian house where my father spent his teenage years and where my grandparents lived until they retired. This was the house where they spent nights in the cellar during the Blitz, as German bombers flew above the town on their way to London. This was the house where my mother stayed before I was born, and where I came home as a new born baby.

As a child, I remember the spacious rooms. The living room that looked out over the valley. The steam trains puffing their way through gaps in the trees. The sound of a long-case clock, chiming the hours. My grandparents slept in the room with the big window, underneath the gable. Their bedroom smelled of eau de cologne and lavender.

On the ground floor was the kitchen with a big black range, and a scullery behind with stone sinks and a door that led out to a steep back garden. There was a door into the cellar, where logs were stored and and it was dark and cold. Steep stairs led down into the darkness. I would not go down there alone.

Now, the house has been divided into flats. Outside, there is evidence of building work going on. There was once a horse chestnut tree that grew when Dad, as a boy, had planted a conker. It was felled years ago and a new house was squashed into the side garden where he used to play.

A Norman Hall, by the River Avon in Christchurch

2011-07-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

A River of Stones

I think of the men who laid these stones, who built these walls, who made this house nine hundred years ago.

Down beside the River Avon, in sight of the Priory Church, stands the roofless ruin of the Norman Hall at Christchurch. Once the finest house in Christchurch, it was built and lived in by the family of Richard de Redvers, the first Norman Lord of the Manor of Christchurch. Redvers was given his title after fighting for William the Conqueror in the Norman invasion of 1066.

The House was completed in around 1160, when Richard de Redver`s heirs were the leading family in the town. It is said that several kings have stayed here, including King John (1999-1216).

Later, it became the Constable`s House, and has survived into the twenty first century as one of the best existing examples of Norman domestic architecture in the land.

The outer staircase that leads up to the first floor, where the Lord of the Manor`s family and guests ate in the great hall and slept in two bedrooms.

Inside the hall, looking through the upper window in the south facing wall.

The upper and lower windows in the North facing wall. The ridge in the wall and the beam holes in the next photograph, of the long West facing wall, show where the ceiling beams of the ground floor were inserted. The First Floor was the area where the family lived. Underneath, on the ground floor, were store rooms and places where servants would work and prepare food.

The original Norman chimney from the great fireplace, where food would be cooked, water would be boiled and an open fire of wood would keep the people warm.

Behind these iron bars , on the ground floor, are the worn and slippery stones of the riverside wharf, where boats would tie up . People and goods could arrive here by water.

Grand upstairs windows in the Norman style, once glazed.....

..........contrast with the defensive slit windows of the ground floor. A soldier on sentry duty could defend the house from riverside attack by firing arrows through the narrow slits.

The thickness and strength of these walls shows the importance of this house and its residents. The Norman Lords and their Ladies may have gone, but the old house remains. A remarkable testament to fine workmanship and the building craftsmen whose work outlives all memory of their names.

Information from the English Heritage website. English Heritage is now the custodian of the Norman House and of Christchurch Castle keep.

Poor Mrs Perkins

2011-07-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

A River of Stones

Grey stones in the green grass. Grey church against pale grey sky. No wind in the warm walled space. Wood Pigeons coo in a churchyard oak. Alive, rejecting silence.

I walked through the graveyard of Christchurch Priory Church today, looking for a particular grave and not being able to find it. The people of Christchurch have been buried in this peaceful place since Norman times, but most of them are forgotten, in unmarked graves. Headstones from the 1700`s exist but it is difficult to read inscriptions after the weathering of three hundred years. Even so, the styles of the headstones hint at their time in history.

In the fresh, sea air of the harbourside churchyard, lichens grow on carved monuments ........

...or leave their impressions on the oldest stones.

Grander townsfolk rest in boxed tombs.

The Georgians carved Neo-Classical pillars and sunbursts in elegant symmetry.

A simple Victorian tomb.

A modern Celtic cross, in pink granite, on an early twentieth century grave.

I walked through the gateway and out of the churchyard, down through the tunnel of leaves by the riverside.....

....past the Garden where people`s ashes can rest, in sight of the ancient church.

As I turned the corner, there was the facade of a most unusual tomb, which stands empty and on its own in a quiet walled garden.

This is the reason why. The story of poor Mrs Perkins is explained on this plaque......

....and here is her tomb.

I can only imagine the dread and horror of those little boys in the Church School, listening out in the darkness for signs that Mrs Perkins might be stirring behind that unlocked door!

Looking for Early Heather

2011-07-08T04:51:00.000-07:00

Bell Heather - Erica cinerea

A River of Stones

A spreading haze of heather, silver-pink, drifts down a gentle hill slope in grey afternoon light.

When the wind dropped, Old Dog and I walked around the village edge to a place where early heathers grow. It is too soon for the sight of ling, the common heather, turning the heathland purple for as far as the eye can see. Now is the time for smaller clumps of stronger, red purple Bell Heather to appear on the moorland edge.

Lovelier still, is the softer, grey leafed Cross Leaved Heath, Erica tetralix. Known also as the Bog Heath, this plant grows well on wet heath and boggy areas. In the New Forest, sandy , gravelly soil is dominant, but patches of underlying clay create areas of bog and marshland where Bog Heath thrives in mid summer. The flowers are small, pale rounded bells in clumps at the top of straggly , downy-leaved stems.

Swathes of Bog Heath drifting down towards bog land in a valley bottom.

Sometimes, we found a clump of white flowered bells among the mass of pink.

A few stems of cotton grass grew in wetter marsh.

A clay pool, where cattle have pudged their hoofprints in a search for water..........

....and a natural dew pond , where hoof prints of drinking ponies mark the sandy edge.

Further into the marsh, Bog Asphodel gleamed its deep yellow, poisonous flowers.

Leaves of new ling beginning to grow through grass and the branches of burned gorse......

Ragwort in the shelter of brambles on the heathland edge.

Across the far distance, towards the coast and the misty Purbeck Hills, common heather was yet to flower among the gorse.

We climbed up the hill. It was steep enough to make an old dog puff and blow, so we rested at the top and I found different flowers at the edge of the wood.

Wood sage.....

Heath bedstraw.....

and purple Selfheal.

Old Dog waited patiently.

Milkweed was in flower by bracken and bramble........

....and then it was time to stand up among the daisies and follow the shaded lane towards home.

Red Fruits Before the Rain

2011-07-06T15:01:00.001-07:00

A River of Stones

All the shades of red, in bright berries bursting with the scent of ripe juices.

Rain threatened this morning. A wild south-westerly gusted relentlessly across the fields. I picked the ripest garden berries, before rainfall could ruin them and mould could follow.

By this evening, four jars of jam were cooled and setting in the kitchen. A mixture of raspberries, redcurrants, tayberries, blackberries and strawberries, caught in a sharp-tanged sweetness and full of the taste of summer.

I made the jam using a quick and easy method, from a recipe passed on by my friend on http://codlinsandcream2.blogspot.com. Thank you Bovey Belle!

Mine is a variation of her Microwave Raspberry Jam. I use it for all sorts of mixtures, including blackberry and elderberry combinations later in the summer.

Microwave Summer Fruit Jam

1lb of mixed summer fruit

1lb granulated or preserving sugar

Method

Rinse fruit and tip into a 3 litre microwaveable mixing bowl.

Crush/ mash the fruit using a potato masher.

Add the sugar to the fruit.

Stir well, cover and leave for one hour.

Uncover, stir and then cook on High setting in Microwave for 5 minutes.

Stir with wooden spoon and then cook on Medium setting for approx. 25 minutes, until

setting point reached. Stir three times during cooking.

I use a cold plate in the fridge to test jam drops for surface wrinkling, but a jam thermometer can be used.

Allow to cool slightly before carefully potting up into clean, pre-warmed jars. Add sterilised lids but do not screw these up tightly until jam is completely cooled.

Label and date jars before storing.

Today I used twice the quantity of fruit and sugar, which took longer to reach boiling point, so I used the High microwave setting throughout.

Riverbank

2011-07-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

River of Stones

Watching water weed wave and flow, my mind`s eye waits for Ophelia to float underneath silver willows.

The River Avon at Ringwood today. Water Crowsfoot and Purple Loosestrife in flower.

Flowers on a Marsh

2011-07-03T03:06:00.001-07:00

A River of Stones

Hot Sunday morning. The still air creaks with cracking, stuttered cries of a magpie on the fence.

The gravel path to Stanpit Marsh is bordered by hedges of bramble. A profusion of their pale mauve, open flowers invites the bees and promises a store of fruit for autumn. Among the prickled brambles grow wild mallow, teasel, nettle and wild bryony.

White trumpets of bindweed follow the afternoon sun.

Down on the wetlands, Marsh Ragwort glows yellow, its flower clusters looser than the common ragwort of field and hedgerow.

On the surface of a salt pan, the mud is spiked with tiny breathing holes from invertebrates who live beneath the surface. The marsh is scattered with salt pans, where long billed birds can dig into the mud and feast.

There is a new information centre at the entrance to the Marsh. A blackboard details sightings of the latest birds and plants. Last week, an osprey was seen on two consecutive days, to great excitement.

Behind the centre is a freshwater wildlife pond, bordered by trees and long grass. A pile of rotting logs makes a home for insects that feed visiting birds.

Beside the pond, in a boggy patch of ground, the frilled petals of a Ragged Robin, growing through the grass.

Sea Lavender and Spotted Foals -on Stanpit Marsh

2011-07-02T01:46:00.001-07:00

A River of Stones

The tide comes in. Green wave ripples wash at the roots of reeds and fill the salt marsh pools.

Yesterday, the afternoon was hot on the Forest uplands, so I walked by the sea at Stanpit Marsh, in Christchurch Harbour, to catch a cooling breeze and to find this summer`s brood of foals. The Marsh is used by New Forest Commoners for grazing in-foal mares.

Stanpit is a place of lush salt marsh where foals are born and can grow in a family herd. The mares are good examples of larger, sturdier New Forest ponies. The stallion used last year was a spotted Appaloosa horse, who ran on the Marsh to father this year`s foals. Their progeny can vary from plain bays to coloured (paint) youngsters, with sometimes a prized young spotted foal or two among the varied mix.

As I walked along the path towards the marsh, curlews bubbled their liquid call in the reedbeds. White egrets waded and black headed gulls stepped through damp grasses. A haze of pale purple Sea Lavender softened the shades of green.

If you click on the photo below, a curved billed curlew stands to the left of the middle distance.

The tide was slowly coming in. In from the rougher waters of the Channel, past The Run, where salt water races into the Harbour and meets fresh river currents from the Hampshire Avon and the Dorset Stour.

Across the Marsh, stands the Norman Priory Church at Christchurch, and numerous small boats are tied in a safe and sheltered mooring.

Looking seawards, across the harbour water and a spit of sandy land. Here, beach huts in a long, pastel-painted row, separate the harbour from the sea. On the horizon stand the distant white chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight.

Down towards the Harbour channel I walked, where the foals were growing bolder, meeting to graze and play on the edges of their herd.

This bright bay foal had seen a friend........

...to play with....

....under the watchful eye of the dark bay`s mother.

A tall, sturdy palomino cropped grass among the swan feathers.

The group splashed in cool water and walked on the narrow shingle beach.

Out on quieter marsh, mares with younger foals slept and grazed.

The palomino foal suddenly realised that his mother, the chestnut mare, was walking away. He whinnied to her, high and shrill, and then leapt into a canter along the shore, catching up.

A group of ponies on the path. Walking through, quietly and with respect, poses no danger. These animals are used to people, although I would not take a dog amongst them while the foals are here.

A fine, tall masted catamaran moored across the channel.

The palomino foal indulged in some mutual grooming with a friend.

This spotty foal, whose profile heads this post, was bold and friendly, coming across to be scratched on his withers. His markings will make him a prized young animal when his owners come to collect the foals in Autumn. He may be sold after weaning, or maybe kept to see how well he thrives and grows.

There were smaller, finer spots on this palomino, especially on the face.

Two fat, glossy mares, doubtless in foal again, waded into fresher pools where river water makes their drink less salty. On a summer`s day, an idyllic place to be. A place of sweet grass and wide space where they can live in a family group and watch their spring foals grow.

Lapwing

Two men in a small white boat, "Gone fishing"....

...and the wooden causeway back around the marsh. Not another human being in sight, I followed the bank of the little River Mude until I reached another path. No kingfishers seen this time, but I knew they must be there, somewhere, as I walked across the wide grass, back to the Purewell road again.

The Last Week of June

2011-07-01T02:25:00.001-07:00

A River of Stones........

A new month. Two swallows skim the holly hedge and circle, chattering, against a soft blue sky.

In the garden this week, everything looks stronger and brighter after days of sun and warm rain.

A lily flowers again. The corm was a birthday gift from an old friend, several years ago.

In the wild pond, there are common newts beneath the duck weed and water forget-me-not grows, waiting for female newts to wrap their eggs in submerged leaves.

Candelabra primula against huge leaves of Canadian skunk cabbage, whose yellow spring flowers smelled as pungent as their name implies.

Opium poppies, self-seeded on fallow earth.

White mallow and common fumitory in amongst the poppies.

Enough salad leaves to feed us....

...while the runner beans flower at last, held back by drought and cold nights.

Ripening strawberries....

....little green blueberries have a while to go.....

crab apples swell hard in rose-tinted green...

and Tay berries ripen in the sun.

A bumble bee dips in and out of foxglove flowers.

Cucumbers struggle in a greenhouse where there is too much overhanging shade from a spreading oak.

Flowering at last, Kiftsgate, the July rose.

Rocking Horse Dapples......

2011-06-29T05:26:00.000-07:00

Our Grey Pony, now four years old, started life as a dark bay roan with a smattering of grey hairs. We wondered what colour he would eventually be. Every year has been different. Last year he was a dark iron grey. This spring he has lightened yet again, and at last he has some lovely "Rocking Horse" dapples on his summer coat. In a few more years , he will probably be completely white. Time will tell!

For New Forest Pony fans, there are photos of his sire on

http://nfstallions.info/P/PortmorePickle.php

There are real similarities between them. Pickle is now a gelding , being ridden and enjoyed in a private home. We know from his previous owner that he has a superb temperament, which he seems to have passed on to his son.

Here is J, another New Forest Pony. He belongs to the same friend who found The Grey Pony in the road, after his mother had been killed. It was J`s owner who had the foresight to save the Grey Pony`s life on that awful summer morning four years ago.

J , is staying with us and is the kindest pony I have met in years. We are gradually bringing him back into work as he was not ridden last year. He has settled in well and we love having him here.

Woody belongs to another friend. He was lame earlier this month and is thankfully getting better.

Woody`s half brother, the Chocolate Pony, comes over to have a word with me. We need to watch this one`s diet!

The Ginger One apologises for his hair. He had only just got up after a morning sleep.....

Enjoying the warm sun, which helps her arthritic old joints, the Golden Pony dodges the electric fence for a tastier bite of grass. She was not so well last winter, despite daily anti arthritic medicines. If we have another hard winter, we may need to make a difficult decision about this dear old girl. Always a character and not always easy, she has mellowed over the years. I don`t believe in keeping animals to suffer though, so if the pain gets bad when summer is over, we shall see.... At least she is doing well on the summer grass and we will take each day as it comes.

Blocking the Road

2011-06-28T02:35:00.000-07:00

Along a New Forest lane in the midday heat of a humid summer day. Like a latter-day Stubbs painting, a group of commoners` ponies rest beneath two oak trees that reach across the lane to form a canopy of shade. Every summer day they stand here, as their mothers and grandmothers will have stood before them.

Driving through this little family is a slow and careful business. Sometimes a pony will turn to let you pass. Sometimes you have to wait, and wait, or wave a duster out of the window, hoping for some movement.

Yesterday, I squeezed the car carefully through. No one was behind me, so I stopped to take some photographs. The young dark grey mare is likely to be a half sister to our own Grey Pony. He was born on this heath four springs ago, and lived with this family group until his mother was killed by a car one night. Aged six weeks, he came to us as an unhandled orphan. Now he is a kind, beautiful young gelding who is beginning his education. We hope he may be a riding pony by next summer. The grey mare looks so much like him. I feel sure that the same grey stallion is their father.

Scratching an itch - a balancing act.

Another possible half sister. She looks around four years old.

Just away from the group, a single chestnut mare cropped the new, sweet grass growing between blackened gorse stumps. Controlled burning leaves a stark, twiggy landscape of charcoal branches, until the rain comes and grass grows again. It will not be long before new gorse sprouts from the burned earth. A new supply of food for ponies and cattle in the years to come.

Gardens at The Red House Museum in Christchurch

2011-06-25T13:41:00.001-07:00

It is a while since we last spent time at the Red House Museum in Christchurch. When our boys were young, we would marvel at the Stone Age hand axes, the Bronze Age cremation urns and the evidence that Neanderthal men and women once lived in the place we called home.

When I was teaching, we would bring primary classes to see the Saxon exhibitions; the artifacts and the finds from a Saxon graveyard excavated where a supermarket car park now lies. A boy and a girl would dress up in the fashions of a Saxon man and woman. Christchurch was an important town in Saxon times. It was called Twynham then, because the town grew up between the confluence of two great rivers, where the Hampshire Avon and the River Stour meet the sea in Christchurch Harbour.

Today, we came to research an important craftsman who lived and worked in Christchurch in the first half of the twentieth century. Arthur Romney Green, a furniture maker and boat builder, is considered a fine craftsman of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He had a workshop and a bow fronted shop in Bridge Street, Christchurch. Inside the Red House Museum, a small room is set out as a 1930`s dining room, where Romney Green`s furniture is displayed. It is like peering through a window into the past.

I took photographs outside, in the lush and lovely gardens of the Museum. The Red House was built in 1764, as a workhouse for the town`s poor. It is difficult to walk in this garden, without thinking of the orphaned, old, ill and destitute souls who trod these pathways centuries ago.

More about the museum can be found at http://www.hants.gov-uk/redhouse

The water pump....

Into the walled garden, where herbs of every description are grown. Well labelled, they make a good resource for teaching children and adults about both culinary and medicinal herbs. They also make a quiet garden of scented leaves and bright flowers.

In the centre is a pond.

A formal urn grows house leeks.

A plaque tells of the origins of the herb garden.

Mr Blackbird......

...and his wife.

Leaded windows above climbing roses.

We followed a narrow path, into the garden that borders the road.

Through the hedge was the tower of the Priory Church. As we walked in the garden, the bell in the tower struck four o`clock.

The covered well where the workhouse residents would draw their water.

On the Georgian Vicarage opposite, Virginia Creeper covered walls and chimneys.

Soft herbaceous borders against the trees........

A cloud of powder-blue cranesbill geraniums.

The West Window on the tower.

A beautiful rose, Lady Sylvia.

The weeping ash........

.....moss on a coral skeleton........

....and a return through the herb garden, out into the busy streets of the town.

Not far from the Avon Bridge on Bridge Street, we found the building which once housed Arthur Romney Green`s furniture workshop and bow fronted shop.

A popular Italian restaurant has taken the place of a craftsman`s shop......

....but the upstairs windows are the original ones. These are the rooms where Romney Green lived and where he met with friends to discuss art, politics and philosophies of life.

As he walked into town, Romney Green would have met this view of the Norman Priory ruins and the Priory Church . In the waters of the River Avon, he would have sailed his beloved wooden boats ........

...moored, perhaps, by the willow trees on the river bank, two minutes from his home.

As a young man, Arthur Romney Green lived and worked in Haslemere, Surrey. He was part of a community of artists, writers, thinkers and craftspeople associated with the Haslemere Peasant Industries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More can be learned about them at this interesting and well researched blog http://peasant-arts.blogspot.com

I have a hunch that Romney Green would have known my Haslemere Grandfather in his younger days, but that is another story and, as yet, we only have the faintest of connections.

Of Swallows and Hunting Cats

2011-06-18T06:06:00.000-07:00

Every year, swallows fly home from Africa, to old nests of mud, moss, feather and hair in the wooden stable roof . The parents spend a while mending and renovating, before the eggs are laid and brooding of the young begins.

This year, one nest fledged early. Two tiny fledglings died on the stable floor, but, in a shivering, gaping huddle amongst the wood shavings, a group of three survived.

Temperatures fell, especially at night, but the parent birds fed their youngsters well. Squealing and chattering over the rooftops, skimming the wide fields for insects, they swooped in and out, over the stable half doors, all through the daylight hours.

At night, the tiny bundles of new life clustered together, vulnerable on the floor.

Outside, Lucy kitten passed by on a well supervised moonlit walk around the yard. She ran up a tree and slid down again by her claws. She chased moths around the grass, but never did she guess that three young swallows were so vulnerable, just behind a nearby wooden door.

By day, the empty nest showed that the parent birds were always on the wing. Out catching food for the growing trio of chicks on the stable floor.

Part of an old ladder was put in the stable, as a half-way perch. It seemed such a long way up to the half opened door and freedom.

For more than two weeks, the fledgelings huddled on the floor. Cats were kept on curfew. Magpies were shoed away.

One morning, the stable floor was empty. I feared the worst, but then I heard soft cheeping and a flutter of wings. Up on a rafter sat three fine young swallows. I walked away. When I came back they were gone. Now that the family has fledged, the stable is empty by day, but at night they come back. Roosting with their parents on high places. At last they can fly and their days on the floor are at an end.

Through the kitchen window, I watch young blue tits learning to feed on apple, and being fed by the parent birds.

In the evenings, "Springwatch" has an audience of humans, cats and dogs. Lucy Kitten stares entranced at the inside view of a Redstart`s nest.

Snapshots from Salisbury

2011-06-16T07:16:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday, when we visited the Flower Festival at Salisbury Cathedral, we arrived at midday in the middle of a bustling Market Day. The shopping streets on the way to the Cathedral Close were crowded with people. There were everyday residents of Salisbury, those who had come in from the villages to shop , local day trippers ( including ourselves) and tourists from around the world. Salisbury Cathedral is a magnet for visitors, but the surrounding streets are full of interesting old buildings and hidden alleyways that whisper the stories of centuries of ordinary Salisbury life.

I have always loved this old and vibrant city. I remember exploring its shops and narrow streets with my parents, many years ago. We would take the train from Fareham, then our nearest town, and spend a day in bookshops, antique shops and then, always, we would walk around the cathedral.

On Tuesday, it was good to come back again with friends. Strangely, I met one of my late Mother`s oldest friends in the cathedral. A lovely lady now in her eighties, who lives many miles from Salisbury. I walked around a pillar and large blue flower arrangement, and there she was!

On our way to the Cathedral Close, we had an unexpected encounter with a topiary dragon.

Busy shopping streets where ancient and modern buildings stand side by side.

The medieval archway into the Cathedral Close.

The Almshouses, in the shadow of the tallest spire in England.

Elegant Georgian homes....

....and fine larger houses line the Cathedral Close, which is an area of wide grass lawns where people can walk, rest and admire these beautiful and well preserved buildings.

A red brick cottage where the walls were festooned with tangles of climbing roses and clematis.

Opposite, stands Mompesson House, built in the reign of Queen Anne ((1702-1714), which is now owned by the National Trust.

The Military Museum.

We found a bistro in the Close and sat in the shade while we enjoyed our lunch. Above us, a blackbird sang from a high chimney on the grand house next door. He is just visible underneath the chimney pots.

Beside us, a lovely old wall of brick and flint.......

....and to our right, the cathedral spire rose into the sky.

Walking towards the cathedral, it seemed as though the great building loomed over every glimpse we had between the houses.

A tree lined street of lovely houses and gardens led away towards an old city gate.

We walked beneath a London Plane tree, through the cathedral grounds and in through the great North Door.

On our way home, we passed medieval carvings in limestone....

..and an Edward VII post box.

We walked back through the archway into busy streets once more.

Down by the medieval Buttercross, market traders were taking down their stalls at the end of the day, much as their descendants would have done for centuries before.