MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 45
In case anyone is wondering, I am still brooding in
my bower but have been unable to post due to my browser suddenly becoming
incompatible with Blogger! Not being of technical mind, I had to wait till my
son could come and sort out my computer. However, at last, it is back on track,
and I can woffle again! The bower is still pretty, and although the clematis
has now ceased flowering, the honeysuckle is a mass of crimson berries and
there is a passion flower and a mock orange, though the latter, also, has no
blooms now. Nearby are some buddleia
bushes (which nowadays we are meant to refer to, for some scientific reason, as
‘buddleja’), one deep purple and another white. These are large bushes. There is also a tub containing two patio
buddleias, one white and the other pale mauve. The other day I noticed a
beautiful pale yellow buddleia in a garden – gosh, I’d love one of those. We
are certainly having a ‘Butterfly Summer’ – the garden has been full of
butterflies drinking their fill on the buddleias, especially peacocks, large
and small whites, commas and small tortoiseshells.
We visited Anglesey Abbey, near Cambridge recently,
just to walk around the grounds. They were beautiful as always. The dahlia
garden was a riot of colour, as was the herbaceous garden, and the
white-trunked birches in the winter garden bore pale green leaves, looking so
pretty when the sun shone through them. The mill stream was green with
duckweed, and there were plenty of yellow water lilies with their large,
butter-cup like flowers and thick oval leaves, perfect for moorhens to walk
across. Which they were – there was a family of moorhens and their babies
happily mooching about the greenery on the stream. Some of the dogwood seems to have been cleared
away in the grassy area by the river, making it easier to get to the small pond
nearby. The cyclamen will be out very soon; a few were already showing pink
along the paths, a reminder that autumn is on its way. We decided not to visit
the house this time, but it is an interesting place, well worth looking round
if you haven’t done so.
 |
| Polecat at the British Wildlife Centre |
 |
| Young red squirrel at the British Wildlife Centre |
A couple of weeks ago we went to one of my ‘special
places’ – the British Wildlife Centre at Lingfield, Surrey. Red squirrels
climbed up my legs and over my arms, and I spent a long while watching a stoat
running in and out of a hole. A baby polecat slumbered in the sun, otters
chased each other in their lake and across the grass, an enormous marsh frog
grinned vacantly and the wildcat kittens were gorgeous – though, as their
keeper explained, they inherited the wildness and they could not be handled or
even touched. We bought sandwiches in the café, and then took them along to the
picnic tables near the roe deer enclosure, as it was such a lovely day. Later,
we walked through the wetlands trail, along the new boardwalk, seeing quite a
lot of butterflies and birds.
I’ve seen quite a few butterflies and dragonflies
lately, with trips to Hatfield Forest and to Wicken Fen. On one of my tips to
Wicken, which is near Ely, Cambs, the boardwalk had a peacock butterfly every
couple of feet, and as I walked along, they would spiral up and settle behind
me. Dragonflies were abundant, many of them coupling or egg-laying, while some
enormous ones swooped, reminiscent of early fighter planes! At Hatfield Forest
a tiled roof was a suntrap for small tortoiseshell butterflies that flattened
their wings against the warm tiles so that their bodies absorbed the heat
trapped underneath them. The thistles had decided to seed, so there were swirls
of thistledown – very pretty, though it made me a bit sniffy as I suffer from
hay fever. Through the trees we glimpsed a group of fallow deer, the sun
illuminating the white spots on their backs and showing off the bold black and
white markings on their tails.
On the 17th August, my daughter and I
were up very early as we had to drive to Coventry and set up our Doll Showcase
stall (we produce a quarterly doll magazine) at a doll and toy fair. The fair
went off very well, and it was interesting to see the old toys. I bought a
small wooden piano, just like one I had as a child – I can still play ‘Pease
Pudding Hot’ on it! I also bought a toy washing machine and cooker. The
washing machine is made of a heavy type of metal, with a mangle attached with
sharp rivets while the cooker is made from tinplate. It always amuses me to
think of how we played with such ‘dangerous’ toys as children – no one worried
about sharp edges in those days – and we survived. I was reading the other day that German
kindergarten children climb trees at school – I can’t imagine ‘elf and safety’
allowing that here!
Over the bank holiday my husband was
demonstrating a railway layout at the model railway club near Hoddesdon, Herts,
of which he is a member. It was the club’s open day and was very well attended.
There were lots of model railways there as well as a ride-on train for
youngsters, a tombola and an excellent refreshments stall, which was doing a
roaring trade. There were model boats being sailed around the boating lake,
too. My daughter and I went to see how he was getting on, he had a queue of
children waiting for a go to operate his train. It struck me as a
quintessentially British affair – all it needed was a few Morris dancers and
the thwack of a cricket ball on willow!
When I visited my son recently I left my trainers behind. (My son has a cream carpet and so is very fussy about footwear! So I took a pair of lightwiight canvas shoes to slip into but went home wearing them.) Next time I visited, he was away and we had called in to water the garden and of course to collect the trainers. I searched and couldn't find them at first - then discovered this box obviously waiting for me. My son has a strange sense of humour - I wonder who he inherited that from?!
In case anyone is wondering, I am still brooding in
my bower but have been unable to post due to my browser suddenly becoming
incompatible with Blogger! Not being of technical mind, I had to wait till my
son could come and sort out my computer. However, at last, it is back on track,
and I can woffle again! The bower is still pretty, and although the clematis
has now ceased flowering, the honeysuckle is a mass of crimson berries and
there is a passion flower and a mock orange, though the latter, also, has no
blooms now. Nearby are some buddleia
bushes (which nowadays we are meant to refer to, for some scientific reason, as
‘buddleja’), one deep purple and another white. These are large bushes. There is also a tub containing two patio
buddleias, one white and the other pale mauve. The other day I noticed a
beautiful pale yellow buddleia in a garden – gosh, I’d love one of those. We
are certainly having a ‘Butterfly Summer’ – the garden has been full of
butterflies drinking their fill on the buddleias, especially peacocks, large
and small whites, commas and small tortoiseshells.
We visited Anglesey Abbey, near Cambridge recently,
just to walk around the grounds. They were beautiful as always. The dahlia
garden was a riot of colour, as was the herbaceous garden, and the
white-trunked birches in the winter garden bore pale green leaves, looking so
pretty when the sun shone through them. The mill stream was green with
duckweed, and there were plenty of yellow water lilies with their large,
butter-cup like flowers and thick oval leaves, perfect for moorhens to walk
across. Which they were – there was a family of moorhens and their babies
happily mooching about the greenery on the stream. Some of the dogwood seems to have been cleared
away in the grassy area by the river, making it easier to get to the small pond
nearby. The cyclamen will be out very soon; a few were already showing pink
along the paths, a reminder that autumn is on its way. We decided not to visit
the house this time, but it is an interesting place, well worth looking round
if you haven’t done so.
A couple of weeks ago we went to one of my ‘special
places’ – the British Wildlife Centre at Lingfield, Surrey. Red squirrels
climbed up my legs and over my arms, and I spent a long while watching a stoat
running in and out of a hole. A baby polecat slumbered in the sun, otters
chased each other in their lake and across the grass, an enormous marsh frog
grinned vacantly and the wildcat kittens were gorgeous – though, as their
keeper explained, they inherited the wildness and they could not be handled or
even touched. We bought sandwiches in the café, and then took them along to the
picnic tables near the roe deer enclosure, as it was such a lovely day. Later,
we walked through the wetlands trail, along the new boardwalk, seeing quite a
lot of butterflies and birds. 
I’ve seen quite a few butterflies and dragonflies
lately, with trips to Hatfield Forest and to Wicken Fen. On one of my tips to
Wicken, which is near Ely, Cambs, the boardwalk had a peacock butterfly every
couple of feet, and as I walked along, they would spiral up and settle behind
me. Dragonflies were abundant, many of them coupling or egg-laying, while some
enormous ones swooped, reminiscent of early fighter planes! At Hatfield Forest
a tiled roof was a suntrap for small tortoiseshell butterflies that flattened
their wings against the warm tiles so that their bodies absorbed the heat
trapped underneath them. The thistles had decided to seed, so there were swirls
of thistledown – very pretty, though it made me a bit sniffy as I suffer from
hay fever. Through the trees we glimpsed a group of fallow deer, the sun
illuminating the white spots on their backs and showing off the bold black and
white markings on their tails.
On the 17th August, my daughter and I
were up very early as we had to drive to Coventry and set up our Doll Showcase
stall (we produce a quarterly doll magazine) at a doll and toy fair. The fair
went off very well, and it was interesting to see the old toys. I bought a
small wooden piano, just like one I had as a child – I can still play ‘Pease
Pudding Hot’ on it! I also bought a toy washing machine and cooker. The
washing machine is made of a heavy type of metal, with a mangle attached with
sharp rivets while the cooker is made from tinplate. It always amuses me to
think of how we played with such ‘dangerous’ toys as children – no one worried
about sharp edges in those days – and we survived. I was reading the other day that German
kindergarten children climb trees at school – I can’t imagine ‘elf and safety’
allowing that here!
Over the bank holiday my husband was
demonstrating a railway layout at the model railway club near Hoddesdon, Herts,
of which he is a member. It was the club’s open day and was very well attended.
There were lots of model railways there as well as a ride-on train for
youngsters, a tombola and an excellent refreshments stall, which was doing a
roaring trade. There were model boats being sailed around the boating lake,
too. My daughter and I went to see how he was getting on, he had a queue of
children waiting for a go to operate his train. It struck me as a
quintessentially British affair – all it needed was a few Morris dancers and
the thwack of a cricket ball on willow!
