Nature

Orchids in Beattie’s Field; High Brown Fritillaries; flowers of Southampton’s bombed sites and a squawking Nightjar chick!

Gran has made a few visits to the Punchbowl area on the Petersfield Road lately, looking for orchids and other wild flowers. When describing her finds, she always uses the plants’ scientific names – but many of them are well out of date today. For instance, she finds Habenaria conopsea, which must be Fragrant orchid – a plant now recognised as three separate species, and with a different Generic name. When at the Punchbowl, she:

…resented the arrival of noisy, chattering people on motorbikes who were apparently quite unaware of the beauty of sight and sound all round them, which they had so rudely disturbed.

[Read more…] about Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 6)

It’s the summer of 1947 – nesting birds, butterflies on the wing and flowering plants – and there are recollections of the Hiltingbury youth.

On May 22 1947, Gran notes Lithospermum purpureo-caeruleum (creeping gromwell) in the garden but, she says, “as this is a rarity I am waiting to verify my identification”.

Presently, the front garden of The Ridge has a large patch of this lovely blue-flowered plant, which was introduced  from a small piece collected at Cheddar in 1967, so Gran’s earlier record of it is something of a mystery – though it was surely a garden escape from somewhere nearby. Dad tells me, “It is now a confounded nuisance, its long tough, slender rhizomes getting under paving slabs and amongst other plants, and producing flowering shoots in unwelcome places”. [Read more…] about Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 5)

Gran records several bird species now lost as breeders in Chandler’s Ford – Hawfinch, Wryneck, Red-backed Shrike and Nightjar.

The last day of April and the first of May 1947 give the first hint that I have found of Gran’s constant bitter sadness, which apparently underlies all her writing: [Read more…] about Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 4)

Signs of spring excite Gran but she is worried by news of pending development of her beloved woods.

Gran notes Salix caprea (goat willow) catkins open on March 15th, and a male Early Moth coming to light at a bedroom window the day before this. On the 16th:

The speckled Wood butterfly which I brought home from the greenhouse on March 5th was today spreading its wings to the sun in the dining room.

[Read more…] about Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 3)

It’s the freezing winter of 1946/47, but Gran is still out and about in the countryside

Book 1

It’s dated January 1st 1947 and is headed “A Country Diary”. The inside of the front cover has five or six paragraphs, the first of which goes:

Flowers bring a spirit of comfort and happiness which money cannot buy, and being a spirit, is neither measured nor defined, but only perceived.

This is followed by:

“The tragic beauty of life is revealed nowhere so movingly and so clearly to the spirit as in a wild flower, which blossoms into life and fades into death.”

June 17^th 1945 – January 12^th 1947

In memory of my friend, “Adrian”, (Kenneth R. A. C. Turvey) who gave me an even deeper appreciation of the beauty and wonder of nature. He died January 12^th 1947 aged 34. His brave, wholesome spirit was an inspiration and an example. Semper Fidelis.

I suspect that the words in quotation marks were from Adrian himself, though the journal is peppered with similar rather trite and flowery quotes from all sorts of sources that are not Adrian. And the dates are the period of Gran’s brief friendship with him. [Read more…] about Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 2)