Tuesday, July 28, 2009

birds, flint mine, Schuyler's house, stuff

This first thing is a question about a bird song. I could hear it but you can't, so I sang it just in case. Good thing.



It's a woodpigeon. Thank you Alison for knowing, and for the link. Yesterday near Norwich Cathedral I heard one in a tree and David recognized it.

Yesterday David took me to see Grime's Graves, a neolithic flint mining area that was in use for a thousand years, and then became a mystery when people would guess what they thought all those holes were. It's interesting.

[There was once a slide show of the photos of that day, but it's obsolete.]

"Grime's Graves is the only Neolithic flint mine open to visitors in Britain. A grassy lunar landscape of over 400 shafts, pits, quarries and spoil dumps, they were first named Grim's Graves - meaning the pagan god Grim's quarries, or 'the Devil's holes' - by the Anglo- Saxons. It was not until one of them was excavated in 1870 that they were found to be flint mines dug over 5,000 years ago, during the later Neolithic and early Bronze Ages."

"Grimes" would've been the possessive form of "Grim," the pagan god in question, but it wasn't a grammar museum. When there's an apostrophe to show possessive, the letter that's left out is the "e" of that once-pronounced syllable, so it would've been, to the Anglo Saxons, the holes belonging to Grim, or Grimes (two syllables) holes. Few people care, I know.

Wikipedia sez...

English Heritage site

More of Schuyler's house and garden, cat, flowers, neighbors to the left (hay barn) and right (formerly low-income housing the term for which I have forgotten [Estate flats?]). This property, Fornost, is built into a corner between those. Only the driveway touches the road, at a bend in the road, and behind the house is wheat.

[Another slide show bit the dust, but the gallery below will have all that and (maybe too much) more.]


Sorry my camera isn't great with close-ups of flowers, unlike Holly's she's been taking photos of the false sea onion as it blossoms at home. I put the new ones here: 100 species challenge

I have some more I haven't put up yet, from London on Sunday, but I'm hungry and I smell food.

* Click here to see photos, and click the "x" in the upper right to escape them. *

That includes a trip to London (we stayed in Kensington), then I went to Llanharan in Wales to stay with Joy K's family, then to Julie's (and Windsor) before coming home. These photos were added in 2023 to make up for the loss of those slideshows.

5 comments:

Katy said...

Sandra, or Schuyler, or anyone...

What are the light purple-ish flowers in the slide show right before the Fornost sign? I have those in a pot that was donated to me, with just soil and rock in it at the time. With the rains came those flowers, and the brown papery seed pods that follow. I've been wondering what they are.

Loved the picture of the kitty in the hammock!

~Katherine said...

I've been enjoying catching up on your blog of all the things England (or much that is England where your camera or MacBook periscopes through). Looks like lots and lots and scads of indecent fun (cobblestone of course). Great to look through and see. Like a window.

alison said...

Could that bird be a woodpigeon? It is common in the English countryside. You mention it coos. It's more tuneful than a regular pigeon. If not a wood pigeon tell how it's different and I'll have another go. You can try this link to hear one. http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/w/woodpigeon/index.asp

Alison

alison said...

In response to Katy - we call those flowers love-in-a-mist - see link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/575.shtml
I'm enjoying this native species indentification thing!
Alison

Katy said...

Cool! Thank you Alison! I had both lavender and white ones. According to the link they usually bloom from July to September, but in New Mexico they bloomed in March!

By the way, my sister is an Alison with one L. It seems like most people use the spelling Allison. I will have to tell her that I heard from another Alison with one L. :-)