Not giving a fig

There was the 10.17 bus up on the board yet when I looked a couple of minutes later it had vanished into the ether without any explanation for its mysterious disappearance. With the next one not due for an hour David and I regrouped over a coffee and doughnuts. We were soon chuckling about just how grumpy we'd been about a missing bus [first world problems eh!] and before long we'd come up with a plan B. Half an hour later and we were on our way down to Tarring.

I had always believed that the beautiful village of Tarring was separate from Worthing, but turns out that once again I am misinformed. Once upon a time it was the more important town and Worthing was just a small fishing village, but over time fortunes changed and these days it's been absorbed by the ever expanding coastal conurbation. Somehow though it's retained its character and although the oldest part is only a couple of streets now, it's a joy to spend an hour or so there admiring its medieval buildings which are in such contrast to its surrounding environs. Personally I like to have a starting point when exploring new areas and the short heritage walk provided exactly that. 

The church of St Andrew's dates from the 13th century. As ever the Victorians have had their mucky little paws all over it, but I found the medieval feel of the 19th century stained glass pleasing. John Parsons died in 1633 and his tomb is now the oldest remaining one in the churchyard.

For those like me who enjoy different architectural styles the High Street is the place to head for. Below we have the timbered 15th century Parsons Row along with the very familiar Sussex flint covered former Malthouse. Many of the houses would appear to be later, but if you were to remove their once fashionable brick frontages you would find the much older timber framed structured hidden behind them. The Castle Inn lamp is an amazing survivor when you consider that the pub served its last pint way back in 1911. Although I spotted the castle adorning the top of it when I was there the presence of the cannons were a later discovery. My absolute perfect type of small and easy to miss detail.

Prior to coming here I had wanted to follow up the legends of both Thomas A Becket and the figs. It is rumoured that the great man himself came here and stayed at the grade1 listed Old Palace below. Sadly the facts don't stack up as this dates from 1230 and he met his grisly end in 1170 nor do the claims end there.

The house below is called Bishop's Garth and is nowadays a private residence. If you squint you can see a fig tree growing up above the garden wall and that's where the former Archbishop of Canterbury comes in again. This time it is claimed that the great man himself planted the first one and this little nugget gave the 19th century tourist industry just the boost it needed. By 1830 the fig garden covered three quarters of an acre and had boasted over 100 trees. Visitors flocked in to see this spectacle and with the Victorian nose for ingenuity very much in full view the house became a cafe. One could enjoy a cuppa and bowl of fresh figs. Legend has is that such was the high quality of the figs an Italian warbler called Beccafico bird would fly all that way every year just to feast on the Tarring figs! Legally the homeowners have to open the garden to the public once a year which they do so in July, but nowadays it's a much smaller affair as much of the land was sold off during the 1980s for house building.

As it turned out this change of plan worked in our favour as we had sea mist and drizzle for most of the time we were out and about...we were never going to get fabulous sea views down in Worthing under those circumstances were we😉There's nothing for it...we're just going to have to hop on the bus another day and give it another whirl. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

꩜Aril꩜

New sightings

 I adore this time of year when the breezes are soft and there's some warmth in the air. Have so enjoyed the past few days, although the month has been a quiet one. It seems like this past year has gone past in a flash and we passed the first anniversary of David's cancer op last week. The memories it has stirred up has seen me seeking reflective spaces and heading out into nature has always calmed any emotional maelstroms for me. We are in the best place we can be and I am delighted to say that for the first time the surgeon didn't find anything to remove to test following David's latest biopsy. With a couple of recent wanderings I am so very happy to have seen my first Redwing. Close up you can see very clearly that they are part of the thrush family with their speckled breasts, but the smudge of rouge on their side gives away their true identity. Alas no photo, but instead I have this one to share. My first encounter with Coltsfoot💛🧡

I will endeavour to write about our latest bus adventure next time.

Arilx

Saying it with flowers

We have a rebel with a cause living amongst us. A local chap plants up the worst of the local potholes. Literally flower power in action.

Arilx

Garden doings.

David is naturally a very busy sort of fellow and he's often found to be making or adapting things. A number of factors have combined which has seen a flurry of garden related activity from him recently.

I have spoken before about our efforts to make our teeny garden more wildlife friendly. Our efforts seem to be paying off, but the one thing we didn't have was a pond. There isn't enough room to have anything huge, but it all helps and one black bucket and a wooden hedgehog ramp later and we now have this.

 

To meet the legal deadline our local council is finally rolling out a waste food recycling scheme. We are late to the party on this one. Currently we compost as much as we can, but we're now in the position that our borders are at a level where they won't take much more compost either so we will move over to the new system. We produce so little garden waste that we don't bother paying for the collection service offered (it used to free). That leftover empty bin has now been made into a new smaller compost one than our current one. There will be a space next to it to put our 4th slimline water butt and divert the rainwater from the shed guttering into it.

The final repurposing has been using the trunk from our neighbours' tree when they had it cut down last year (they were happy for us to have it) and making bee hotels. You have to drill deeper holes if you want to attract the female bees apparently.

To be honest I haven't had any input into this bar supplying him with homemade digestives and Dorset apple cake. I did suggest that we had a chat with the pond specialists up at the garden centre about suitable plants and then forced him to stop off at the cafe. Might have picked up a couple of unplanned for perennial wallflowers too🤣

He's now busy working on other stuff.....

Arilx

You doughnut!

"That sculpture looks just like a bleeding ring doughnut" I said to David rather sniffily. "We're standing on the Doughnut Groyne" replied David chuckling.....I should learn to keep schtum sometimes😉

 

꩜Aril꩜

All's well that ends well.

Aside from coppicing and hedge laying, we have been helping to complete an orchard restoration project at the same nature reserve. It had lain neglected for at least thirty years and over the past two winters the dead fruit trees have been removed, the remaining ones have been pruned and the thicket of brambles cut back and half a dozen new Sussex Heritage apple trees planted. There was one last push before the end of last month to get it done before the nesting season start on the 1st March. 

On this part of the site we're very near Chesworth House, a Tudor mansion which was the childhood home of Catherine Howard. Within the orchard [where there is no public access] there is an old well which we speculated might once have been used by the house. These days it's been capped off, but the stone top has broken so we couldn't resist moving it to one side just to see how deep it was. One of the chaps spotted this beetle swimming in the water and scooped it out as he didn't fancy its chances otherwise. Said beetle wasn't very thrilled at this human intervention and showed us so by raising its abdomen aggressively like some sort of scorpion. To my knowledge I've never seen one of these for real, but I knew from others' photos that it's the Devil Coach Horse Beetle.

This species doesn't have the best of reputations. Whilst it won't kill you, it can certainly deliver a nasty bite and it can throw out an evil smelling substance if it feels threatened. To be honest I think it would rather get out of our way as quickly as possible instead. It doesn't fair much better in the folklore realm either because it's claimed that it ate the core of the forbidden fruit or that it pointed its tail in the direction of Jesus to allow Judas to find him. The Irish call it the coffin cutter. However, don't believe all this bad press. They may not be pretty like the ladybird, but they are good to have in your garden because they and other carnivorous beetles enjoy eating slugs!

Have a great weekend.

꩜Aril꩜

 

Adventure on the bus No 1

"It looked as if the Dome of St Paul's had come down to Brighton and pupped."

Sydney Smith

Here we have the Royal Pavilion...once the fantasy and pleasure playground of George, Prince of Wales. Commissioned from John Nash and heavily influenced by all things Oriental, it's hard to not be impressed by this extraordinary building. Not only is the exterior impressive, but things continue in the same vein inside. It is a true assault on the senses.

On a personal level I am not a great fan of the interior. Chinoiserie is not to my taste nor do I enjoy  ostentatious displays of wealth [I could see this fitting right in with a certain president's plans for his $400m ballroom]. However, aspects of it are truly stunning and the chandeliers are divine. Although the entry cost is £19 each, we can now go back as often as we like for the next year. I am definitely going to do so again as they have a dragon exhibition starting soon. With David's new bus pass our horizons have suddenly opened out as we can get to many more places with only having to pay a capped price of £6 for me and not paying out for parking and fuel. This was our first foray and we have already ventured  elsewhere.....

꩜Aril꩜

The unfurling of Spring

 It's been so good to see the sun back this week and feel some warmth on your back. We have taken full advantage of the fairer weather and been in full beetling about mode. As ever the pull to spend time in nature was calling so we wandered up by the river to our nearest reserve for a coffee and a spot of bird watching. Usually I'm looking down, but this time I looked up at the aments instead. Up until today I'd never come across the word 'ament', but thanks to my Dad I now know it to be the official name for catkins. Turns out they vary greatly and are rather pretty. Thanks to my new mate Google lens I can tell you that we have here alder, aspen, poplar, goat willow and hazel which is the only one I knew. Am always grateful to learn new stuff.

Have a good weekend folks.

Arilx

The Lost Folk

 

I picked up this book from the library shelf a couple of weeks ago. It came out last year and was sort of on the radar, but I didn't know anything about it. The mantle of folk in all its forms is seeing a resurgence of interest and it's being picked up by the younger generations which has to be a good thing. As you would expect, they are overlaying their own interpretations and bringing it into a more inclusive form which reflects our modern day society. There's some exciting stuff going on out there and it's certainly inspired me and Mythago to step out of our comfort zones and go off at different tangents. As it turns out I found this title to be inspiring as it looks both back to what we've lost, but also forwards to what we are gaining. Lally MacBeth's interpretation of what constitutes folk is quite far reaching and it transpires that many of the things I've been photographing for last 13 years come under her folk umbrella. So in the spirit of being a collector of random folk images here's my selection from my travels on foot or within Sussex from the past few days. Post box topper, a handmade trellis with an added house and the fabulous details from this Tudorbethan pub down in Brighton.

 

 

 

I think that there's a fighting chance that a copy of this might join my collection once the pre-loved copies start appearing.

Arilx

Farewell February

 This miniscule anenome type bloom is the female flower of the hazel. The tree's distinctive yellow lambs tail catkins are to be seen from late winter.and are one of the early signs that seasonal.change is on the horizon. I had the pleasure of having a go at hazel coppicing this week for the first time. The stools at the local nature reserve have been neglected for many years, but they are being brought back so that they can be cropped again. We collected several branches for stakes and binders which we will use next month to create another 30m of living hedge to extend what is already there on the site. Dormice eat hazel nuts and last year the volunteers ran a survey to see if there were any on the reserve. As many will be aware this species is in sharp decline and all the dormice boxes were empty so it didn't look promising. Tubes with ink at the bottom were placed at various points and the results are now in. Lots of dormice pawprints have been recorded. Let's finish February on a high!

Arilx

'Tis not the season

The next target in the great top to toe sort out here at GBT is the loft. Doing well so far and have found a few corkers that I'd completely forgotten about. One thing that I did come across was a bag of home made Halloween decorations that I'd done when YTM was a very small person. Somehow they'd got missed in the last cull when I had rehomed all of the bought decs. Whilst it might have been the wrong time of year, I steamed ahead and offered them on a free site unapologetically acknowledging my imperfect timing....they were snapped up. Unfortunately I was not the only one that day operating unseasonably.....

David just shrugged his shoulders as I bounded in with my new treasure...it even has a battery operated candle in it. Am now avoiding all the local free sites (until the next time and there will doubtless be a next time) as they and I are a lethal combination👻

I remain, as ever, unrepentant.

Arilx