Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate

I've just realised how long it is since I last blogged.  The whole of May has whizzed past in a frenzy of work it seems.  I have had  time to start to learn to crochet however, wanting to find a craft I could do to keep my hands busy as well as something a little more portable than painting or patchwork.

We've both put a lot of effort and energy into our garden lately when the weather has allowed.  On a pleasant sunny day, it is my sanctuary.  One of the things I loved about the garden when we bought the house was the fact that it wasn't just one long space, the people who lived here before us had put effort into adding fences and large shrubs and of course, the gate in the middle of the garden.  There is always a sense of a journey, of a secret garden beyond a gate....

 Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

J. R. R. Tolkien

I wait for you at the garden gate

Yes I will patiently wait

Among the wild flowers that bloom

So fragrant and so free

They will wait with me

With lots of room

As I watch the path

Time will pass

That leads to my garden gate

My heart knows to wait

This path that meanders on by

Sometimes it seems to touch the sky

I am not all alone you see

My garden keeps me company

As I patiently wait for you

The sky turns azure blue

It reminds me of your true eyes

Holds no secrets, holds no lies

So my anxious heart yearns

Lingering memories that burn

For my true love to come along

He'll bring me flowers and a song

He'll wander thru my garden gate

My heart knows he was worth the wait

The gate is the focus of our garden all the year round, even in the depths of winter when the snow is deep and even.

 

'Show me your garden, and I shall tell you who you are'
Alfred Austin

Time for tea

Sometimes there is nothing else for it but to have a proper pot of tea and a slice of homemade fruit cake of an afternoon.

We bought our Wood's Beryl ware tea service on our honeymoon and it usually sits on our dresser.  Sometimes however a mug of tea isn't right and you need to get out a teapot and  cups and saucers.

Using the teapot is also an excuse for using a tea cosy.  I love this tea cosy, I didn't make it sadly, its a Cath Kidston design from a few years ago.

'Never trust a man who, when left alone in a room with a tea cosy, doesn't try it on.'

Billy Connolly

I also bought some flowers at a market, which looked so beautiful on our dining room table.  I do love cottage garden flowers like delphiniums and stocks.  As I struggle with growing such flowers due to our massive slug and snail population, I try to buy them often during summer.

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the ceremony known as afternoon tea”
  Henry James

If you've read this blog often, you will know that I'm a great fan of Jerome K Jerome and his wise and witty writings.  He has this to say about tea;

'“After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!”
  Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

The language of flowers

There are lots of books that tell us about the meaning of flowers.  The Victorians were fascinated by the subject and hundreds of books were published about it.  A white rose means purity and innocence and a red rose means love.  The new tulips which now grow in our garden mean 'declaration of love' and our alliums mean 'prosperity'.

Even Shakespeare's plays were used, rue was said to indicate regret - this is from Ophelia's mad ravings in Hamlet:

 There's fennel for you, and columbines:

there's rue for you; and here's some for me:

we may call it herb-grace o' Sundays:

O you must wear your rue with a difference

Rosemary is said to symbolise remembrance, the tradition of this is probably far older than Shakespeare's time  'There's rosemary, that's for remembrance.'  

We are lucky in England in that many of the flowers that grow wild have wonderful names that describe their traditions and meaning.  My favourite of these if Forget-Me-Not, a dainty and beautiful flower that we grow here at Hazel Cottage.  This year we even have some growing wild in our lawn!

So many flowers are named after Mary, the mother of Jesus.  The Madonna Lily of course, but there are scores of flowers and shrubs named in her honour, usually starting with 'Our Lady'.  Lady's Mantle still bears her name, but in medieval times clematis was the Virgin’s Bower and lavender was Our Lady’s Drying Plant.  In the fourteenth century the poet Dante called Mary "the Rose, in which the divine Word became flesh."  So of  course the rose is also her symbol.  Even the humble marigold - or Mary's Gold as it once was, is named after her.

Lilies at our local church at Easter

I tried to bring in a good number of flowers into the house for Easter.  This year I was blessed with a larger number of flowers as Easter was quite late. In addition to the daffodils we bought, I added forget-me-nots, grape hyacinth, pansies, chive flowers and flowering currants.

 

If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. ~Terri Guillemets

Their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers

'Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.'  Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

We sat in the garden on a warm, bright Sunday afternoon eating home made rock cakes and watching the bees.  Suddenly spring is here and everything is blooming.  My spring garden is filled with bluebells, comfrey, tulips, hyacinths and primroses.  Even the borage has started to flower.  The whole garden was buzzing with bees, wasps and hoverflies of all kinds. 

 

I'm not an expert in bees, but we did see several different types - some bumble bees and some more shaped like honey bees.  Some were very dark and others were almost ginger or yellow.

They particularly love the comfrey flowers and spend most of the spring dancing around them.

I must state that I didn't take these wonderful photos - they are the work of Mr C, who is brilliant with things like this.    I did however make the rock cakes!

My sister and brother in law keep bees and were selling their honey at a local market this weekend.  These wonderful little creatures always feel rather miraculous and magical to me.

How doth the little busy bee 

Improve each shining hour, 

And gather honey all the day 

From every opening flower.

Isaac Watts

A wet weekend in Devon

We are just back from a rather soggy weekend in Devon seeing the family.  I don't think the sun came out at all but nature carries on regardless and spring is indeed springing everywhere.  Every hedgerow was an intense green and resplendant with primroses and these lovely white flowers - does anyone know what these are?  They look a bit like snowdrops but are obviously too late in the year for those.

There is something special about primroses.  So gentle and simple and just so much part of our countryside. AE Housmann mentioned the primrose in his poem to the Lenten Lily

'Tis spring; come out to ramble

The hilly brakes around,

For under thorn and bramble

About the hollow ground

The primroses are found.

  This poem was rather sweet, meant to be a children's song:

Ring-ting! I wish I were a primrose,
A bright yellow primrose blowing in the spring!
The stooping boughs above me,
The wandering bee to love me,
The fern and moss to creep across,
 And the elm-tree for our king!
Wm. Allingham—Wishing. A Child’s Song.

If it wasn't for the fog you would be able to see that the farmland actually stretches further than the veg patch.  The veg patch has been dug over ready for planting, some cabbages are just in (out of view).

Some newly purchased sheep mowing the front lawn.  You can see the grass they've been eating on the left, and the lush new grass they have just been moved onto...

I believe the breed is a Dorset sheep.  They were very woolley, even having woolly legs!

We wondered whether this was the home of some rabbits or something else?

A hedgerow always seems to remind me of a Pre-Raphaelite painting and it always makes me wish I could paint this scene in detail.

Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw

Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote a rather long elegy called In Memoriam in 1849.  It is a poem written over seventeen years about his grief at losing a friend and is long meditation on God and the reason for human existence and even TS Eliot called it unapproachable.  In spite of the fact that few people manage to read all 100 plus stanzas, it has been influential in giving us two well know phrases.  The first is

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all

The second is the well known phrase 'Nature, red in tooth and claw' which was meant to describe mankind, though is most often used when humans are rather shocked at how bloody and violent nature can be.  This phrase has been in my mind since we had a visitor to the back garden yesterday.

After a moment of stunned shock at seeing what looked like a bird of prey near to our back door, we took a few pictures of what we've decided is a young sparrowhawk.  He seemed to be a little confused and kept on calling for what we assumed was his mother.  He otherwise just sat on the fence and preened himself for a few minutes until we heard another bird calling and he flew off.  

I half expected to see most of our blue tits and sparrows in small pieces on the lawn, and whilst excited to see this wonderful bird, suddenly concerned about the small birds we love to watch.  But this is a natural way of things, hawks have always hunted small birds, as nature is red in tooth and claw.   On the walk home last night this thought was confirmed when I saw a charming scene of a dead rat in the park, which had been somewhat torn from limb from limb, probably by one of the crows in the area.

In spite of the all this bloodshed, this morning we had a rare sighting of a jay in the garden which was wonderful.  The year is moving on, Mr C is starting to grow his veg seeds in sunny windowsills, the birds are nesting and singing loudly, the days are lengthening and the word is slowly turning green again.

"March is a month of considerable frustration - it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away."
  Thalassa Cruso  

The first day of Spring?

Today is officially the first day of Spring and of course, it is colder and duller than the last week or so.  It is almost as if Spring doesn't want to be pinned down and told when to start!  Everything is starting to bloom and bud in the garden though.  I took a little wander through the garden and took some pictures of the spring that is starting...

 

Everything is unfurling and slowly turning green.  I love this time of year, there seem to be endless possibilities and it all looks so very new.

Flowering currant

Comfrey

Even the roses are starting to bud

We are just back from visiting friends in Norfolk and spent some lovely days on the River Yare and looking at Norwich.  It felt that there were churches every few feet - there are still over 30 medieval churches in the city, most of which have other uses now, but in the early medieval days there were 57 churches just within the city walls!

The River Yare

We also visited the Castle and Cathedral.  The Castle was mostly just the main keep, it once spread across a far larger area, although where it could have fitted amongst all the churches, I don't know. 

 

 

Norwich Cathedral is a rather elegant Romanesque design, the cloisters were my favourite part.  I wonder if we can build some cloisters at Hazel Cottage?!

We ran out of time to visit all the things we wanted to, so we will just have to return one day.  I quite like the idea of visiting all of the 30 odd churches in the one trip, but we will have to see.  There are other adventures and holidays to plan before then.  It has been a long time since we've been to Devon due to weather and busyness, and when I haven't been there for a while amongst the leafy lanes and wild garlic I feel slightly bereft.

The March wind roars
Like a lion in the sky,
And makes us shiver
As he passes by.
When winds are soft,
And the days are warm and clear,
Just like a gentle lamb,
Then spring is here.

Anon