Books - His 'n' Hers

"Do you know where my Collected Hughes is? I can't see it on the shelf."

It's poetry evening next Thursday and the subject is an easy one: 'Animals'. Ted Hughes has written a series of poems on animals. Beloved is looking for 'his' Hughes.

That he can't find it, means nothing.  He can never find anything without asking me for directions first.

And no, I am not currently borrowing 'his' Hughes.

In close to twenty-five years of marriage the only thing we haven't married are the books. We each still have our own bookshelves, in separate rooms.

When we got married, both for the second time, we had supplies of every kind of ordinary household utensil, from pots and pans to linen, porcelain, silverware and glassware. We kept the best and/or most useful of everything and amalgamated it. There were many items resulting from the break-up of previous households neither of us wanted to keep. "After all", we said, "it doesn't do to carry the past into a fresh start".

Everything surplus to requirements went to charity shops or the local dump. We had a wonderful few years scouring antique dealers for large and small pieces of furniture, rugs, pictures, china, all to become part of our 'present and future'.  The future is with us, the results of our collecting frenzy all too visible.  Charity shops are once again the beneficiaries.

Books have remained strangely immune from the 'togetherness' bug. We have both continued to buy books, very few of which have been given away. Sometimes we look at the shelves and one of us will suggest that the other could surely very well do without their collection of Lilliput or Gibbons' Decline and Fall. (If you don't know what they are, don't worry, you haven't missed a lot).

"Absolutely not", is the heated reply. "I have kept them this long, they haven't bothered you before, why do you want me to shed them now?" We guard out treasures jealously.

We both sigh: "Well, perhaps not just yet, but if you feel that you really don't need the entire series on 'The Celts in Britain' any more  . . . . . . . .". That particular edition has long been superseded by a new one based on  modern research but who is to say that modern research is necessarily more accurate.

Whichever one of us owns it, doesn't need to be told that their edition is no longer fit for purpose.  Neither of us says it, we are friends, after all; not only that, but we both suffer from the same disease: we both hoard books.

As for Collected Hughes? It's exactly where it should be,  on the poetry shelves under 'H'.  I put it back there after I'd borrowed it.

A Summer's Day in the Garden - Open Doors

WILLOWs MAGPIE No. 71

The Endeavour has been great,

for now the task is done;

To sit back and let others judge

is harder than the the work itself.

No critical remark will go unheard.

The expert laying down the rules

remains polite.

Certain of her superior taste and knowledge

she graciously allows a word of praise

to cross her lips.

These ladies stand and stare.

Lost in admiration? 

A flash of inspiration?

The day is hot,

the Fernery promises welcome shade.

Here we can stop and study the programme at leisure.

"Where to next?"

The path leads to the fruit cage.

Why bother to enclose the fruit 

when birds have long ago slipped through the net 

and gorged themselves on juicy berries. 

A small vegetable garden

bristles with sticks.

The pigeons' favourite food 

are the tender green shoots of healthy lettuces.

Healthy for whom?

 It's time to go.

"Thank You and Goodbye,

your garden's lovely, 

you have a gorgeous spot here".

Midsummer Miscellany - It's Cancer's Turn

Time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labour.

Tomorrow we'll find out what the garden visitors have to say.

I'd still like some colour in this view from the kitchen window,

but this is as good as I can make it - it'll have to do. 

There was little time to cook

This is what simple ham and egg can be made to look like.

Just a touch gastro-pubby but it tasted good.

Ludlow's Dinham Bridge over the Teme 

and the castle on the hill above looked good too yesterday.

There was just enough time for a quick trip to do the weekend shop in the market.

And if you happen to be born under the sign of cancer, this is what the  Kalendar of Shepheardes, 1604, has to say about it:

The man born under Cancer shall be avaricious. He shall love women, be merry, humble, good, wise and well-renowned; but he shall have damage by envy, and strife and discord among his neighbours. He shall have often great fear on the water; he shall find hidden money, and labour sore for his wife. At thirty-three years he shall pass the sea and shall live seventy years after nature.

The woman shall be furious, incontinent, soon angry and soon pleased. She shall be humble, serviceable, wise, joyous, but shall suffer many perils by water; if any person do her a service, she shall recompense them well. She shall be labouring until thirty years, and then have rest. She ought to be married at fourteen years, and shall have many sons. She shall live seventy years.

As well the man as the woman shall have good fortune, and victory over their enemies.

The more of these things I read the more I realise that even in the 17th century the wise man covered his bases.

See you on Tuesday, friends.

Summer Solstice Walk

Last night it rained heavily for several hours;  this morning drizzle took over, the sort that gets you steadily soaked in a kind of pernicious, spiteful, underhand way. I should be grateful, should not complain. I am, truly I am, farmers and gardens need the rain; but . . . .  OK, so I am complaining, want to make something of it?

When the rain stopped after lunch I asked Benno what he wanted me to do. "Garden or walkies?" He quite firmly opted for a walk, so I really had no choice in the matter.

We left by the side gate which leads from the courtyard to the castle moat, This exit will soon become impassable. The rambling rose over the trellis and gate and a clematis over the path stop us using this gate for weeks and weeks between the end of June and the end of September. Rose tendrils get tangled in hair and clothing and the clematis blocks the path most effectively, daring you to trample it underfoot. Plants can be so uppity.

The courtyard is walled on two sides, there's a hedge behind flower beds on the other and the house forms the fourth side of the square. The ground slopes slightly towards the house which means that the sort of rain we had last night provides us with  a refreshing paddle right outside the front door. Luckily, there's a step to the front door and the paths leading round the house allow the water to run off in merrily tinkling rivulets.

 I love it that so many of you envy me my castle, so here's another picture of it, of the keep this time. That beautifully manicured bit of lawn you can see inside the fence is Valley's End's bowling green. There can't be many bowling greens in the country which have a prettier location.

We didn't go very far today, just climbed the hill to the  North of Valley's End, via a field path crossroads where the gallows once stood, aptly named Gallows Corner; then  over the Modems and back down to the sheep pasture. 

Sheep are stupid creatures and only appealing when newborn and gambolling in the fields. (Our possibly roasted, with garlic and rosemary). This girl had got out and was blocking our path, running dementedly back and forth, eyeing Benno suspiciously. He pays the creatures no attention at all, he is far too busy sniffing out evidence of  friends who may have passed this way and left news of  great importance, to judge by his urgency. Dogs read verges and grassy tussocks like we read newspapers, have you noticed?

Two thoughts to leave you with:

With Midsummer Eve so close, be sure to keep your house clean. 
Apparently, the Fairies preferred it that way, according to John Aubrey's  Remains of Gentilism 1688.
Damn, I wish I'd known that, I'd have stayed home and done some cleaning.

And, if the cuckoo is heard on June 21st, it will be a wet summer.
Chance would be a fine thing, I haven't heard a cuckoo for several years.

In the Land of the One-Eyed

the one-and-a-half-eyed is Queen.

WILLOW's MAGPIE No. 70

A ruff, a ruff,

my Queen's realm for the other half!

(Perhaps half a ruff is all you get for $1.99)

Not only but also . . . . . .

There's a saying : 'Never explain, never apologise':

however, 

as I am not Royalty, I will do both.

Not only has the past week been 

"the birthday week", 

when I pay more attention than usual to

togetherness,

it has also been my last ditch attempt at knocking the garden into shape

before the grand opening next weekend.

Hence my temporary absence from

the blogosphere.

I am guilty of neglecting my friends' blogs as well as my own.

Forgive me.

Problems, problems.

Firstly, the English weather, what else.

Winter left huge gaps in beds and borders, needing camouflage

in the form of smoke and mirrors,

shrouding semi-dead shrubs in annual climbers and bedding plants,

strategically placing terracotta pots and rusty metal watering cans,

as well as large lumps of rotting tree trunks, rocks and pebbles; 

the canny gardener has all these tricks up her sleeve,

just in case.

Several expeditions to expensive nurseries 

helped to deplete my gardening budget and fill a few more gaps.

Secondly,

the most essential ingredient to gardening success,

trusty gardener, 

hurt his back. seriously enough to drop out of my schemes for two weeks.

He came in one day, crooked and not his usual cheerful self at all,

just to mow the lawn.

In spite of being a selfish sort of employer, and frantic to boot,

I forbore to get cross with him, commiserated and asked

how soon he thought he might be well again.

That's gardeners for you, anything for the cause.

So, here he is again.

I am plying him with tea breaks,

kind words and consideration.

He is almost back to normal,

complete with gardener-isms;

today he suggested, that somebody should

"draw a diaphragm".

I love gardener-isms.

I love gardener even more. Today he defined the edges between the lawn and beds and borders, and  weeded all soft paths as well as between stones and slabs on the hard ones; both these jobs make an instant difference.  He staked tall herbaceous plants securely, weeded a deep border and strimmed the daffodil lawns, a long overdue job, leaving me free to do delicate hand weeding on narrower beds, which I can do kneeling. As it's Saturday he left early but he has promised to come back on Thursday. I shall continue to get out there between showers as often as I can, so I might not be around that much this week either.

All I need now is a few days of sunshine to get some colour into the borders which are still quite sad looking. Tidy, but colourless.  Wish me luck.

Birthday Presents

Birthday week chez Friko and Beloved's,
and this is the card Beloved gave me.  Inside he wrote "we get more alike as the years go on, or is that just cataracts?"  What do I do with a man like that?

Presents are usually not of great concern in our house. We give each other - and other people - books, CDs, food and drink, small items of dress like scarves etc. (never socks or other sensible clothing); I've had jewellery for special occasions, expensive meals, the odd weekend away perhaps. Nothing terribly extravagant but always given with thought.

One long ago birthday present Beloved gave me still ranks amongst my favourites: a swing, an ordinary swing made from a piece of oak with two holes in it and suspended from a beech tree by stout rope.

When I was a little girl I always wanted a swing in a cherry tree; a friend had one and I loved to eat cherries. I told Beloved and for my next birthday he took me into the garden and showed me what he had done. He said : " I can't grow you a cherry tree fast enough but will a swing in a beech tree do?"

I still have the swing, the seat is now covered in lichen and mosses, but it still works.

We had an equally wonderful present between the two of us this week. Gardener has been dragging his feet over stripping and repainting an old Singer sowing machine with a sheet of marble on the top, which we use as a table on the terrace by the kitchen, and a municipal park bench we brought back from France many years ago. Both were seriously rusty and in need of attention for some time.

I mentioned this to our good friend Jay, who paints pet portraits; "I'll do it", she said instantly, "it can be your birthday present. I love doing intricate, complicated work". The intricacy of the job was exactly the reason why gardener didn't want to do it.

during 

and after

This bench has never looked as good as this even in its glory days in a

Municipal Park in France.

Tomorrow it will go back in its place against a very old wall where the evening sun

warms the ancient stonework; our favourite place for indulging in pre-dinner drinks.

The Birth Of Venus

WILLOW's MAGPIE No. 69

Alessandro Botticelli scratched his head; his visitor, the mighty Lorenzo de Medici had left his workshop only minutes ago.  He should be feeling immensely proud that Lorenzo the Magnificent had commissioned him to paint the lovely Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci;  to be chosen by the powerful ruler of the Florentine Republic to execute this commission was a great honour indeed; it was an open secret that both Lorenzo and his younger brother Giuliano were in love with the girl and Lorenzo would want the painting to the very best that gold could buy.

The commission, however,  came with conditions, which was the reason Botticelli frowned. He was to paint her as the embodiment of Venus. Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical love or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them. So, looking at Venus, the most beautiful of goddesses, might at first raise a physical response in viewers which then lifted their minds towards the Creator. Lorenzo knew exactly what he wanted, he wanted to have his cake and eat it, so to speak.

A difficult proposition and it would not do to upset the great man.

Botticelli's apprentices threw covert glances in his direction. They had witnessed the scene with Lorenzo and were aware of the maestro's discomfiture. What would he do next? They were all ready to help him in any way they could, their love and respect for their teacher was limitless.

Botticelli was unaware of them for the moment, his creative mind churning, ideas being born and discarded one after the other; this was going to prove a difficult birth . . . . .

born  . . . . birth . . . .

yes,  there it was, the germ of an idea . . . . .

yes, he'd paint Venus being born, both innocent and as a fully formed woman, rising from the sea . . . .

stepping out of the waves? enveloped in spray? rising like a mermaid from the ocean?

Hm, maybe not, these images were rather too suggestive of earthly delights . . . . .

A shell, that was it.  Yes, a shell, she'd be carried by a shell, not moving a muscle, hands modestly held in front of her, her long tresses hiding her femininity.

He had it. That's how it would be.

"Go get me the most beautiful shells you can find on the seashore", he shouted to his apprentices, who scattered instantly, each of them wanting to be the one who found the shell the maestro would use.

Pietro came back with the best, a gorgeously frilly conch shell.

"That's the one," Botticelli cried. "Now then,  how to get Venus to arise from it? Half in, half out  . . ?"

The Day The Country Mouse Went To Town

Even a country bumpkin needs the occasional breath of mildly polluted air, the noise of many footsteps, the glare of traffic lights, and, above all, a shop or two above the level of hardware store, animal feed store and basic village grocery shop; occasionally, a girl needs to shop and that is why I kicked off my rubber boots, combed the straw from my hair, changed my muddy dog-walking jeans for a clean pair of trousers and  attached earrings to my ear lobes and with me thus prepared, we took ourselves to the delights of lovely Shrewsbury, Shropshire's county town, where centuries of history jostle for attention with a slowish pace of modern life. 

My pictures here are just of two sides of one ordinary Shrewsbury square.

 The Prince Rupert Hotel

Some of Shrewsbury's history is pretty bloody, as this tablet records; 

but that's history.

When was it ever not bloody.

It's not just the shopping though; I also enjoy good food in pleasant surroundings. The Draper's Hall, a prestigious Restaurant with Rooms has it all:  six centuries of history as well as delicious food and a civilized ambience.

By the 1440 the drapers of Shrewsbury had formed their own guild and had become prominent in the town. They had their own chapel in St. Mary's Church. The present Hall was built in 1576 to provide a meeting hall for the Drapers' Company. The Hall, although much altered over the centuries, retains original features of the Shrewsbury School of Carpentry, especially the frontage. The majority of the original Elizabethan fittings and purpose-made Jacobean furniture is still in place.

Shrewsbury still has many individual shops, spending money is easy and could be a great pleasure. Keeping your purse closed  is the hard part here. Some of the items I bought are none of your business, after all, a girl needs to replenish certain items of her wardrobe even before they are worn out.

But I can tell you that I bought a bag,  larger than the one I usually use, mainly because nowadays I need to carry a camera or two and maybe a notepad too, for the purposes of blogging. (see how seriously I take keeping you entertained and glued to my blog? And hopefully incite one or two more of you to become followers? I'm shameless, I know.)

It's a pretty ordinary bag, made of a kind of woven straw,

(I'm sure there's a name for it) with leather trim. 

It really was not expensive, when you consider that handbags have become status items.

I also splashed out on three fat volumes of poetry; they come highly recommended by a number of reviewers in various newspapers and, as it's my birthday this month, I felt like giving myself a special treat. For once they are not second-hand, I had some money left over on gift vouchers I hadn't fully cashed in on a previous occasion, so the total outlay was less frightening than it might have been.

Soon I will believe that I wasn't extravagant at all and that these books were an essential purchase.

Maybe.

Matters Horticultural

Frou frou

Peonies,

in various stages of undress

I have never really admired peonies before; they tend to flop, droop and dangle their massive blooms all over the place. My garden is very windy and peonies need staking and confining if I don't want their primadonna ways to smother their less ostentatious neighbours. Their frilly knickered glory is also short-lived and I have been rather ruthless with them up to now. But plants are like books to me, I wouldn't deliberately kill one or give it away to any other than a really good home; as peonies don't take kindly to being transplanted I  have had to tolerate them in my borders.

But in a vase they look spectacular. So that's where they will end up from now on. A worthy setting for the star of the show.

Whereas the Weigela,  covered in a mass of pink blossom,  is a welcome addition to the May/June borders, being self-sufficient, hardy and very sturdy. Above all, its scent is gorgeous, sweet and fruity. It is also perfectly happy to be pruned back after flowering and will spend the rest of the year in the shadows, lending its green leaves to the lush background so very necessary to give structure to an English country garden with its emphasis on herbaceous planting.

Bob The Flower and his assistant grow annuals, a few easily propagated herbaceous plants and one or two common shrubs and sell them at weekends in summer in a car park in the centre of Craven Arms. 

Bob started about ten years ago in a small field he rented from a local landowner. He now does a roaring trade. People mainly come for his trays of bedding annuals, hanging basket and container plants, as soon as the danger of night frost is over.  I bought a whole carbootful of annuals and container plants, all garishly coloured, to fill the many gaps left in my borders by the killing frosts of last winter.

Bob's plants are cheaper than those from expensive nurseries; he also sells vegetable seedlings. I bought French beans, beetroot, courgette and lettuce (little gem) plants from him. I really couldn't grow vegetables more effortlessly or cheaper.

Plenty of arse over elbow action going on at Bob The Flower's

When we got home this chap was waiting for lunch. We only seem to have one grey squirrel, although they normally hunt in large packs. He has been with us for years, has made his home in the owl box in the horse chestnut tree, regularly steals the bird food and uses the birds' drinking dish for a bidet. 

I am not fond of tree rats, which is all grey squirrels are, but one chap, so long as he doesn't bring his missus and expect us to subsidise a large brood of layabout dependants, well, where's the harm.

My World - My Castle

Monday, June 6th, 2011, 22.30 hrs. 

Over the garden hedge.

That's My World

True Story

WILLOW'S MAGPIE No. 68

Reg Barker was the leader of the Percussion Section at the orchestra of the Royal Opera House.  It was part of his duties as leader to study the score before a new work was performed, working out which of his section members would play which instrument, for instance, would the side drum have enough time to get to the cymbals, etc.

On call for a performance one evening shortly before rehearsals for the new opera started, he decided to use the interval to go down to the library and start on the job. He was only half way through the task when the interval bell sounded, calling the musicians back to the pit. 

Reg had a glass eye; when he heard the bell, he took it out, shuffled the papers into a pile, placed his eye on top of it and said: "here, keep an eye on it for me, and carry on, if you would. I've got to get back to work".

A Little Bottle of Pills - And A Very Difficult Subject

My friend Deborah of The Temptation Of Words wrote a post today, calling it The Ultimate Decision, which deals with a person's wish to have the final say over how  their life ends.  As always, her post is thoughtful and measured and eminently readable. She says her decision to re-publish  an earlier post was prompted by the death of Dr. Jack Kevorkian on Friday in a hospital in Michigan. I am sure that his work as an advocate of assisted suicide is well known to most.

I wonder if I might post here my own experience of the subject; before I do so, I'd like to reassure all of you, that it now lies in the past, and is no longer acute. Life is sunny and pleasant, on the whole, and although the black dog of depression occasionally bares his teeth and barks in the night, thoughts of suicide are far from my mind.

Once upon a time they were daily companions. Literally. By that I mean that it was somehow wholly reassuring that, if things became unbearable,  a way out was available: a little bottle of pills, barbiturates, which sat in a secret drawer of my night table;  they were just there, my little friends, a crutch to lean on. There was no drama involved, no great moral or religious wrestling; there was  an almost benign and quite calm acceptance of the possibility of taking control. I was not just battling depression but deeply entangled in a very unhappy, destructive relationship; the only way out appeared to be death. Although I was desperately serious about the fact that I might end my life, the physical presence of the means to do so somehow made it less urgent, less immediately imperative. In a strange way I could function normally, at least on the surface.

Then a very strange thing happened. At the office where I worked we had a library and this library was catalogued and updated by a professional librarian, a youngish woman like myself; we must have recognised something in each other;  on the days she called at the office, we took to having lunch together. We became friends, and in due course she confided that she was a manic depressive, what is now called bi-polar. Beverley had suffered greatly in the past with bouts of both mania and depression and the treatments had been horrendous.  She was absolutely certain, that she did not want  to undergo another episode of either illness or treatment.  To this end she had, like me, a little bottle of pills; like mine, just in case.

For years she and I met in the lounge of a large hotel in Victoria in London for drinks and dinner, both of us having left the company where we met long ago. We sat and talked for hours, exchanging news on many subjects, work, family, lovers, leisure, and the state of the world. We talked like any two friends, who meet occasionally for a catch-up; the only difference between us and  other friends meeting for a meal was that with us there'd always come the point when one or the other would ask : "do you still have it? ", meaning the little bottle of pills. The answer was always in the affirmative.

Eventually, we ran out of time; our friendship had served its purpose. I left London and although I returned for another year of monthly meals for old times' sake, we found our paths following different routes. Beverley remained stuck in her own groove and I wanted to move on. I am ashamed to say I rather deserted her in the end, as so often happens, our friendship fizzled out.

I don't know what became of her. Now that she is back in my mind I may ring her and find out.

The talisman in my little bottle also ran out of time in the end, the pills had long ago lost their potency.

I no longer needed them, I flushed them down the loo.

My World - The Arbor Tree - Aston-on-Clun

In the village of Aston-on-Clun in the beautiful South Shropshire Hills the very ancient custom of Tree Dressing survives to this day. Where once was the village green, opposite these cottages on the main route through the village, stands the Arbor Tree, which each year on Arbor Day, the 29th May, is dressed with flags; originally these were flags of the Commonwealth, but these days a few other flags are added.

A local land-owning family, the Marstons, reinstated the custom in the 18th century, on the occasion of  the marriage on 29th May 1786 of Mary Carter of Sibdon to John Marston of Aston-on-Clun. A large rice pudding also used to be eaten by the villagers, but this ceased in the 19th century.

Apart from acquiring things like phone lines the village has probably not changed very much since Mary Carter came here as a young bride.

The custom of tree dressing is ancient. The shrine of the Celtic goddess Bride was a tree and trees used to be dressed in her honour. When, in the fifth century, the daughter of a Celtic chief founded a church near a Bride tree at Kildare in Ireland, she became known as Brigid and was later venerated as a saint.  Tree dressing was revived in 1660 when Charles II proclaimed 29th May, the day of his Restoration, as Arbor Day to commemorate his concealment in the oak tree as Boscobel. At first, almost every village had its arbor tree.

Aston-on-Clun, referred to as Eston in the Domesday Book and so-called, because it lies east of the Clun, is today thought to be the last place in England to still have an arbor tree.

When the Marston Estate was sold in 1951, the tree, a large black poplar reputed to be over 270 years old, was given to the village. The old poplar was felled by a storm in 1995. The current tree, already a good sized one, is from a cutting taken of the old poplar in 1975.



My belated contribution to That's My World