Christmas Day 1914

Valentine's Day 2014: The Little Land of Me

 

I came across Naomi Johnson, creator of these gorgeous little artworks at her workplace last year. She is as lovely as her creations.  If only you saw her range of Christmas decorations, each one handmade to Naomi's meticulous standards. Guess the price of the red felt heart above; £3.00.

 

And this perky little key ring; £1.00.  Yes really, a pound! I've ordered several for little stocking fillers ready for next Christmas.

But the green wreath above is my favourite decorative item this spring, and is going to feature heavily in my Easter decorations in the weeks to come. 9cm diameter an absolute steal at £2.00.  Two pounds!

 

http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheLittleLandOfMe?ref=l2-shopheader-name

 

If we are to reflate our economy, we must support young, skilled British designers like Naomi.  For as William Morris so perfectly stated; "If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody... Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

Sheffield Botanical Gardens; What Is This Plant?

 

Another trip over to the Sheffield Botanical Gardens this afternoon, after an arduous hour in John Lewis replacing half a dozen assorted pieces of Robert Welch cutlery that appear to have gone walkabout since the start of the year. It wasn't arduous at all. Quite the opposite, actually. John Lewis was pretty much deserted, so much so that I wandered up the escalators and bought some lovely little White Stuff woollies and an Alice Temperley dress. But back to the Botanical Gardens, beautifully stripped back by winter and experienced staff supported by tremendously knowledgeable volunteer gardeners...

Now, my charming, witty and erudite readers, I have a little task for you all. Hop in the car and belt up the M1 to Sheffield then career off at J31 along the A57; jump left onto the A61 and stay on it until you get to the big roundabout St Mary's Gate / Waitrose; take the first left onto the A625 Ecclesall Road, and stay on it until you come to the roundabout where you need to go right up the hill onto the B6069 Brocco Bank.  Follow the road up past the student uni flats on the left hand side and swing right as the road becomes Clarkehouse Road.  Near the pedestrian crossing you'll see free parking on both sides of the road.  Park up and stroll across to the Botanical Gardens. Free admission.

 

Walk downhill towards the fountain. Standing with your back to the fountain, sparkling droplets in the bright winter sunshine, walk up towards the glasshouses between the two large herbaceous borders.  About halfway up on the right hand side you'll see a gap in the hedge backing the border, where the following plant grows.  It's about 5' or 6' tall, woody and still with some crimson coloured racemes.  Those racemes would put you in mind of a Corylopsis Pauciflora.

At the end of last year I decided that I really ought to get my photos sorted out into some sort of meaningful order, rather than the strip-dumps of, "2013 summer?" "Sheffield 2013?" Some don't even have that measure of effort. Anyway, suffice to say I've dated, filed and shifted hundreds of photos from last year, and now I can't find a thing. Somewhere I have a picture of the fountain at the Sheffield Botanical Gardens; the one above's in Dublin.

Incidentally, the pictures above of the as-yet-unknown plant (which is just a thinly veiled plea to Helen Yemm to name it), which you'll see EVERYWHERE in Sheffield, were taken sometime in the Autumn.

New Year's Eve 2012

Christmas Eve 2012 and a Miracle at Mass

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/track.html

NORAD tracks Santa again.

How To Propagate Mistletoe: Part 2

As we have already discussed, mistletoe is so easy to propagate we can safely leave it to the birds.  Or, armed with Marigolds, we can squish the berries into youngish branches of apple trees and hawthorn hedges.  And wait until next year to see if the seeds have sprouted.

Christmas Day

Helena & Najm

"Like me, you were late coming.  The shepherds were here long before; even the cattle.  They had joined the chorus of angels before you were on your way.  For you the primordial discipline of the heavens was relaxed and a new defiant light blazed amid the disconcerted stars.

          How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating, where the shepherds had run barefoot!  How odd you looked on the road, attended by what outlandish liveries, laden with such preposterous gifts!

          You came at length to the final stage of your pilgrimage and the great star stood still above you.  What did you do? You stopped to call on King Herod. Deadly exchange of compliments in which began that unended war of mobs and magistrates against the innocent!

          Yet you came, and were not turned away.  You too found room before the manger.  Your gifts were not needed, but they were accepted and put carefully away, for they were brought with love.  In that new order of charity that had just come to life, there was room for you, too.  You were not lower in the eyes of the holy family than the ox or the ass.

          You are my especial patrons, and patrons of all late-comers, of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation, of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt, of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.

          For His sake who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for the learned, the oblique, the delicate.  Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom."

From Evelyn Waugh's Helena, a prayer made by the Empress to the Three Wise Men before finding the Holy Cross

How To Propagate Mistletoe

I've gone down a size in jeans.  I'm telling you this only because I've just had to go and change into my M&S 15£ black exercise trackies as sitting here catching up with my favourite blogs was edging over into the pervy side of painful.  I rather like wearing a snug pair of jeans as Christmas approaches; keeps my hands off the snacky, nibbly loveliness that's starting to appear when eating out.  "I just thought I'd try a few recipes before the big day, you don't mind do you?" is starting to become a regular feature of midweek suppers and weekend lunches with friends.  And mostly it is a gastronomic trial run.  A couple of wretches will try to pull off their usual one-up-manship nonsense, but we'll give them short shrift... will they never learn?

Some time in late winter 2009 (January or February 2009) I scrubbed the mistletoe into the branches of a couple of my least favourite apple trees.  There is a tremendous lot of nonsense written about propagating mistletoe, none of which your garden birds have bothered to read and if a bird-sized brain can do this, so can we.

Essentially you must try and buy English mistletoe, but don't worry if your provider can't tell you where it was grown; in all likelihood it will be French and just as good.  It's just always lovely to try and have a go propagating British natives.

Take your mistletoe berries (which will be a bit withered and dead-looking by February) and push the black seeds inside the white berries into the bark of apple trees in your garden.  Hawthorns are also good host trees.  Try and pick a youngish tree, as the bark tends to be a bit thinner and thus easier for the seeds to penetrate.  Then just leave them alone and forget about them.  With any luck, a year later you'll have a few tiny leaves just like the ones below.

These pictures were taken in January 2011.  I'll take some more this weekend and add them to this post.

I loathe that Hebe.  I don't know why I keep it.

On Reading Into The Year Ahead

I don't make New Year's resolutions.  Complete waste of time.  I'm a Virgo; I make lists instead.  After parking up the parental taxi on Friday night I hopped into bed with a pile of books and luxuriated in the prospect of reading my way through the year ahead.  I've a precious selection of fiction, but most of the books in my house are reference and textbooks including a good selection of horticultural pornography. 

The best horti-porn combines few colour pictures with endless, sparklingly fabulous text.  Anything by Monty Don ought to be sold from the top shelf at Waterstone's.  Helen Yemm is so specialized her agent daren't peddle her via bookshop signings; her fans are considered too dangerous for open gatherings.  We include amongst our numbers parents of undergraduates, after all.

  

Listen to this example from Anna Pavord's Plant Partners;

"No garden can have too many tulips.  It is one of the few infallible rules in gardening... Tulips are natural companions for wallflowers, and although wallflowers are often badly used, they are never hackneyed. Their rich tawny colours consort well with both tulips and daffodils and the smell, when a warmish shaft of sun tickles their scent glands, is a glorious antidote to the sloth brought on by winter hibernation.  A late spring garden should be swooning with more scents than a seraglio and one sniff of a wallflower can open up a whole Pandora's box of emotions: rows, reconciliations, a particular meal, a birthday party.  A garden without smells would be a hamstrung thing." 

I classify all my cookbooks as reference books too.  I've got most of Elizabeth David; Jane Grigson; Sophie Grigson's Vegetables; lots of Jamie; ALL of Delia; some Rick Stein; a few bits of Claudia Roden and Jill Norman (of course); Margaret Costa's Four Seasons; Hugh Feathery-Walking-Stick's Meat;  a bit of Bill Granger; a couple of Tessa Kiros (from which I have never cooked just looked at in a daze); and some early Nigel Slater.  I used to love reading and cooking from his early stuff, then bought his Kitchen Diaries.  I read with pleasure every entry until I came to "Boxing Day" and his mealy mouthed description of ridding himself of yet another jar of someone's pickled harvest.  Oh really?  The irony of this statement is clearly lost on its author, and I have disliked him ever since.  Managed to catch Toast over the holidays?  We watched it screaming with laughter at the hackneyed dialogue and thoroughly repellent characterisation of women.  His attempts at gardening in his latest TV series are almost as funny.

Some authors are real authors, whose writing casts a spell upon their readers as deliciously perfect as the sight of Jeremy Clarkson in a burka.  They cast their spell upon first reading, then decades later you fall in love all over again.  At some point this autumn/early winter, I read a review of Nevil Shute, and  Requiem for a Wren came to mind.  I read it on my sister's recommendation when I was 14.  As she passed it to me I remember her saying how she wanted so much to suspend everything she knew of the tale as she read it, and that the ending came as a shock. 

And on Friday night I settled down to read Requiem for a Wren all over again.  I spent most of this afternoon stretched out on the sofa in a warm and quiet house reading and reading and reading.  And the ending still came as a shock.  After closing the book I lay still, thinking and mourning for some time.  Here I am, reading into the year ahead.

A German Sang Of Peace From No Man's Land

"1915 on Christmas Day, on the Western Front the guns all died away, and lying in the mud on bags of sand, we heard a German sing from no man's land.
"He had a tenor voice so pure and true, the words were strange but every note we knew, soaring o'er the living dead and damned, a German sang of peace from no mans' land."

Remember this?

Something perfect to think about and to be thankful for as across the UK as our schools break up for Christmas, our undergrads return home from universities and please God, NATO, Commonwealth and our forces' peacekeepers work to make our world that little bit safer.

Happy Birthday

Although any parent who takes their children shopping, (even to Tiffany's on Fifth Avenue) without their mittens needs a good slapping.

Holidays Are Coming, Holidays Are Coming

m.b.e.d. Turn on the telly now!
mum: I know, I'm watching it now!

And within nanoseconds, Beloved Firstborn also rang; "It's on the telly!  Oh man, we have to start our Christmas shopping now."

Unbelievable But True Nonetheless

British people love to tell each other that the warm summery weather we are currently experiencing is an Indian Summer.   It isn't really; it's often like this in early autumn, but we do so love our colonial past, and like to wheel it out for a flaunting whenever the opportunity arises, especially when we are eating curry.

The reason I'm telling you this is to ease my charming, witty and urbane readers into the following startling disclosure;  I've finished potting up all the spring bulbs.  Yes.  I popped the hyacinths into pretty bowls and blue and white, lidless Victorian tureens in September.  The fragrant crokes went into washed food tins from Cora and the scented Narcissi went into smallish terracotta pots from B&Q this morning.  I've planted everything into gritty sand, and topped off the bigger bulbs with a fine scattering of white gravel chippings.  No more compost-ridden window ledges for me.

It's been a delight, standing at the long garden table potting up my bulbs under the  autumn sunshine, cup of tea to hand.  Even more delightful after I took the loppers to the blasted bay tree that overhangs the table on the top terrace.  I've lifted the crown by perhaps 4' and in doing so have increased the direct sunlight falling onto the perennials in this part of the border.  This will enable me to plant another rose (from David Austin) and drop a miniature lavender into the border's front, and increase the amount of spring bulbs here, too.

The bay branches are going into the outhouses to store and dry out a bit.  Then I'll strip off the leaves and thread them onto garden twine together with dried and scented oranges, pine cones and other wintry treats.  I'm planning to drape this along the banisters at the top of the stairs, and down into the hall around the handrails.  Should look and smell delicious.  Alternatively, I could chuck the bay branches onto the bonfire, where they'd ignite like a mad thing.

Delia Smith's Spiced Plum or Damson Chutney

Halve and stone 3lb Warwickshire Drooper plums, damsons, or a mixture of your orchard drupes. Core and finely chop 1lb cooking apples, peel and finely chop 3 large onions, and drop into your preserving pan.

Crush 3 fat cloves of garlic, 2 heaped teaspoons ground ginger, 1lb raisins, 1lb soft brown sugar, 1lb demerara and add to the preserving pan together with 2 pints malt vinegar.

Next add 2 tablespoons salt, 2 small cinnamon sticks (I don't use sticks, as I can't be bothered to fish them out at the end, so just replace with 2 heaped teaspoons ground cinnamon), 1oz whole allspice berries and a dessertspoon of whole cloves. Delia advises wrapping the whole spices into a little square of muslin, but you too can just crush the whole spices in your mortar and pestle and throw into the pan.

Bring everything to the boil, lower heat to a simmer and cook gently for about 2-3 hours until all the vinegar has disappeared, the chutney has thickened and your house smells wonderful. Pour into sterilised jars in the usual way, then leave on your work surface for a few days, admiring your labour. Don't even try to eat until at least Christmas / three months - better the following year.

Thanks Delia.

On What It Is To Be British: Snow, Free Beer And A Siege Mentality

It began to snow across the UK the week before Christmas. The country held its collective breath, willing it to "stick" so we could all have a white Christmas. Global warming put paid to routine white Christmases years ago, so you can imagine how everyone hoped this would be the Christmas we really got snow. And we did. It made the most perfect backdrop to Christmas Eve and all the excitement of opening crates of clementines, handing round mulled wine and hot mince pies in the garden with fireworks as we began the traditional Christmas lock-in. The tradition in our family is that no-one comes in or out until Boxing Day; emergency workers excepted, of course. And our farming neighbours on Christmas morning for a glass of cheer and something nibbly and delicious. But apart from that, the lock-in holds.

The snow melted briefly in our part of sunny Derbyshire, I think around last Monday or Tuesday. Then more fireworks and flutes of Bellinis helped bring in the New Year, and on New Year's Day we awoke to blankets of snow. Big fat snowflakes just kept falling, making everyone so happy and smiley as light bounced through every window and sparkled. Some parts of Britain were truly blanketed, with huge snow drifts making headlines;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/dec/04/christmas-pubs-festive-events

"Elsewhere wintry conditions continued to catch people out unawares. New Year's revellers at England's highest pub were continuing their celebrations after getting stuck in a three-day lock-in. Drifting snow, which was 7ft deep in some places, meant that party-goers at the Tan Hill Inn on the Yorkshire Dales had been unable to leave. http://www.tanhillinn.co.uk/ Members of Leeds University Cross Country Club, who had organised their New Year's Eve party at the pub, said they had been making the best of their situation thanks to free beer and a siege mentality."

Martin Evans

Daily Telegraph

Feast Of The Holy Family 2009

"The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." Revelations 12 v2

The Tree of Life, at the National Arboretum, was created in 1969 by the Housewives Fellowship, Blue Bell Hill, St Alban's, Rochester.

St Stephen's Day 2009

"There was a time when, a week or so before Christmas, I used to set about making gigantic game and pork terrines and chicken liver patés, huge supplies of vegetable soups, jar after jar of Cumberland sauce, bowl upon bowl of fruit salad...

"What one comes to realise after years of organising Christmas food supplies is that, the celebration meal apart, there are always members of the family who tend to make their meal off snacks and bits and pieces. They just don't want to sit down to formal meals, and while a varied supply of ready-cooked food is necessary to supplement the cold turkey or goose, patés and terrines are perhaps too rich and fat, and vegetable soups too thick and filling."

Elizabeth David's Christmas

Christmas Day 2009

Pope Bendict XVI

Tommie Smith

Peter Norman

John Carlos

You

Lombard Street To A China Orange: Christmas Eve 2009

"If I had my way - and I shan't - my Christmas Day eating and drinking would consist of an omelette and cold ham and a nice bottle of wine at lunchtime, and a smoked salmon sandwich with a glass of champagne on a tray in bed in the evening. This lovely selfish anti-gorging, un-Christmas dream of hospitality, either given or taken, must be shared by thousands of women who know it's all Lombard Street to a China orange that they'll spend both Christmas Eve and Christmas morning peeling, chopping, mixing, boiling, roasting, steaming."

Elizabeth David's Christmas

Ed Jill Norman

Yes please Santa.