MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 25

Welcome to a new year of musings – 2013. Some people consider the number 13 unlucky, but I’ve not had a problem with it.

It’s much too cold to sit in the bower at the moment, but already the evenings are getting a little lighter, and it’s only a few months to spring. There is a pretty Christmas hellebore in bloom, I love those white waxy flowers. And I bought a pot of lily-of-the-valley at the local garden centre a few days ago. It was in bud, and the flowers have opened in the warmth of the kitchen, perfuming the room. Glorious! Lily-of-the-valley is ‘my’ flower – it’s the flower of May, my birthday month.

The winter jasmine has been out for weeks, its cheerful yellow flowers on their curving green stems brighten the garden at this time of year. I took a photo in early December, just after we had a light snowfall. Amazingly, we have a red polyanthus in flower which we bought a couple of years ago. I don’t think it’s stopped blooming. The snowdrops are shooting, and a trough of daffodils have leaves about three inches high. Let’s hope we have a warm and sunny spring so that we can see the flowers at their best. Unfortunately we have had so much rain that the garden is very muddy – the lawn is really soggy, but at least we didn’t get flooding unlike so many people. It must be devastating to have torrents of water ruin your furnishings and possessions. As I’ve travelled around recently I’ve seen plenty of flooded fields, swollen rivers and water-logged roads.

Usually, this is a green field, not a lake!

Have you made any New Year resolutions? My only one, so far, is to keep a nature diary so that I can see just when the blue tits begin nesting in the boxes and the newts come back to pond.  I think it’s the wrong time of year to begin dieting – this cold weather requires hot soups and stews, filling casseroles and maybe warm puddings with plenty of custard. This is when my slow cooker comes into its own – just put all the ingredients into the pot about 10 am, and by 6pm a delicious stew with tender meat and rich gravy is ready. The slow cooking means that you can get away with cheaper cuts of meat, and root vegetables cook beautifully too.  When the warm weather comes, that’s when I’ll be serving plenty of salad and healthy food!

Recently I wrote an article for Best of British magazine about the history of pet keeping. It is interesting to see how fads and fashions changed through the years, from parrots and monkeys, to tropical fish and budgerigars, to today’s fad for exotic pets and reptiles. Dogs and cats are still the most popular pets in Britain, but rabbits are poised to take over – house rabbits are becoming a craze nowadays, and it’s quite easy to see why. Rabbits can easily be house-trained – they are naturally clean creatures anyway – and they can be affectionate and playful, too. They are also quiet, although our rabbit does grunt when he is happy!

I would love to have a cat, but sadly, with a main road at the back of us, a very small garden and an open-plan house, it is not feasible. So I get my ‘cat kicks’ when I visit my son, who has two, one grey, one ginger.  When  I was a toddler, I had a blue Persian cat called ‘Dinky’, a terrible misnomer as the name conjures up thoughts of tiny cat. My mother said she used to feel really silly when calling ‘Dinky, Dinky,’ and this huge fluffy cat came plodding up to her!  Later, I had a ginger cat called Jinx – I didn’t mean to buy a cat, I was meant to be buying a tortoise (but that’s another story) – and Jinx was beautiful, especially when sitting in the sun. The rich gold of his fur was almost the colour of marigolds.

Speaking of marigolds, did you know that an old name for marsh marigolds was marybuds? We used to sign a hymn at school, and the second and third verses were my favourite – they told of everything that was beautiful about spring:

Green now is on the larches;
Springtime in triumph marches,
And every day uncloses
A host of new primroses:
Then daffodils and marybuds let us in garlands bring,
For Christ has come again to greet the spring.

Skylarks, the earth forsaking,
Soar to their music-making,
And in the roof-tree's hollow

Now builds the trusting swallow:
So cries to him, so flies to him my soul on fearless wing,
For Christ has come again to greet the spring.

Don’t those words make you long for spring to come?!