Dear Little Kate

I couldn't move on from "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" without mentioning dear little Kate Millet.

Kate Millet by
Sir Laurence Alma Tadema 

Kate was the original model for the painting. She was five years old and the only child available when JSS began the work in a frenzy of creativity in 1885. Some have suggested, due to her tender years, she was unable to pose for the length of time required. I doubt it. The whole point of the painting was the desire of  JSS to capture the contrast of twighlight and lantern light. He worked no more than twenty minutes on the painting each day and sometimes as little as two minutes. Kate was living in a colony for American artists in the village of Broadway in the English Cotswolds. Henry James said of it "There is portraiture in the air..... Everything is a subject or effect...." I think little Miss Kate would have had a very good idea of what was expected.

Never the less along came Polly and Dolly Barnard

Polly Barnard by JSS

At 7 and 11 yrs of age they took instruction well and had the features JSS had imagined for the work. In addition the work had always been of two children. Poor Kate had her feelings well and truly hurt.

The story is excellently told in the fictionalised account by the award winning writer Hugh Brewster in his book "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose; the Story of A Painting"  Although a work of fiction it is based on letters and memoirs of Kate and others at the colony.

It is recommended as an introduction to art appreciation for children aged 9-12 yrs but I think it is also the story of a garden. 

Under The Tree

My Christmas wish list is so predictable, Santa and his representatives have no trouble finding the right gifts. Here is a sampling of what lay under the tree for me this year.

  

Carolyn begins, "it only takes five years to become self sufficient in fruits and vegetables year round".  Immensely reassuring for someone like me who is way past the first flush of youth.  Her garden is in Victoria, British Columbia, an environment conducive to growing, however, she started on 15 feet of clay fill which would be a challenge anywhere.  I happen to now live in similar growing conditions , minus the clay t.g., so I was keen to see what could be achieved. 

I've only read the January chapter so far but things bode well. This chapter is all about soil, everything you could want to know and then some. Flipping through February I can see we get into design, tools and building stuff. Perhaps to encourage the reader there is also a to die for recipe for Mildred's Norwegian Fruitcake. If I ever meet Mildred I am going to kiss her. Any fresh fruit can be thrown in, rhubarb chunks with orange peel is one glorious combination and cherries, apples, blackberries, pear slices, raspberries, strawberries are also on the list.

This book is Carolyn Herriot's response to the Making Sure Your Neighbour is Fed  definition of food security. "I decided to put everything I knew into this book, so that others can work toward achieving greater food self sufficiency without learning the hard way"  Smart lady.

On the back the blurb claims "from a quarter acre you can harvest: 1,400 eggs, 50 lbs of wheat, 60 lbs of fruit, 2000 lbs of vegetables, 280 lbs of pork and 75 lbs of nuts." Will this book convince me? Right now I'm thinking the claim is on the ambitious side. I wish this was a really, really, monstrously famous book because then I could write a fabulous and money making blog about following it's principles in the style of those blogs that live according to Oprah for a year or cook every recipe from Julia Child.

The book is a compilation of advice and information from previous books published by Storey Publishing. "Storey’s books teach skills and knowledge, encouraging readers to pursue their interests and to live more sustainable, self-sufficient lives". Just reading their publication list can put me in a cheerful mood.

So far, I'm pleased with the arrangement of information and artwork. I'm a visual learner so books that are pleasing to the eye have an advantage. I'm only a few pages in and again we start with planning. Whatever is ahead, I'm loving the diagrams for planting one tenth of an acre, one quarter of an acre and half an acre. It would seem Mr and Mrs Homesteader and all the little Homesteaders are living in a very tiny house if they have the space to plant all those crops. Hello, I've just looked at another page and now they say I can have a 100 lbs of honey too. I have to read on, this book will be coming to bed with me tonight.

Finally,

This was from M, who along with the child with Christmas in his heart, gave us a warm and wonderful Christmas. Darling girl is a fabulous cook from a family of fabulous cooks, I admit to feeling intimidated. Fortunately she has a kind heart and chose a book within my limited skill range. I picked this book up before breakfast today and was still reading it at lunch time. It is fantastic. It is rare I get excited about recipes but I'm excited about these. It tells me everything I need to know from pantry supplies, equipment, prep techniques, and how to safely puree without a kitchen splattering episode. Three basic stock recipes follow. The recipes are arranged by season and availability of ingredients. Don't these sound wonderful:  Squash, Pear and Parsnip with Ginger; Curried Sweet Potato, Carrot and Lentil; My Big Fat Italian Wedding? I'm particularly pleased to have received this book as our garden will be dominated by root vegetables next year and I can enjoy using the produce in these soups.

The Soup Sisters  is a non profit organisation founded by Sharon Hapton. Nurturing women join with chefs to provide soup to women's shelters and youth in need. It is an idea simple in execution and brilliant in concept. Please go to their website. I think you will be impressed.

Also thanks to M's Mom whose Christmas Day plan is the one I will be using from now on. Do the traditional dinner on Christmas Eve. Spend Christmas Day grazing left overs, watching movies, playing games and stay in your PJs all day. Loved it.

Is A Year Long Enough?

At the end of the year we review the past growing season and plan for the next. The year becomes our test period before we review again. Our bodies are attuned to follow the seasons. Writers seek a framework to support the story they wish to tell. What then would come more naturally to a garden writer than the progression of the gardening year.  But is a year giving us enough? A quick search on the Internet provides me with a slew of  gardening books, how to's and memoirs, all with the word year in the title. Yes, some of them are classics or hilarious or incredibly informative but the arbitrary cut off leaves me asking, Well what happened next? Did you stick it out? Solve the annoying neighbour problem? Get more hens?

Give me the equivalent of Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr, Five Years in Revolutionary Cuba by Carroll English, Den of Lions: Memoirs of Seven Years by Terry Anderson or even Thirty Five Years of Newspaper Work by H.L. Mencken (though can't help thinking you could have come up with a snappier title H.L.)

In this frame of mind  I chose Paul Gervais' A Garden in Lucca for my entry to the Garden Book Review.

It is a twenty year memoir of transforming an abandoned garden in Tuscany into a personal paradise. Gervais embarks on some serious research, devouring books, investigating garden history and exploring significant gardens. The author has a lyrical style which is a pleasure to read for it's beauty alone.

Unfortunately I found the tone to be more than slightly pretentious at times. The use of foreign phrases and Latin names without explanation becomes tiresome. I have taken to ignoring the parts I don't understand and adopt a "Oh, Paul!" defence to examples of pomposity. Truth be told this Quaker girl finds them rather delicious.  I keep going back for phrases like these:

"There's a flood of white "Sea Foam" roses cascading off a low ledge, and there are pink and yellow honeysuckles, mauve "Marie Viaud" roses, and a sky-blue California lilac trained up on a southern, framing wall."

"In late winter, the young, bare-limbed cherries wade in deep floods of yellow and white narcissuses"

" ...a three-hundred year old Zizyphus tree, all wretched and thorny, like something a not-terribly-wicked witch would grow."

and give a wry smile at

" my salone, the nineteenth century style room I'd always thought of as quite Lucchese in style"

Twenty years gives both the writer and reader scope for reflection, a quality that attracts me to this book, despite it's flaws.

Garden at Lucca from Villa Massei website

Joy For Beginners

Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermiester is my entry for this month's garden book review hosted by Roses and Other Gardening Joys. I feel a bit cheeky submitting this one as I'm really stretching the definition of garden book.

I usually like my reading material to have a bit of depth to it but with travel ahead deliberately chose something lighter. The book is broken up into roughly six sections, one for each woman in the story. To my surprise and delight one section was about the healing power of a garden.

"What would it be like to design a garden to take care of someone?"  asks Hadley.

Hadley is a young woman frozen in grief following the death of her husband in a car accident. She retreats to a tiny house  hidden behind a neglected garden.

""...if you truly understood....that humans were made of bones and blood that broke and sprayed with the slightest provocation....in street curbs, and dangling tree limbs, bicycles and pencils-well, you would fly for the first nest in a tree, run flat out for the first burrow you saw."

"...loneliness...might not track her down the narrow bark covered path, might get lost among the unruly green, the whispered distraction of sweet white scents."

Mud Maid sculpture by Susan Hill, Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall

Eventually a child comes into the garden and then a woman in great need. When the woman is recovered she offers Hadley a gift but she must accept it before she knows what it is. The gift is a task and the task is to restore the garden.

It takes her months to begin but with the encouragement of the other women, who have also been given gifts particular to them, she begins.

The writing is lyrical, wise and sensitive. Restoring a garden is demanding. The writer slows the pace to mimic the effort allowing the reader to share the surprise and joy of each discovery. A woman has loved this garden before and what remains is passed from one to another.

A knight in shining armour wielding a magical trowel does not sweep Hadley off her feet. What does happen is much more realistic and satisfying.

For information on the creator of the Mud Maid click here 

Do You Believe In Fairies?

From Flower Fairies of the Summer by C.M. Barker

                 "If you believe in fairies, clap your hands", cried Peter Pan

Peter Pan, the play, was written in 1904 and came out in book form in 1911. In the early 20th century  the ears of the British nation seemed particularly tuned to the sound of beating fairy wings. In 1916 "The Allies Fairy Book"  was published, in an attempt to raise morale in WW1. Queen Mary, wife of George V,  sent postcards to friends and family decorated with fairy art. In 1914  their daughter, Princess Mary, had a gift book published to raise funds for the war effort; included in it were two stories about fairies. These were  illustrated by Claude Arthur Shepperson.

Princess Mary's Gift Book

These illustrations were to become famous as part of the Cottingley Fairies hoax. In 1917 two young girls claimed they had taken photographs of fairies. (In reality they had cut out pictures from the Gift Book, although they did not confess until decades later.)

                                                                              
Their claim set off a heated public debate and their cause was taken up by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame. He steadfastly believed in the supernatural and used  the photographs in his book "The Coming of Fairies" (1922)

Into this milieu came Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies. I'm sure there are many who have been inspired by her paintings. My favourite has always been the Rose Fairy.                                        

from Flower Fairies of the Summer by C.M. Barker

Originally there were seven separate books, an eighth was compiled from existing drawings, after the painter's death, to form Flower Fairies of the Wiinter. All eight are gathered together in The Complete Book of the Flower Fairies

Apart from pure enchantment I value the Flower Fairy books for their botanical accuracy; C.M. had an arrangement with the botanical gardens at Kew to send her specimens. The rhymes that accompany the illustrations manage to include a fair bit of information regarding each plant.
 
"In shady shrubby places, right early in the year,
I lift my flowers' faces-O come and find them here!
My stems are thin and straying, With leaves of glossy sheen,
The bare brown earth arraying, For they are ever-green"
                                                                    from The Song of the Periwinkle

I also discovered other names for plants, allowing me to finally match up a name with the correct flower.
"Old-Man's Beard is Wild Clematis; its flowers are called Traveller's Joy"

The fairies have a robustness that differentiates them from other depictions. They were modelled on real children from C.M.'s sister's nursery school. To me it just adds to the charm.

Wood Sorrel Fairy

Cicely had no time for the fairy debate. She firmly stated, "everything I have said about them [plants and flowers] is as true as I could make it. But I have never seen a fairy; the fairies and all about them are just pretend."

To my mind the flower fairies need to be discovered on a rainy afternoon by a child of just the right age . If you have a special little person in your life tuck a copy on a bookshelf and let serendipity take care of the rest.

Images of the Flower Fairies are taken from prints which can be purchased from the Flower Fairy website.


The Complete Book of the Flower Fairies is my recommendation for HolleyGarden's book review.  Follow the link or click on the Book Review button to the right. The review always has a wide range of interesting books submitted by a diverse and random group of garden bloggers.        

A Complicated Knot

“…she had wept on remembering that, as a prisoner there [the Tower of London], she had not even been allowed to walk in the garden”.

 Elizabeth the 1st had sought refuge in gardens all her life. Knowing this, the two most powerful men in Elizabethan England, Lord Dudley and William Cecil, set out to woo the Queen by building the most fantastic gardens ever seen. Marriage to the Queen would give Dudley the prestige and wealth he craved, while Cecil sought the Queen’s steadfast commitment to his political strategy.

                    

Queen Elizabeth 1

Trea Martyn in her book “Elizabeth in the Garden” describes the magnificent gardens and the attendant intrigue, passion, rivalry, libel and deception. Throw in an execution or two and an upstart French suitor and garden making starts to look like a perilous venture.

Lord Dudley is thought to have spent the equivalent of 15 million dollars on improvements to the castle and gardens at Kenilworth. He was all about show. The festivities for Elizabeth’s nineteen day visit in 1575 were designed to excite and entertain.

It could be considered an early form of theme park.

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester

William Cecil

In contrast, William Cecil understood Elizabeth’s need for refuge and respite. He designed the garden at Theobolds as a safe haven and balm for a weary soul. For all that it was still lavish, covering seven acres with orchards and hunting grounds beyond. He also appealed to her knowledge of plants by scouring the world for the new and unusual. 

 Trea Martyn gives a comprehensive account of each garden, the history of garden design to that point, the influence of French and Italian landscapes, describes other royal gardens of the period and provides information on the plants. All of which I found fascinating.

Enough biographical information is provided to allow one to ponder the character of the individuals and the nature of their relationships.

More difficult to follow were the political and historical events. They were not kept in chronological order which I found unnecessarily convoluted.

I finished the book wishing I could have walked in those gardens however I wouldn’t have enjoyed the fear of losing my head on a royal whim. Would I like an Elizabethan garden, not on that scale! I wouldn’t mind a knot garden, the shape outlined in lavender, hyssop and thyme, as described in the book.

Both gardens have been lost over time. Recently the one at Kenilworth has been recreated from an eye witness account.

Recreated Garden

Recreated Garden

Aviary, Kenilworth Castle

William Cecil’s handwritten description of his garden at Theobolds is still in existence at Hatfield House..

Hatfield Old Palace with Knot Garden. Childhood home of Elizabeth 1

I enjoyed this book and will refer to it when designing my new garden. If you like a linear flow of information, however, it may become a frustrating read. Purists may take exception to scenes that drift into imaginative re-creation.

Posted for the Garden Book meme hosted by Roses and Other Gardening Joys.

Heart's Desire

Hooray, I’m organized enough this month to join in the Book Review meme hosted by Roses and Other Gardening Joys.

I have my heart set on a cottage garden. With this in mind I checked out of the library “Creating a Cottage Garden in Canada” by Stephen Westcott-Gratton. Don’t let the title mislead you, virtually the same book is published under the title “Creating a Cottage Garden in North America.”

I was initially disappointed to find complete formats were not included. In response Mr. Westcott-Gratton’s book swiped me across the side of the head and said, “Smarten Up! I’m going to give you everything you need to make a cottage garden intended for your pleasure.

Two thirds of the book is a plant by plant guide. Each listing has the usual growing conditions and attributes and also, much to my delight, suggested companion plantings for a range of visual effects. The photograph of light shining through salpiglossis planted with lavender and verbena almost had me weeping with pleasure.

Subjects include climatic variation, trees, structures, paths, boundaries as in fences etc including this snippet, “I live across the street from a grade school and I’ve found old fashioned roses…. furnish a splendid garden margin that in addition to fragrance…..has the advantage of keeping the little angels off the flower beds.”

The rest of the book is packed with information including, but far from limited to, recipes, quotes, hints based on personal experience, money saving tips and biographical vignettes. The history of cottage gardens, traditional plants including pre and post ice age, and the significant introduction of plants by the Romans revealed a story line I can incorporate into the garden if I so desire.

Borrowing this book is no longer an option. I must have my own copy.

Appalachian Book Therapy

Despite the excitement of starting a new life, inevitably there are misgivings. Fortunately a friend dropped off a book that steadied my resolve.

  “Prodigal Summer” by Barbara Kingsolver follows three women over the course of one summer in Appalachia. Based on their opinions regarding the natural world, each made decisions outside the conventions of their community. It mirrored my own feelings about the arrogance of humans in thinking we are not all part of the same system.

 

www.niekamp.org

Coincidentally, a book which hid between the desk and the wall during the packing frenzy crawled out last night. “A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson is an account of the author’s attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail. Hilarious to the point of helplessness it also raises questions about man’s place in the world.

I am supposed to be moving to Appalachia?