Autumn Cottage Diarist

Yahrzeit for Lissie

 

 I write often in the sunroom now.

at the Georgian desk,

French windows open onto the garden.

Sometimes summer outside…

Bees… the scent of lavender floating in;

Today, through misty rain.

 

Along an unplanned sightline

my eye rests in the bottom bed -

on  the terracotta urn,

and the flourishing hydrangea

above my Darling Girl.

 

I stand there, sometimes,

in silent conversation;

still waiting…

expecting

hoping

willing

 

Any moment,

her piebald form

to lope towards me -

emerging from the bushes,

chatting back  to me,

recounting her day.

 

Asking, as always,

only for her supper

and her rug to stretch upon,

to snooze and snore in the sun.

 

Through the four seasons

 she has slept;

wrapped in her blanket,

becoming the earth.

 

But even now, she sends me flowers.

 

© Roz Cawley,

August 2012

 

 

 

 

A Wander Through 'Timber-Land'

Close-timbered house in Pembridge

A quiet weekend, digging and delving (aka 'war against the grond elder!!'), unlike the weekend before, when we made a foray into beautiful Herefordshire to attend a family wedding. I have not been to that exact part of the country for over 25 years, so it was a delightful reminder to return and find that things had changed very little.

There is a quilt hanging in Leominster Priory, showing various aspects of the local countryside, with the script 'the Land that Time Forgot' embroidered below and for once, it did not seem to be a hyperbolic description - the towns and villages are still very much as I remember towns and village from my childhood and youth in Wales - which could be summed up as 'big skies, a slower pace and a lack of monster plate glass shop windows' - know what I mean?

 

Quilt in Leominster Priory

 

Quilt key

I live in an old house, and I am used to seeing pretty cottages dotted about the countryside here in Hampshire. In Herefordshire, I was lucky enough to visit several very untouched villages and towns, noticing that old buildings are very much more evident there because of the presence of blackened  timber frames, infilled with both brick (as is Autumn Cottage) but also the earlier, 'wattle and daub' woven hazel panels, coated with a horsehair/mud/cow dung mixture.

The timber framing creates the characteristic 'black and white' houses of Herefordshire (you can actually follow a 'Black and White villages'  trail from Leominster), many of which survive from very early periods (a rule of thumb being that the closer together the framing is, the earlier the building, stemming from the greater availability of timber when Britain was a more extensively wooded landscape, earlier in our architectural history). You can see, lower down, the notice board giving details of a dendrochronology (tree ring) dating project in the village of Pembridge.

I spent an idyllic, sunny Sunday afternoon meandering through a few such villages - here are some of the  images that I captured of those streets and houses, which you may enjoy (virtually!) walking past as well…

Woven hazel stakes - the 'wattle' - visible above the front door of a house in Pembridge

 

 Lattice-paned windows

 

Steps leading up to the front door - the planter filled with  patriotic red, white and blue flowers for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee

 

The 'New Inn' hostelry and ancient covered  market  in Pembridge (with a somewhat more modern Harley Davidson parked alongside!)

 

Dendrochronology datinmg project on some of the Pembridge houses

 

The river at Eardisland

 

Less wood in this timber frame at Eardisland

 

Sunlight through heleniums

 

God Bless Her Majesty!!

There was I...Digging this 'ole...

The most modest planting can turn up the most interesting finds here at Autumn Cottage. Placing a small clematis just now on the trellis at the back of the garage, this is what I turned up out of the hole...

Its a fragment of a saucer, I think - Victorian, and decorated with either sponge or stick printing. I have found other pieces here at other times, but never one as large as this - about 2 inches (5 cm) across the rim.

Here is where I found it...

The arrow marks the spot where I dug the hole - as you can see, the trellis lines up with the (front of the) old Victorian loo - where there was originally a hedge, we believe...so the earth here holds all sorts of discarded treasures that would have been tossed over the hedge when they were broken.

I've always thought that it would be interesting to use the pattern as a motif for all sorts of crafts - I feel a papier mache bowl coming on sometime soon - decorated in red and blue :-)