Autumn Cottage Diarist

A Strange Sort of Solstice

It's a strange year right to the end. Here are some thoughts on these particular 2020 Solstice days - and (as always!) a look around the garden as She rests and the year turns.

 

 

A Strange Samhain

Well - here we are again, on the threshold of Samhain 2020, and it's so different to any marking of the end of the Celtic/Pagan festival year than I have experienced before. It's normally a time of peaceful reflection, when I sit in the summer house, set up an Ofrenda for my beloved Ancestors and Loved Ones, light the candles, remember and honour them in tranquility.

Not this year - This year, the year of COVID-19, the year of confusion, of the unknown, of the unexpected, of the unwelcome - this year is different. From the death of my dear cat Pip back in February, to the alien world of Lockdown and then social distancing, mask wearing, vigilant sanitary precautions and a whole world of uncertainty about how to behave and how to relate to our fellow human beings, even for somebody such as myself who has not been personally touched with tragedy through the Covid virus, the world is a very different and strange place to what it appeared to be this time last year.

Samhain is the time when we move down into the dark days of the year, when the natural world up here in the Northern Hemisphere starts to go into a period of rest, decline, death and decomposition. As we observe the nonhuman world enter this period, then so we are reminded of our own material, corporeal beings, our own mortal existence and the fact that this will also reach a point of decline, death and decomposition.  But also - if we observe in the long term - it will become clear to us that the decomposition is a vital precursor to feeding what will come after - the new life that WILL burst forth from the earth and will continue the circle of life.

These concepts have been, I must admit, both a poetical and a theoretical idea for me up until now; but during the last few months, I have had health issues which have caused me to very literally look death - briefly - in the face. My own mortality is now a thing of reality, rather than just an academic concept. It's a tough one to start to face, no doubt about that, but it's a fact that will become only too real to us all one day. I guess it's a privilege to be given the time to get used to the idea (a LONG time I hope!) rather than having Sister Death turn up and tap me on the shoulder, out of the blue with no warning.

And now, this very evening, our Prime Minister has held a news conference to tell us that we will all be going back in to a form of lockdown for another month, in order to try to quell the upsurge in Coronavirus cases, an increase which is threatening to be larger and even more devastating than the first surge of the virus in the early part of this year. The leavening to this serious news is that we are (supposedly) better prepared - more protective equipment and staff numbers for the National Health Service, more systems in place to support the economy and a well prepared and fast (15 minute) form of personally administered testing that will be available, distributed and coordinated by the army, to be available nationwide within days. (Hmm - I'll believe it when I see it; like politicians of all colours, promises are more easily made than kept!)

But there is a little light at Autumn Cottage in all this darkness… a little cat has joined the Cawley family. We have acquired “Fluffy”, a 14 year old tortoiseshell and white little lass from the local cat rescue organisation, after we were told that her age and health problems (she has a cardiac issue) meant that little interest was being shown in her; the possibilities for her adoption did not look very bright. Since we are none too sturdy ourselves at the moment, we thought we would all make a good match and could be three old fogies together! So far, that is exactly how things have turned out to be 😊

She is, as we were warned, “extremely nervous”, though after three weeks she is a great deal less nervous than she was. She is more or less left to her own devices, spends a good part of the day sleeping and the rest of the time eating tasty morsels & little biscuit treats and getting numerous cuddles and pets. It seems to be working well and it is certainly lovely to have another little living creature in the house, though it goes without saying that she will never be a replacement for our darling Pip, nor would we ever want her to be.

So, my friends, down we go into the dark days together here; I will be calling on all my creative resources to keep me going through the next few months. I'm undertaking a memoir writing course with the University of  Oxford at the moment that is keeping me busy both with my own writing, but also in devouring lots of wonderful biographies and memoirs written by others. I also intend getting my sewing machine into action again - though this requires a certain amount of clear space in which to work, which may well be a little time in coming, according to how the energy levels go. They are slowly returning, but it may well be a long job, so stick around to keep me company in the meantime (and enjoy this little video walk around the garden this afternoon)

 

A Blessing Arrived at my Door Today

I thought the crunching of the gravel on the drive early this morning heralded an early delivery of a book that I had ordered…but when I looked, there was no parcel – but an envelope. Hmm – hand delivered? - must be someone handing out flyers for a local event? No such thing; I was greeted by the delightful card below – and inside – good wishes for the Autumn Equinox – from An Admirer of Autumn Cottage (and the garden!).

Out of the blue – a little package of love, an unexpected surprise to make my heart soar, and feel that suddenly, a Monday was a much nicer day than usual!

Dear friends – never be in any doubt that gestures like this make a difference. Never be in doubt that in this difficult, angry, conflicted world, there are still good, kind thoughtful people out there – and that one of them chose, today, to go to the effort of paying me a compliment, bringing me this gift and blessing my spirit abundantly.

If they read this blog, they will know who they are.

Thank you, friend – you have made my day very special.

The last rose of summer?

A Pilgrimage Round the Garden - Easter Day 2020

Today - contemplations on Grief and Gratitude and how we can help ourselves to cope with life in unusual times

 

Publish

 

And so the Festivals of Light are Come

…Winter Solstice..Yule…Christmas.- all over the Northern Hemisphere, in places where the darkness rules at this time of the year, grew the Festivals of Light, to lighten the darkness of an otherwise mysterious and fearsome world. Though I am not now a Christian, I grew up in a Christian home, so my earliest experiences were of the beautiful Christian story and its artefacts - the Nativity, The Gifts, animals everywhere, an abundance of stars (and one in particular!). A story combined, in my house as in so many others, with the older Pagan traditions of marking the Winter Solstice by bringing in greenery from outdoors; always a decorated Christmas tree (Thank you, Prince Albert!) but rarely a Yule Log - except in the form of a chocolate cake with robins, Father Christmas and tobogganing Snowmen, all added with abandon!

When I had my own family, I continued the old traditions and added some of our own - each year I buy and make one or two 'special' ornaments to hang on the tree, to join the obligatory toilet-roll Santa, made by Tim at nursery when he was three, and cross-stitched, bamboo chomping Panda, crafted by Hugh around seven years old. Both of those are non-negotiable. They go on first, in pride of place.

I also made Advent Calendars for the boys for three decades - covering a cereal packet in Chrismassy paper, attaching the annual gift of a religious ('proper') Advent calendar from their paternal grandmother, and filling the box with tiny, individually wrapped little gifts that I had collected through the year. For several years, these included the eternal egg laying plastic chicken from Hawkins Bazaar, which was an absolute treasury of ideas - the arrival of 'The Box of Stuff' from Hawkins was an event in itself each December..

Well, Tim had his last calendar when he was 30 - and now I have decided that Stockings are also no longer appropriate for the moment. Finding 'stuff' to put into them got harder and harder…I know that there was a groan  when the apple, tangerine and banana were retrieved, (but, I suspect, never eaten) and one more can of car de-icer would be one can too far this year!

So  this year, Baskets will take over - now for both boys and their partners - and material gifts will include more creative items than in the past… (can't give away TOO many secrets…) - but the tree is still up, the Naff Gnomes and Nut Crackers will still make an appearance, The Santas will once again convene on the desk in my hall.

The Ancestors will still get their bits of tinsel on their heads (whether they like it or not, though I think Sir Henry, as Queen Elizabeth 1st's Champion was more than used to a bit of glitter and bling) and I will still worry about the abundance of The Banquet (Who can eat what?, will there be ENOUGH? and will the roast potatoes be DONE??)

All will be as it should be - including last minute anxieties and panics. There will, of course, be more than enough…and we will all be, and have, more than enough, because we will have what I value more than anything material these days.  All around me, I will have my dearly loved ones. I need nothing else.

Enough!!

If you want to know what my own childhood Christmases of the 1950's were like - listen to this - Dylan Thomas reading his own 'Child's Christmas in Wales'. It is a blueprint for the way working class family festivities in Wales played out for decades, probably centuries, and a Transport of Delight for me each time I listen to it.

Make time to sit with your families and friends this Midwinter festival time, dear readers. Tell the stories…happy and sad. Write them down…remember them. Remember those no longer with us…for in your remembering, you make them immortal. Remember and love, as best you can,  those who are with us in the Here and Now - for in the end, love is all that is necessary, all we need and all that will remain, when the tinsel and trees are down and disintegrated into dust. 

Make Merry and Make Memories, my friends -  and the heartiest Greetings of the Season, however you celebrate it, to you all, from all of us at Autumn Cottage!

Send the Bloody Politicians to Fight the Bloody Wars!

Boxing Day, 1908. In front of the beautiful, Georgian, Henry Holland designed façade of Berrington Hall, surrounded by gardens landscaped by Capability Brown, Sir Frederick Cawley sits astride his hunter, his four sons at his side.

They are masters of all they survey. En-titled, privileged, wealthy, secure. Sir Fred has already made his fortune as a Lancashire mill owner and now sits in the House of Commons - and here he looks upon the fruits of his labours. The world is their oyster. In the background, their mother looks on, with what must be burgeoning pride and satisfaction. Four fine sons at the top of their game.

A month short of ten years later, as the Armistice Treaty is signed, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, three of those sons do not sit astride their equines - they lie buried in the blood and ordure filled battlefield earth of France and the Dardanelles. John, a Hussar died in the first few months of the war, ambushed at dawn while endeavouring to calm his stampeding horses. Harold fell in the disastrous campaign in Gallipoli, and Oswald died at Merville in France, just three months before the war ended.

It is said that their mother never recovered. Neither would any mother, I think. Father expressed his grief as men often do…with rage. Winston Churchill felt the full force of his anger, hushing him only (and probably temporarily) by 'kicking him upstairs' to the House of Lords.

I often hear the comment that 'the politicians should send THEIR sons to do the fighting'…well, this one did. In fact, Sir Fred, himself a Member of Parliament, sent two of those sons as politicians - here is the 'Recording Angel' memorial bearing their names (on Panel 2 and Panel 8) which stands in St Stephen's Porch, Westminster Hall. (There is also a heraldic shield to Oswald behind the Speaker's Chair in the House of Commons).

And so it has been, forever, both before and after the great conflict of World War One, that young men and women from all backgrounds, of all classes, colours and creeds, have gone off to 'do their duty'; to be wounded or die for their country, and for causes which we so easily criticise with the glorious benefit of hindsight and broader information, but causes in which many (if not most) of them believed at the time. How else could they have endured what they did?

However we feel about War and the responsibilities of those in power, let us not take away from these individuals the fact that sacrifice was made at all levels, by all sorts of people (A subaltern's life - many of whom came from public schools, averaged six weeks at The Front) Their deaths and injuries always left (and still leave) not just one tragedy, but the many tragedies of bereaved and traumatised mothers & fathers, parentless children and both selves and families wracked with grief - one emotion which knows no boundaries of any kind.

Whether rich or poor, all of our mortal remains, in the end, occupy the same space. For those left behind, a broken heart cannot be mended by pound notes or privilege…just by the love, support and understanding of others. Perhaps cultivation of that understanding and support is one way, even 100 years later, in which we can help fulfil their 'bright Promise' to change the world that they so wanted to make better for us all?

...Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:

Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say,

“Come, what was your record when you drew breath?”

But a big blot has hid each yesterday

So poor, so manifestly incomplete.

And your bright Promise, withered long and sped,

Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet

And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.

(From 'Such, Such is Death' - Charles Hamilton Sorley)

 

 

Lighting a Candle for the Beloved Dead - Samhain 2018

The Women of my Line: Left (of Image) to right….

Mary Amici/Latham (in crinoline) my Great-Grandmother. 1843 - 1929. Engagement photograph, 1867.

Kate Hosking/McCallum - my great Aunt. 1899 - 1929. Went to Australia to marry her beau - died in North Wales of Tuberculosis.

Lilian Mary Louvain Silcox/Latham (In candle shrine) - my Mother. 1915-1998

Lilian Mary Nankivell/Silcox - my grandmother. 1888-1955

Margaret Norris Humby/Nankivell - my great grandmother. 1866-1950

Esther Silcox - 1927-1929 - scroll/death certificate. No chance to grow to womanhood.

All on a bed of fallen leaves, to remind us that we all return to Mother Earth, to replenish Her and rise anew through root and branch

Today is Samhain - 'Summer's End' …the last of harvest time, the turning point of the Old Celtic year and the doorway to Winter. The time when I welcome in the memories of the Beloved Dead, as other traditions commemorate the Company of Saints (Nov 1st) and their deceased loved ones (All Souls, Nov 2nd). Collectively, these days are known in some parts of the world (Most notably Mexico and South America) as the 'Days of the Dead' - the Dias de Los Muertos. Much imagery abounds across the internet of the celebratory nature of such festivals - take a look - it's interesting and informative.

I follow the custom of creating an Ofrenda/Altar, upon which memories and reminders abound. Samhain is a Fire-Festival, so it is natural that we who celebrate are drawn to lighting candles…they remind me of the light that the women I celebrate brought into my life, particularly my mother and grandmother…and through them, I also feel the thread of compassion passing down to me from my great-grandmother, who lived and was loved in my Mother's memories.

Through them I have my existence - and to them, wrapped in the arms of the Great Mother Earth, I shall return.

  Kwan-Yin, Bodhisattva of Compassion, amongst human practitioners of boundless love.

 I wish you all a Blessed Samhain/All Hallows Eve - may you celebrate those of your line who have gone before you, but who still live within you and are a part of who you are. As we turn towards the dark days of Winter, 'Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness'...

Let's all be that light to lighten our sad and wounded world.

(You may also enjoy this old blog post from 2011 )

 

Water for the Soul

Fledgeling BlueTit, Great Tit and Blackbird - all down for a sip.

After several weeks of on-off illness, (Lyme disease - again!), treatment and too much enthusiastic gardening in the far too hot temperatures of the current weather, today I have at last 'given in' and designated today a 'Summerhouse Day'. So that is where I am writing from at this very moment.

I've been taking respite here in this shady, seculded corner of the garden for an hour or two each day, when it has been simply too hot to do anything else (We're in the middle of an English summer 'heatwave' - temperatures up to 30C, which is warm for this neck of the woods). But today I am setting up camp and only moving for food and drink!

I often describe this corner of the garden as my particular piece of Paradise…and I still hold to that. If being in Paradise is to live alongside and in harmony with all other Beings, watching the Wheel of the Year slowly turn, having the great luxury of time and the space to think and wonder about many different things, then Paradise is truly here, in this tiny, watery, cool and peaceful corner of North Hampshire, interrupted only by birdsong and a deeply welcome breeze whispering through the trees.

These photographs are my evidence from just the last hour…what do you think of my assertion?

Mr.Pheassie on his way down for a drink

...a quick check around

Sweet water...

Meanwhile, St Francis welcomes all...

Sophia bids you ponder your Inner and Outer Cosmos...

Eve's Apple invites everyone to take a bite of knowledge and learning!

Lord Buddha encourages mindful contemplation...

...and the many worlds of Being go on being, all around us.

Are you able to take a few minutes in your own days to stop, rest and think, Friends? I'd love to hear about your own special places and how your draw your own sustenance from them...

Catching a Breath to Breathe in the Garden

 

I sat last evening in the cool of the summerhouse, looking out on the pond, a glass of wine in my hand, the light filtering through the trees, birdsong abounding…everything still; particularly myself, unable to move after three days rather 'over-doing it' in the garden! It was blissful - physical incapacity (of a very temporary kind) insisting that just for a half hour or so, I stopped to enjoy all that exists and is also in the process of being created here.

As gardeners, we do this so often, don't we? Particularly after this year's horrible winter and cold wetness of the spring, we see the need to 'get on with it' and spend all hours of the day (and half the night if I have my way) doing all the jobs that need doing. But we miss the most important thing of all. The thing that I am oh, so good at telling others to do - to just stop…for a while…and enjoy. And listen. And notice. I'm not so good at doing it myself!

When I'm pottering around the pond, I take in the pleasures of the birdsong - Blackbird, Thrush and Robin all inhabit the air with their fluting melodies at the moment. But I must admit that I also enjoy sitting inside the summerhouse, listening to Classic FM on the radio, while I write my Summerhouse Journal - which I leave there, for others to also write their thoughts.

I've also got a pile of gardening magazines and a few books (not many - they get damp); Alan Tichmarsh's 'My Secret Garden' and Thomasina Tarling's 'Truly Tiny Gardens' are there for my current browsing. Indoors, I often pull out John Weather's 1924 tome 'My Garden Book' - filled with early colour plates of blowsy old Edwardian gardens, stuffed full of plants and colour. (You can see a couple, above and below). I've got a big library of gardening books, never ceasing to be inspired by their photographs, more than the texts. Most of my gardening books are 'picture books' (I have a very visual learning style) with a few very good technical information tomes (and trusty Google always nowadays at the fingertips!).

I do also have several garden writers anthologies, which also inspire with their enthusiastic prose; the best garden writers always helping me to imagine that I am standing in a garden right alongside them - or that I CAN, indeed, cope with the eradication of Triffid like weedy landscapes stretching as far as my histrionic eye has convinced me to see!

Poetry elevates my pleasure to yet another level - the delight of hearing someone put into words (that you cannot yourself find) the transcendent experience, the balm to the soul, the assurance to fears of whatever 'Hereafter' there may or may not be - the poet is able to capture these thoughts, wrap them in ink and paper and present them back to me so that I may say - ah, yes…that is *exactly* what it is like. To share the pleasure (as other poems help one to share the pain) of knowing that someone else really 'gets' the emotions that you may be feeling.

As for particular garden poems…you may be familiar with Kipling's Edwardian 'Glory of the Garden' - but have you ever read the whole thing? Until just a few years ago, I did not KNOW that there was 'a whole thing' other than the fifth, most quoted verse - but when I did discover that there was more, it touched me with a truth and profundity that I felt deeply. My great grandfather was a gardener - a little earlier than the time that Kipling wrote 'The Glory…' (1911) - but I like to think that when he wrote it, Kipling was thinking of people like Thomas Latham and his hard-working ilk. Certainly, though technology and internet searches make life easy for our gardening hands of the 21st century, still the beauty and the glory of the gardens of the whole of the UK remains a many splendoured  joy.

The gardeners of Quex Park

The Glory of the Garden

OUR England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.

For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You'll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.

And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 'prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise ;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.

And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-" Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.

There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner In the Glory of the Garden.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!

Rudyard Kipling

 

Great grandfather Thomas Latham - a Victorian gardener

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When it comes to material inheritance of monetary worth, I didn't inherit much - my maternal grandmother's Victorian oil lamp; my mother in law's turquoise ring (rescued from a box of paper rubbish put out for 'the bin men' !); my paternal grandfather's 'Victory' medal from WW1; my father's wigs and make-up. Two or three items from Dad's mother - a broken Indian silver bracelet, a broken locket, a broken silver brooch. (notice a theme?). I keep the smaller items in my 'box of treasures' -  treasures to me, but by no means to anyone intending to make their fortune from burglary (*that* box has already been burgled - 30 years ago).

It was on one of my little reminiscence forays into that box that the broken brooch caught my eye anew. I had been watching 'The Antiques Roadshow' a few days before, when items belonging to an ancestral Suffragette had been brought in. Amongst the items, there were several displaying the same colours - purple, green and white. There, on the green velvet of my treasure box, was Granny's broken butterfly brooch - and there were the colours of the enamel with which it was decorated - purple, green and white. The colours of the Women's Social and Political Union - the colours of the Suffragettes!

Born in 1888, Granny was a feisty woman in middle and old age. She sure scared the bejabers out of me! One of three Hosking sisters (and three brothers), I imagine (especially from her photographs) that she was quite a gal - from quite a trio of women.

Kate, Flo & Lena - the Hosking sisters

Her younger (by 12 years) sister, Kate, sailed off to Australia and adventure, to marry Frank McCallum, Chief Medical Officer at Australia House in London when they married (and later Director-General of Health for the Commonwealth of Australia). Poor Kate had only three years of happiness with her 'Mac' before she came back to the UK for treatment for TB. It was not successful - she died, aged just 29, in 1929.

Her other sister, Lena, took a different path, becoming a Salvationist in Cardiff. She was apparently very enthusiastic in her handling of the tambourine!

Florence Emma Hosking, my Granny, married Grampy, Arthur Henry Latham and ran a little corner shop in Newport after their marriage. But I know little of her life before then. Now I think I might know a little bit more. I am heartened to see that little brooch and appreciate its significance - just a tiny bit of what might be evidence that Granny's spirit led her to espouse the cause of  Women's Suffrage. My enthusiasm is spurred on to discover much more about her now.

On this Centenary Day of women (of property) being given the vote, I say Thank You, Sisters (and Grannies!) and the good men who supported them, for supporting and fighting the Good Fight to give everyone representation.

There is much still to be done, but since 1918, we have still come a wonderfully long way .

Women Members of Parliament, 2017 General Election, UK.

ONWARD, SISTERS!