August in the Garden

I seem to have amassed a stack of gardening books, old and new, read and unread, which I love

to browse through, along with seed catalogues, imagining the riot of colour and perfume that I could create – only I spend so long looking at gardening books, there is no time left to do anything! Really though, they seem to lend themselves to the ‘slow read’ method, and perhaps I should like at them month by month, to see what I should be doing.

This month, for example, in The Curious Gardener, Anna Pavord begins by suggesting I should trim my evergreen hedges and reshape the topiary: since I have neither, I feel I can carry on reading with a clear conscience, unless I can stir myself to tackle the buddleia, which are not evergreen, and are not topiary, but they are striving for world domination, which is a problem in our tiny garden. So, being a curious gardener, I’ve just looked these up, and discovered I should have hard pruned them way back in March. So what do I do, cut them right back now and hope they survive, or wait until next spring and hope they don’t grow during the winter?

Actually Pavord’s book is fascinating, with lists of tasks to be carried out each month, and a selection of short essays on plants, gardens, and life in general. August includes a moving account of how the ‘swoony’ perfume of sweet peas helped recover from an operation for cancer, and a discourse on the lengths some gardeners go to in a bid to attract butterflies to their plots. This last seemed a particularly apt choice of reading matter, since I spent a couple of days recently spell-bound by the kaleidoscope of peacocks fluttering around the dreaded buddleias, so maybe I’ll just let them be, because the butterflies are so beautiful.

Karel Capek, writing in The Gardener’s Year back in 1929, informs us that: “August usually is the time when the amateur gardener forsakes his garden of wonder and goes on leave.” He follows this with a detailed description of the many and varied jobs that must be undertaken by the friend of relative who is entrusted with looking after the garden. There is mowing to be done, watering, staking and tying, weeding… and finding suitable spots for the plants gathered by the absent gardener whilst on his holiday, and posted home!

But Capek has serious points to make about our lives. According to him: “All year round is spring, and all through life is youth; there is always something which may flower. One only says that is autumn; we are merely flowering in other ways, we grow beneath the earth; we put forth new shoots, and there is always something to do.”

Capek was a Czech playwright and novelist who, apparently, invented the word robot, and I must read some of his fiction some time. Meanwhile I am enjoying his gardening book immensely. It is easy to read, and is a light-hearted look at gardening, which captures the joys (and the frustrations) of ordinary gardeners, and the little line drawings which are scattered throughout (by Josef Capek, who I assume was a relative), are an absolute delight.

I also took a look at the wonderful Katherine Swift, who I’ve written about before. She is probably my favourite gardening writer. I love her prose style, and the way she mixes information about her garden with thoughts about life, medicine, herbal lore, ancient myths and legends, history, geography, great gardeners of the past and all kinds of other topics. The pieces gathered together in The Morville Year were all originally published in The Times, and are informative and entertaining – a combination which is not always easy to achieve. For August, you’ll find entries about raspberries, climbing plants, summer pruning, dew, the dog days (so called because Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, rises and sets with the sun at this time of year), and bees on lavender.  Did you know the Latin for bumble-bee is bombus? The word, she says,’ perfectly conveys the sound - a deep resonant hum – as well as their bumbling progress from flower to flower’.

She describes six different types of bumble-bee feeding on her lavender, including the wonderfully named little lion-maned Carder bee, and the large red-tailed bumble bee (they have red tails, like foxes, and ‘huge shiny black transparent wings like glossy fifteen-denier stockings’). Unlike honey bees, bumble-bees don’t store honey – the colonies die at the end of the year, apart from the young, mated queens. I’d already decided that I’m planting to attract birds and insects, and after reading this I’m even more determined. How could I resist when there such are wondrous creatures in the world? For next year the buddleias stay, and I’m planting lavenders alongside them, different species to flower from May right through to the autumn frosts. And Swift says if you are trying to encourage bees into a garden it helps if you are not too tidy, and I am certainly not, so I’ve got a head start there!

Short Story Sunday: French Connections...

OK folks, I’m getting back on track here. Having a laptop that works properly makes all the difference. This is Brand New (but does not, thank goodness, involve touch screen – the charming young man in the shop agreed that would be a step too far, given my limited technical abilities). But I can save things, and write things, and look at things, which is all I want to do really, and I am sure it will prove most satisfactory when it comes to ordering books – except, of course, I keep promising there will be No More Books, so forget I mentioned it!

Anyway, it’s Sunday, and it must be time for a Short Story so, since I am catching up, here is a selection of short stories from my trusty copy of The Persephone Book of Short Stories. This week I have two: Dimanche, by Irène Némirovsky, and The Photograph, by Phyllis Bentley.

Irene Nemirovsky

I daresay most of you know that Némirovsky escaped the Russian Revolution and fled to Paris, only to die in  Auschwitz, leaving behind a body of work which included the unfinished Suite Française (which is sitting on my TBR stack). I must admit, I didn’t realise that in addition to her novels she wrote short stories, but apparently she produced more than 40 of them, including this one, which focuses on a mother and daughter who, on the surface, appear very different (they certainly think so). But when it comes to love Agnès and 2o-year-old Nadine are not so dissimilar after all, for both are victims of men who do not care - or do not care enough.

Over the years Agnès has become resigned to the point of indifference, and no longer waits in despair for her charming but errant husband to return from his latest affair. Seemingly calm, serene, and self-contained, she finds pleasure in the quiet beauty of everyday life. But as she contemplates the past, and remembers her hopes and fears, Nadine is playing out the same kind of scene, suffering as she waits for a man who doesn’t turn up.

Némirovsky has a light touch when it comes to writing about feelings and emotions, and her descriptions of Paris at lunchtime on a hot spring day conjure up the sights, sounds and smells of the city. Things may have changed since this was written in 1934 - for example, Parisians no longer head for the country on Sundays, they head for the banks of the Seine to take some exercise). But the smell of fresh baked bread still wafts through the air; above the noise of the traffic you can still hear church bells and birds, and the chestnuts still flower in the Luxembourg Gardens. I liked the way  Dimanche is written, and its quiet restraint with all that hidden emotion seething away beneath the two women’s placid exteriors.

There’s also a French connection in Bentley’s The Photograph. Miss Timperley is

Phyllis Bentley.

an ageing, down-on-her-luck, out-of-work governess who considers trying to pass herself off as a younger woman in a bid to secure a job in the south of France. She is admirably suited for the role, but feels her age may be against her.

Well! She would say she was twenty-nine, and she would have a new, modern, young, almost coquettish – Miss Timperley smiled and bridled at the word – photograph taken. She could not afford it of course; but it had to be done. She put on her clothes with quite a rakish air, and betook herself to an expensive West End photographer.

The account of her trip to this establishment is very funny, but the outcome is not as she hoped, although her landlady tells her:

They’re as like as life. Just your pleasant look, they have. They’re right down good.

Poor Miss Timperley (who reminds me a lot of Miss Pettigrew), sends the picture off with her letter of application for, at the end of the day, she cannot tell a lie, and cannot obtain a post be deception. She decides it is better to starve than to cheat, and that she will go down with her flag flying. She even informs her prospective employers of her real age - 58. Then she weeps, ‘pressing her thin fingers against her anguished face’. A week later there is a response from France.

Miss Timperley winced. There was no hope from France, she knew. She opened it wretchedly, and unfolded the sheet with spiritless fingers…

Really, I shouldn’t reveal the ending, and I shouldn’t tell you whether the new photo worked its magic, but you all know how much I love a happy ending, and I loved this little tale, so draw your own conclusions! This was a lovely story, full of humour and warmth, that left me wanting to know more about Miss Timperley, and more about Bentley’s work.

A 'Spendthrift's Spreading' of Marmalade!

Yay! The Great British Bake-Off is back, and promises to be every bit as good as the last series... And the One before that... And the one before that. Consequently, I am baking mode, and what better time to take a look at a cookbook. So here are my thoughts on a Persephone kitchen classic, Kitchen Essays, by Agnes Jekyll. And, before you ask, yes, she was related to gardener Gertrude Jekyll: her husband was Gertrude’s brother, and they lived quite close to each other, near Godalming, in Surrey. Agnes, who was made a Dame of the British Empire in recognition of her work for ‘good causes’, was a well known society hostess. Apparently, she was famous for the wit and wisdom of her imaginative housekeeping! I’m not sure if that’s an attribute which should be applauded, and it’s probably a whole lot easier if you have servants (which she did). Anyway, she wrote a cookery column for The Times, and her pieces were gathered together as a book in 1922, and she really is a very good writer, with the most original turn of phrase when it comes to describing food.

Before I go any further, I should warn you, this book is not intended for vegetarians (like myself) or those of a faint-hearted disposition. Even the staunchest carnivore will blanch and reach for the cooking sherry when reading the instructions for Consommé Fausse Tortue. I have no idea what the English translation of this dish is (my failed ‘O’ level French didn’t equip me to cope with the demands of French gastronomy) but it involves half a calf’s head.  And a lot of stewing and simmering (especially on the part of the cook I imagine). And the cooking sherry...

Actually, Jekyll does include a chapter on ‘meatless meals’, but this is ‘Lenten fare’ making use of fish and veal stock. However, there is a recipe for Oeufs Mollets in Sauce Fromage (soft boiled eggs in cheese sauce – even I can cope with that) which is jolly nice, especially if you tweak it around a bit. I like to add a bit of zing to this kind of dish with some English mustard and pinch of cayenne.

It’s not a recipe book in the conventional sense: Jekyll writes about food, including her

memories and opinions, as well as literary quotes, and reflections on life in general. As far as the food goes, while some of her offerings still hold good today, many are not to modern tastes. In addition quantities, cooking times and temperatures are not nearly as precise as those in modern cookbooks and, of course, there are no pictures. But none of that matters, because Jekyll’s descriptions are so wonderful. For example, there’s her version of rice pudding (re-baptized Dundee) where she tells us:

Boil sufficient rice in milk until cooked rather firm, sweeten, and fill in therewith  a fireproof glass or nice-looking pie-dish, adding a spendthrift’s spreading of juicy home-made marmalade...

Don’t you just love that ‘spendthrift’s spreading’? It gives you such a clear idea of what you should be doing. And what about her recipe for orange jumbles which concludes by saying:

They should be the size of teacup rims, and should curl their crisp edges, faintly pink as the underneath of a young mushroom.

Anyone with an old-fashioned bone china tea service will know exactly how big these dainty morsels should be, and if you’ve ever looked at the gills of a young mushroom, when it’s just beyond that button stage and beginning to unfurl, they are indeed the faintest of pinks, so pale it’s almost not a pink at all. This recipe sounds so nice I was going to try it, but I’ve only got one orange, and the list of ingredients calls for two, so I got up early and baked a Victoria sponge instead, inspired by GBBO. Orange jumbles must wait for another day.

I have to admit that I didn’t want to sample many of Jekyll’s recipes, but I really enjoyed the book, and loved the glimpse it gave of a long-gone way of life. Here is a world of kitchen maids, cooks, shooting-parties, weekend guests, luncheons, and motor excursions. In fact, the essay on motor excursions is, to coin a phrase, an absolute hoot. No motorway service stations in those days! Instead travellers need a hay-box (for chunky hot soup), a Thermos full of mulled Claret (no breath tests either!), another full of coffee, as well as camp stools, a waterproof rug and furs! Then there’s the food, all home-made (by the cook, not the lady of the house). An ideal meal on the move included stuffed salmon rolls, a Winter Cake, ‘black and sticky with treacle, enlivened by whole white almonds’, and a ‘little selection’ of desserts and sweets.

There are 35 chapters, covering a variety of topics, including advice for the too thin (and the too fat) and tray food for invalids. There are sections on food for men, food for travellers, Food for the Punctual and the Unpunctual, and A Little Dinner Before the Play (followed by A Little Supper After the Play, which I’m delighted to say, involved cold dishes, or things which could be kept hot – the poor cook was not expected to wait up).  These days, of course, people are more likely to get a take-away on their way back from a night out, and a jolly good thing too if you ask me. Much less trouble!

I particularly liked the two chapters on breakfasts. Who would have imagined there was so much to say about this meal? Not me, that’s for sure! According to Jekyll:

Breakfast is the most difficult meal of the day, whether from its social or its culinary aspect.

She continues:

A cordonbleu cannot be at her best very early in the day; and as for the chef, he will unblushingly delegate his duties to his understudy. It is wise, therefore, to aim at implicity, but, within its limits, to strive after perfection. 

Agnes Jekyll

Above all things, she says, breakfast must be hot. No cornflakes for her then. Or left-over pizza scavenged from the fridge. She recommends use of a long metal food-warmer with spirit lamps known, so she assures, as the ‘Sluggard’s Delight’ upon which porridge, coffee and hot dishes can be kept palatable. In addition she urges us to:

Insist on a hot-water kettle of real efficiency, on a tea-caddy which will contain a delicate as well as a pungent blend of tea, more than one tea-pot, and a small saucepan over a spirit lamp for boiling eggs, with an hour-glass standing sentry nearby.

Then there’s the ‘fireproof jug of ample proportions’ with a ventilated top to keep the milk hot without boiling over, and toast, which demands ‘a glowing grate, a handy toasting fork, and a patient watcher’. There are recipes for brioche, frothy coffee, marmalade and home-cooked tongue, and all sorts of other suggestions, including this:

Try bananas, skinned and halved across, and again lengthwise, and served frizzling from a buttered sauté pan on fried toast, with perhaps a dash of orange juice added, an excellent and wholesome food for the young. 

On that note I shall leave you. I’m exhausted just reading about the breakfast preparations. I need a rest. And something to eat...

The endpapers feature 'Clusters of fruits,
flowers  and shell motifs' designed by
George Sheringham and printed on silk
for Seftons in 1922.

Mr Fortune's Maggot

Now listen up people, because I want to tell you about a truly wonderful book. I loved it, loved it, loved it! What is it? Oh, did I forget to say? It’s Mr Fortune’s Maggot, by Sylvia Townsend Warner, and it is fabulous, and I am so pleased I like it, because it is one of the new books I bought with the money my mother gave me to treat myself. Plus I got it on the strength of reading just one of her novels, and one short story (I’ve been raving about her ever since) so I was a teensy bit worried that Mr Fortune might not live up expectations, but he did, and I can’t wait to start the Virago collection of her short stories, which as another of my treats.

Anyway, the Reverend  Timothy Fortune is a one-time bank clerk (he has the perfect name for someone who works with money), who uses a legacy from his godmother to train as a deacon and, once ordained, leaves England for St Fabien, a port on an island of the Raratongan Archipelago in the Pacific. But after 10 years Rev Fortune feels a call to take up residence on the remote island of Fanua which, so Warner tells us, ‘could only be seen in imagination from that beach edged with tin huts where Mr Fortune walked slowly up and down on evenings when he had time to’.

In the preface Warner says that when she first moved to London one of the books she borrowed from the local public library in Westbourne Grove was a volume of letters by a woman missionary in Polynesia.

I can’t remember the title, or her name; but the book pleased me a great deal, it had the minimum of religion, only elementary scenery, and a mass of details of everyday life.  The woman wrote out of her own heart – for instance, describing an earthquake, she said the ground trembled like the lid of a boiling kettle.

The book stayed in her memory, and elements of it blended with a vivid dream she had in 1925.

A man stood alone on an ocean beach, wringing his hands in an intensity of despair; as I saw him in my dream I also knew something of his circumstances. He was a missionary, he was middle-aged, and a deprived character, his name was Hegarty, he was on an island where he had made only one convert: and at the moment I saw him he had just realised that the convert was no convert at all.

She jumped out of bed and started to write, and although much of the dream faded, the facts remained, and she felt as if she had actually experienced the man’s loneliness, simplicity and despair, as well as the look of the island.

She changed the name of the man, but the unknown library book and the dream combined to form the kernel of Mr Fortune’s Maggot, and she seems to have written it in a kind of frenzy, as if she had been taken over by some force outside herself, and there seems to have been little editing or alteration – as far as I can see the novel is pretty much as it came out of her head. She tells us:

I wrote steadily, and with increasing anxiety, not because I had any doubts about the story, but because I was so intensely conscious that the shape and balance of the narrative must be exactly right – or the whole thing would fall to smithereens, and I could never pick it up again.

She wept ‘bitterly’ when her work was complete, and I found the account of her reaction to the final sentence so moving that I very nearly cried myself.

I know this is a bit of a ramble, but I thought her explanation of how this strange and extraordinary novel came into being was fascinating, and it helps to put things in context. And by the way, if you are wondering about the title, there is a note at the beginning which states: Maggot. 2. A whimsical or perverse fancy; a crotchet. But words can be double-edged, and the maggot that destroys from within seems to have a bearing here as well.

So, back to the book. Rev Fortune’s preparations for departure to the island of Fanua are every bit as wonderful as those of William Boot leaving for Ishmaelia. He doesn’t take a cleft stick, but his purchases, which show a ‘nice mix of thrift and extravagance’, include:

...tinned meat, soup-squares, a chest of tea, soap, a tool-box, medicine chest, a gentleman’s housewife, a second-hand harmonium (rather cumbrous and wheezy but certainly a bargain), and an oil-lamp. He also bought a quantity of  those coloured glass baubles which hang so ravishingly on Christmas trees, some picture-books, rolls of white cotton, and a sewing machine to make clothes for his converts...

But nothing goes to plan: the islanders are polite, cheerful, indolent, happy-go-lucky, - and stark naked. They are not a bit interested in being westernised or becoming Christians, and are quite happy to let  Rev Fortune go his way, while they continue to go their’s. They certainly don’t want to be civilised and, as in Warner’s dream, there is only one convert: Lueli, a beautiful young boy who is anxious to please. But, just as in the dream, the boy is not a convert at all, and still worships his pagan God. And it is Rev Fortune who loses his faith...

I love the way Warner writes. It seems such a simple narrative, then - wham! All of a sudden she sneaks in and knocks you sideways with an unexpected turn of phrase that can be so sharp and subversive it takes your breath away, and you wonder if you’ve read it right, because she’s so subtle in the way she does it. She is, I think, a very sly writer, who can turn the world upside down in just a few words.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Yet she cab also write tenderly about emotions; deals honestly with questions of love, faith, belief and matters of the spirit, and evokes the lush beauty of an island paradise which has its darker side, as we discover through the terror of an earthquake and volcanic eruption – scenes which reflect the upheaval in Rev Fortune’s own feelings about life. To be honest, I am not at all sure this book would be published by a new author today. I am certain there would be questions regarding the portrayal of the islanders and the relationship between priest and boy, but it really is all very innocent and, like so many other books of this period, it is very much of its time.

Hidden Garden Haunted by a Ghostly Monk!

Monks Walk: The carved wooden sign at the entrance.

Been on holiday, and scheduled posts to appear while I was away (including this one), but nothing happened! Plus all my portrait photos, which are saved as such, are appearing here as landscape... the same thing has been happening on Facebook for weeks. I have no idea what I am doing wrong. I am doing everything just as I always have. Anyway, since there seems to be no way of correcting them, you have some sideways pictures in today's  Saturday Snapshot. And if anyone can tell me what I am doing wrong, and how to put it right, I'd love to know. Meanwhile I can only apologise. I find it very annoying, and very confusing, and it must be worse for anyone reading this post. I am sorry!

One of the flower-edged walkways, with part of an old wall
running alongside.

Anyway, here goes. I’ve been meaning to explore the Monks Walk Garden in Lichfield for ages, but I never seem to have time on the days I’m in the Oxfam bookshop. However, the other week I arranged to meet friends for lunch, so I went over a little earlier to give myself time to take a look, and to have a play with the exposure and aperture on my posh Nikon D3100 which I’m still getting used to. 

The little dovecote looks even better the right way up.

It was a good place to experiment, because there were spots in bright sunshine, and dappled shade, and much darker areas with very little light indeed. Some of the photos were rubbish, because I didn’t get the settings right, but at least I now know what not to do! Others were quite nice, and I was pretty pleased with myself, so I thought I’d use them for a Saturday Snapshot, even though self praise is no recommendation!

Backlit alliums. There were masses of these, all grouped
together, looking really stunning, but I wanted to try a close-up.

The garden is only small – a narrow strip hidden away alongside a car park, between the city’s library and the college, and it's kind of hidden away, so I suspect it goes unnoticed by visitors and residents alike. But it’s absolutely beautiful, with masses of old-fashioned, cottage garden type plants. There's a little path which runs down one side, across the bottom end, and back up the other side to the entrance and exit. And there's a dovecote, and a bench with the back carved from two huge slabs of wood.

I love this carved wooden back of a bench.

I assume it’s called Monks Walk because this is where the old Friary stood (until Henry VIII got rid of so many of England’s religious institutions), and it’s only a stone’s throw from the modern 'Friary Garden', which I wrote about here this time last year. 

Foxgloves, or Digitalis: Perhaps the old Friars who once lived
on this site grew these lovely flowers to treat heart conditions.

When you think about it the monks, or friars as I should really call them, would certainly have had some kind of garden where they could walk and reflect, and where they grew herbs and other plants with medicinal properties, and kept bees. Probably I’ve read too much Cadfael, but I like to think the Walk might be on part of an older plot, where a Medieval Franciscan (for this was a Franciscan house) toiled on his land in all weathers and spent hours brewing up his lotions and potions to help the sick and elderly. 

The garden has a really old-fashioned feel to it, and is
very peaceful.

I doubt the image in my mind is accurate, but it might be – after all, no-one seems to know the age of Monks Walk. Apparently it is shown on a late 19th Century map, and in the following century it was part of the Friary School, which includes the old Bishop’s Lodging (the buildings now house the library). And there are legends of a ghostly lost monk haunting the garden and vanishing through the ruined arch by the college, on the other side of the car park. But be warned, you can’t move in Lichfield without tripping over a ghost: every building in every street seems to boast a spectral visitor, and it’s hard to sift fact from fiction!

Volunteers look after Monks Walk, and in the past local schoolchildren have also helped, but I don’t know if they still do. Actually, I don’t know much about the garden at all and nor, I suspect, does anyone else, because there is very little information available anywhere. Even Kate at Lichfield Lore, who is a mine of information about the city and its history, seems to have drawn a blank on this one, although she has written a couple of short pieces about it. According to her, the walls around it are interesting. They are, she says, a mix of brick and stone, with a bricked up entrance, but I didn’t pay them as much attention as I should have done, and consequently missed the bricked up entrance. 

If you look at the photo very carefully (which is jolly
difficult when it is the wrong way), you can see where a gate or
door in the wall has been bricked up.

I also missed the grave, of ‘Richard the Merchant’, set into the back wall of the Friary, which is mentioned in one of the comments on her post. Apparently, it is very hard to read, and I am not sure whether it refers to one of the walls enclosing the garden, or the main Friary building, or other nearby walls, so it's difficult to know where to look!

Not sure what this plant is - some kind of broom I think - but
it looked truly amazing with the light behind it, making the
pods translucent, so you can see the seeds inside, and all
the tiny hairs on the surface.

Kate gives a link to Staffordshire Gardens & Park Trusts, where it says Monks Walk could have been part of a larger garden on property owned by Sir Richard Cooper. His estate was on land that originally formed part of the historic Friary, and it was given to the City of Lichfield in 1920 ‘for the permanent use and benefit of the citizens’.  Plants grown there today were popular in the 17th and 18th Centuries, and are laid out in what was known as ‘mingle’ planting.

A feather caught on a leaf looked so delicate, and I like
the contrast between it's feathery edges and the solid leaves.
This is another upright shot!

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda at West Metro Mummy.