Garden Gaze: Seeds, Weeds and Smells

Well, it’s September, and  gardens, hedgerows, fields and woods seem to be full of flowers, grasses, trees and bushes, all producing seeds to ensure the survival of the species, so for the this month’s Gardening Gaze I’ve been looking to see what the experts recommend on the subject of Seeds.

First up is William Cobbett, who I’m rather fond of. His life spanned the 18th and 19th centuries (17662-1835) and he was one of these gentlemen of independent means who seem to know everything about everything, are only too willing to pass on reams of good advice to others, which could be regarded as patronising. But he has a sense of humour, and it’s hard to take offence at anyone who recommends growing ‘four feet of good thorn-hedge’ to keep ‘the boldest boy’ away from trees laden with fine, ripe peaches!

Cobbett, who was a farmer, journalist, politician, traveller, and supporter of social reform, wrote several books, including The English Gardener, which was published in 1833 and claims to be ‘A Treatise on the Situation, Soil, Enclosing and Laying-Out, of Kitchen Gardens; on the Management of Hot-Beds and Green-Houses; and on the Propagation and Cultivation of all sorts of Kitchen-Garden Plants, and of Fruit-Trees whether of the Garden or the Orchard’. It is also a Treatise ‘on the Formation of Shrubberies and Flower-Gardens; and on the Propagation and Cultivation of the several shorts of Shrubs of Shrubs and Flowers’.

It is, as you can see, very comprehensive, with clear, concise instructions, and much of the advice he offers still holds good almost 200 years later. Not only that, but the book is surprisingly readable (though having said that I wouldn’t read it all in one go or even from start to finish – it’s one of those tomes that’s much more fun  to dip in and out of when the fancy takes you. Anyway, he has the following to say about Collecting Seeds:

They should stand till perfectly ripe, if possible. They should be cut, or pulled, or gathered, when it is dry; and they should, if possible, be as dry as dry can be before they are threshed out. If, when threshed, any moisture remain about them, they should be placed in the sun, or near a fire in a dry room; and, when quite dry, should be put into bags, and hung up against a very dry wall, or dry boards, where they will by no accident get damp. The best place is some room, or place, where there is, occasionally at least, a fire kept in winter.

Threshing (by which I think he simply means separating the seeds from their husks and any bots of leaf or stem) prevents ‘injury from mice and rats, and from various other enemies, of which, however, the greatest is carelessness’. According to him ‘seeds of many sorts’ will be ‘perfectly good’ kept for 10 or 12 years, but I notice that he admits to always good, new seed alongside the old, as an insurance policy

Canon Ellacombe’s In a Gloucestershire Garden is very different in tone and content. I gather the book, published in 1895, draws together a series of articles he wrote for The Guardian a couple of years earlier, and the Canon is clearly passionate about the garden he created his vicarage near Bristol. However, unlike Cobbett, whose book is very much a ‘how to’ volume , the canon wrote about his own experiences and thoughts in his garden, and it’s a mixture of his observations of nature, bits of science, history, poetry, and so on. I’d never heard of him until I came across this 1986 reprint in a second-hand shop, but I think it’s a gem – it’s another of those books you can dip in and out of when you’re in the mood, and Rev Ellacombe is never preachy or dull: his joy in plants, and the ups and downs of his efforts are delightful, and it’s easy to relate to his feelings. For example, most of us, I’m sure, will sympathise with what he says in his ‘September’ chapter.

In my own garden, for instance, there must be millions of seeds formed, and for the most part ripened every year, and yet, with the exception of such things as groundsel, thistle, and other garden weeds, which seem to have an unbounded power of germination, it is very unusual to find any quantity of seedlings.

Which of us hasn’t moaned about the ease with which weeds spring up, no matter how poor the soil, or how bad the weather, of how often you pull them out – yet the plants you want, upon which your lavish care and affection, fail to thrive.

And the canon also reminds us that a plant is not there for the beauty of its blooms, or its usefulness to mankind. No, he says, ‘the whole life of a plant is directed to the one object of forming seed for the continuance of the life of the plant’ – a fact which is easy to overlook, I think. And he goes on to explain:

…for the sake of the seed only was the flower formed, with calyx, corolla, pistil, stamens, and ovary, with colours and lines and scents to attract insects that would be friendly helps, or it may be with an equally subtle arrangement to ward off others that would be hurtful.

I think he would have enjoyed my final offering for September, Led by the Nose, A Garden of Smells, by Jenny Joseph, who is best known for her poetry (she wrote Warning – the one about growing old disgracefully), but turns out to be a keen gardener. As you might expect from a writer of her calibre, she has a real gift for conjuring the scents of the garden, but she’s also very knowledgeable about plants, and although this is not a gardening manual, she does include lists of what to grow if you want a perfumed garden, so you will know when the various flowers, herbs, fruit and vegetables give off their best fragrance, and can plan accordingly.

The book gives a very different, very personal view of gardening, which will make you think about what you want from a garden, and why you plant the things you do. Other people may plant sweet-smelling flowers because they attract bees, butterflies and other wildlife. Joseph plants them for sheer enjoyment, for the sensual pleasure she gets from stepping outside and inhaling the perfumed air, and perhaps more of us should follow her example. She says:

Even the berries and seed heads that do not give off a fragrance (and most fruits do have a scent recall the scents of the flowers they have come from. I am picking off pods and seedheads to dry and store, and as I shove them in my pocket I vow I will go in straightaway and find an envelope or container and write the name of what, where and when.

Like most of us, she doesn’t always get round to it, but she explains:

The seeds and the bulbs we either buy at this time or retrieve from those dug up and saved earlier, give us the promise of scent. It is a forward whiff which is to cross the coming months of dark damp enclosed dulled air, like a ray of light hitting a mirror in a darkened room, and transport the other side of winter, to spring. They hold future scents, literally, in their fabric, as well as in our imagination, September is one of the fulcrums of the year, balancing summer passed with winter to come.

 I loved this book – it was beautifully written, and very inspiring, and I always enjoy gardening books which combine thoughts on the beauty of plans with reflections on Life and the Universe. 

Novel on Yellow Paper

The cover shows a detail from Catherine
Carrington, by Dora Carrington.

Novelist and poet Stevie Smith seems to have become a forgotten author, but back in the middle of the last century her spare, wry poems were immensely popular, offering a skewed view of suburban life that questioned our perceptions and made us think about loneliness, death, and the dispossessed. I must admit I have never been a huge fan of her poetry (her language doesn’t sing to me, or if it does I don’t hear it). However, she also wrote three novels, and I’ve just read one of them – Novel on Yellow Paper, which sings out loud and clear, and I loved it. My copy (one of my charity shop finds) was published by Virago in 1983, but they don’t seem to have reprinted it recently, and as far as I am aware no-one else is producing it either, which is a shame. If a modern edition is available, I apologise. If not, can I make a plea for this to be re-issued? Please?!

It has to be one of the most curious novels ever written, and is unlike anything else you are ever likely to read, with the possible exception of Tristram Shandy (actually, I felt quite pleased with myself for thinking this, because I didn’t look at Janet Watts’ introduction until I’d finished the book, when I found she had made a similar statement).

Anyway, it ought to be listed as one of the greatest and most glorious idiosyncratic books in the English language. Its style, story, structure and characters are unique, and it cannot be categorised.  Apparently when Smith tried to get her poems into print in 1935 she was told to go away and write a novel, and this was the result.  It was published the following year, and must have seemed as odd then as it does today, because it breaks with so many literary conventions and traditions.

Trying to describe this book is really, really difficult, because it’s so individual, and so idiosyncratic. There’s no plot or storyline, and it doesn’t slot easily into of the usual pigeon holes, and the central character is hard to pin down as a will o’ the wisp, flitting from thought to thought and scene to scene. Even her name is not her own. Reflecting on it she says:

Did I tell you my name was Pompey Casmilus? Patience I was christened, but later on when I got grown up and out and about in London, I got called Pompey. And it suits me. There’s something meretricious and decayed and I’ll say, I dare say, elegant about Pompey. A broken Roman statue. One of those old Roman boys that lost their investments and went round getting free meals on their dear old friends, that had them round to fill up the gaps, and keep things moving.

She tells us:

There’s not a person nor a thing in this book that ever stepped outside of this book. It’s all just out of my head

Nevertheless, it seems to incorporate elements from Smith’s life, and it’s hard not to view

Stevie Smith.

Pompey as the alter ego not just of Patience, but of Stevie Smith herself, whose real name was Florence Margaret. Pompey, like the author, works as a secretary, writes poetry, and is trying to write a novel – on very yellow paper, so she doesn’t confuse it with letters for her boss, which are typed on blue paper. She also has a ‘Lion Aunt’, just like Smith. And this is her book, in which she describes her thoughts on Life, Love, the Universe and Everything.

She writes about her friends, her family, her employer, current affairs, politics, religion, education and sex. There’s a lot about the situation in Germany, and from her initial comments you might assume that she’s anti-Jewish, but she’s not – she’s vehemently opposed to the Nazis. And there are references to history philosophy, popular culture, music hall songs, poems, classical literature. Pompey/Stevie writes it all down exactly as it pops into her head, and plays with words and language in a way that rivals James Joyce.

Yet her style seems almost ‘naïve’ as she writes so matter of factly about strange events and complex concepts, which gives the book a surreal edge. Barbara Comyns also does this, describing the most bizarre events as if it was all quite normal, so you can find echoes of other books in Smith’s work – or perhaps you find echoes of her book in other people’s work – but taken in its entirety it’s a one-off that can’t be classified.

Smith obviously knows her novel is ‘different’ and that people may not like it, so she has Pompey tell us:

.

This is a foot-off-the-ground novel that came in by the left hand’ she warns. ‘And the thoughts come and go and sometimes they do not quite come and I do not pursue them to embarrass them with formality to pursue them into a harsh captivity. And if you are a foot-off-the-ground person I make no bones to say that is how you will write and only how you will write. And if you are a foot-on-the-ground person this book will be for you a desert of weariness and exasperation. So put it down. Leave it alone. It was a mistake you made to get this back. You could not know.

Says she’ll try to make it easy to read, as her publisher asks, but finds it difficult.

For this book is the talking voice, that runs on, and the thoughts come, and the thoughts come, the way I said, and the people come too, and come and go, to illustrate the thoughts, to point the moral, to adorn their tale.

Oh talking voice that is so sweet, how hold you alive in captivity, how point you with commas, semi-colons, dashes, pauses and paragraphs?

I feel I really haven’t done justice to Novel on Yellow Paper, but it’s a marvellously written book, which is a wonderful read, and I love it to bits – and I think that ‘talking voice’ deserves to be heard by many more people. 

Struggling with a Short Story...

Well, it’s Sunday again – they do seem to roll round very quickly, don’t they? Anyway, that means it’s time for some sort stories, and this week I’m back with my lovely Persephone collection, and a tale called Nine Years is a Long Time, by Norah Hoult.  And oh, how I struggled with this one. I couldn’t engage with it on any level whatsoever, and found it so wearisome I nearly gave up, but I felt I should be able to see a short story through to the end.

A woman is waiting for a man to return. She doesn’t know his name, or what he does, but she knows he comes from Rotherfield, so she refers to him as ‘my Rotherfield friend’ and we learn that she has met him once a month for nine years, regular as clockwork, and that she has received £3 a time for some unspecified service… then nothing. No telegram, no letter, no visit. Is he dead? Ill? Has he lost interest?

He brought a welcome change to her life, she decides. It had been a sort of holiday when she got his wire or letter. Then Mr Scott (she always thinks of her husband this way) knew he’d ‘have to manage everything himself’. She would take a bath, dress with care, add a drop or two of Coty’s Chypre (too expensive for any but special occasions) then off to the lounge of the Queen’s for a light lunch, sitting with well-dressed people, having a drink and a chat and another drink before going to the hotel…  

Now, if he never came to see her again, or if she never saw him again, life would just go on as if it were a wet November all the time.

At this point I realised my suspicions about the exact nature of the service she provided were quite correct. Our lady is on the game, and her Rotherfield friend is her only client, and has been for a long time, although she once had many more gentlemen friends. But it all seems very normal, mundane almost, and she approaches sex much as she does any other domestic activity, and enjoys a nice cup of tea afterwards! She even discusses the situation with her husband (who is unemployed) in much the same way that other women might talk about problems at the factory, or the shop, or the office. Mrs Scott is very matter of fact about things. She will miss the £3 a month, and her husband will have to go without tobacco.

I imagine Mrs Scott a bit like this Beryl Cook woman,
but in 1940s clothes, with red hair. A rather sad figure really,
 but still liking a good time 

Her chances of finding another ‘friend’ are not good. She’s getting older, putting on weight, wears too much rouge and make up, and too much henna on her hair. She’s too conspicuous says her critical daughter, with all the confidence of youth on her side.

There is no resolution here, no happy ending. At the end of the tale there is still no news from the mysterious Rotherfield friend, and life goes on in its usual fashion.

The Test, by Angelica Gibbs, is very different, which is just as well really! Published in 1940 (two years after the last tale) it’s a very short story about the nature of prejudice, which leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Marian has a college degree, and has held a driving licence for three years, but must take another in the state where she now works, so she can take her employer’s children to school and bring them home again. She’s already failed one test, and her employer accompanies her.

“It’s probably better to have someone a little older with you,” Mrs Ericson said as Marian slipped into the driver’s seat beside her. “Perhaps last time your cousin Bill made you nervous, talking too much on the way.”

But Marian knows only too well what went wrong last time, and she fears the ordeal that lies ahead. It doesn’t matter how well she drives, the inspector will fail her – because she is coloured. And that’s the exactly what happens. The inspector is outrageously offensive – he made my blood boil with his crass remarks and behaviour. He calls Marian Mandy-Lou, talks about picaninnies, and treats her like dirt, as if she belongs to some lesser species.

Eventually she loses her temper (frankly, I think she should have gone the whole hog and smacked him in the mouth), and he makes four random crosses on her application form.

It would be nice to think that we’ve learned something over the last 70 years, and that people no longer treat others like this in America, or anywhere else. But sadly, prejudice still exists, and all kinds of people are victimised all over the world, because of their ethnicity, or their religion, or sexuality, so we don’t seem to have learned anything at all.

Bombs, Boats, and Daffodils...

War Messages: Endpapers in Persephone's Few Eggs and No Oranges
are from a design called London Wall, printed from a fragment of
 rayon  headscard produced by Jacqmar Ltd c.1942.

For those of us born after the Second World War it’s hard to imagine what life must have been like during the six grim years of conflict. History books give the facts, but can be awfully dry, while films and novels tell the story from a particular perspective but rarely give the bigger picture or small details of everyday life. My mother and her friends provide lively images of the war as it touched them, snapshots almost, of events and people who have long gone. Mum remembers her school days when she was the first local girl to attend the London school which moved to her area, and one of her neighbours (who is slightly older) recollects her time as a Land Girl when she drove tractors, operated farm machinery, repaired all things mechanical and was ‘as good as any man’.

However, it’s difficult to know how people actually felt, and I’ve always found that trying to visualise what happened is a bit like trying to do a jig-saw where some of the pieces are missing, and there is no picture to help. But Vere Hodgson manages to fill some of the gaps, and present a portrait of the times which combines lots of different views and is one of the most comprehensive accounts I’ve come across.

Her war diary, Few Eggs and No Oranges (written at the time and edited later), is riveting stuff but, as regular readers will know, I decided on a ‘slow read’ to give myself time to reflect on it. You can see my initial thoughts here and this month I’m looking at the period between January and June 1941. What strikes me most about the entries for these months is the contrast between horror and destruction of the Blitz, and the way Hodgson (and everyone else) was able to find pleasure in the small things of life – a sunny day, flowers in the park, ‘heavenly’ trees. Perhaps the horrors of war, and the uncertainty of life, made these things even more important, providing a touch of beauty and calm amidst the ugliness and chaos of war, boosting people’s spirits and somehow contributing to the symbol of ‘Britishness’ they were trying to defend. 

Anti-aircraft guns pictured in Hyde Park by an official War
Office in photographer in 1939. (Pic courtesy of Wikipedia)

The catalogue of disaster in London, where Hodgson lived and worked, goes on and on, as houses, shops, offices, churches and all kinds of other places are flattened by Nazi bombs. Night after night she hears the ‘thrum’ of enemy planes and noise from anti-aircraft guns, along with terrific bangs and the sound of falling masonry. She sees fires in the distance, as the glow of flames and smoke lights up the sky. On one occasion she feels the house ‘sway like a popular tree’. She relates other people’s experiences, like the woman in a café where the cups and saucers dance and rattle on the tables as a bomb falls nearby, and everyone calmly carries on eating their meal. Or the lady fire-watcher who declares that during one raid she saw’ the two walls of the corridor almost meet – and then the house right itself’.

Hodgson is endlessly interested in what is happening, not just in London, but elsewhere in Britain. She notes reports that pour in from Swansea, Cardiff, the south coast ports, Clydeside, Merseyside, Coventry… it’s hard to grasp the scale of the damage and the loss of life. I found her description of damage caused to places I know the most moving. After visiting her mother in Birmingham for Easter (in April 1941), she writes:

At Snow Hill we were aghast to find the platform an awful mess. A bomb had fallen direct on it – the whole place was all churned up. Fortunately not on the line, but they were mending the platform for us to get out. I was met, and heard the story of the big raid. An awful night! Bombs and landmines everywhere. The Great Western Arcade had looked pretty bad before; but now it was a ruin.

Workmen clearing a platform at Snow Hill after Birmingham
was bombed on the night of April 10, 1941.  This is what Vere
Hodgson saw as she arrived in the morning.
(http://www.warwickshire railways.comdd caption)

The gas main in Victoria Square had been struck and the flames, still burning when she passed by, had reached as high as the top of the Council House. The General Hospital had to be evacuated, there were delayed action bombs in the grounds of the university, and about two thirds of the city centre was destroyed. She adds:

Midland Arcade a ruin in all directions. Round to the Bull Ring. Worcester Street closed for a delayed action bomb. Many firemen still playing hoses on the smoking ruins. St Martin’s Church had a good slice off. We had seen enough. We realised there was plenty more.

When I was a child and we caught the train to Waterloo you could still see war-damaged buildings alongside the railway line. There were gaps in rows of houses filled with rubble where wild flowers bloomed, and dirty, fading scraps of wallpaper and paint still adhering to broken walls, while the ragged remnants of curtains flapped around vanished windows. Over the years we watched tall flats rise up, and the street scene changed. But somehow, when I moved to the Midlands I failed to connect those views of London with Birmingham, and although I knew the city was badly bombed, I never realised the full extent of the damage.  It may sound naïve, but I just assumed that all the newer buildings were the result of modern development, road schemes, and so on, and never questioned why they were needed. I had no idea that so much of central Birmingham had to be rebuilt – in fact, after reading Hodgson’s diary I’m surprised that so many historic buildings survived.

There, I got side-tracked, just as I always do, but I’m sure Vere Hodgson would not have minded – she was a great one for meandering from topic to topic. In her diary she maintains a sense of humour and remains cheerful, continuing with everyday life as best she can, and enjoying the small pleasures that come her way, and everyone else was doing exactly the same.

On a sunny day crowds bask on the grass in the park, or relax in chairs, unbothered by the fact that there are unexploded bombs just a few yards away. Her joy in such scenes is unexpected, almost shocking, and the juxtaposition of the ordinary against the extraordinary throws the hellish happenings of the Blitz into even sharper relief. 

Daffodil: Was it a s symbol of defiance and resistance in the
dark days of  World War Two?

On April 20, for example, she tells us about a raid and, but goes on to describe the thundery weather, adding:  

Walked in the Park – all lovely and green. The daffodils were lifting their great horns proudly, in spite of the storm; a great white magnolia tree was out.

Whether she intended the image to be metaphor for the desperate situation of those days I don’t know, but the daffodils seemed to be raising their trumpets, defying a storm in the natural world, just as Londoners were defying Hitler's man-mind storm of the war.

A week later (April 27) I liked the following entry:

Saw the guns in Hyde Park for the first time. Sun came out and the Serpentine looked lovely. The weeping willows are all yellow green and their graceful light branches trailed down to the water. Many people were boating. Chestnut trees were well on.

Again, it’s the picture of normal life alongside the paraphernalia of war which is so touching, that makes you stop and think. 

A Little List of Books....

I’ve now finished the ‘treat’ books which I bought courtesy of my mother, and I’m  delighted to say there wasn’t a dud among them – I loved them all. Actually, when I say I’ve completed them, I’m lying, because I’ve got two Works in Progress where I opted for slow reads: Vere Hodgson’s wartime diaries, Few Oranges and No Eggs, and the Short Stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner. As a rule I’m a fairly fast reader (I want to know what happens, so I have to reach the end quickly, then I can go back and take my time with a re-read!). But Hodgson’s book is such a chunkster, and so packed with information and observations that it lends itself to a more leisurely approach, which gives me time to take everything in, and to think about what life must have been like, and to look things up, and find other books from the same period. And short stories, I’ve decided, should be read one (or possibly two) at a time, rather than racing through an entire book in one fell swoop, which means my brain gets overloaded, and I cannot appreciate the individual tales because they all get jumbled up together! I am sure I never used to have problems like that – it must be a side effect of old age and decrepitude!

Anyway, I’ve got a little list of the new batch of books collected from charity shops over the summer, and I’m looking forward to making a start on them. They are mainly ‘old’ books – vintage Penguins and VMCs predominate, and there is only one live author among them. What does that say about me I wonder? Sometimes I think I should read more modern fiction, but why change the habits of a lifetime!

First is Novel on Yellow Paper by poet Stevie Smith, which I’m reading at the moment, and enjoying immensely. It is one of the most extraordinary novels I’’ve ever come across, which will make writing about it quite a challenge, but I’m hoping to put up a post next week, however inadequate my thoughts may seem.

Next is another novel from another poet: Mr Petre, by Hilaire Belloc, who is known mainly for his Cautionary Tales (remember Matilda, who told such dreadful lies, it made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes, or Henry King, whose chief defect was chewing little bits of string). I knew he wrote more serious poetry, but hadn’t realised he was a prolific author, who also produced novels, travel books, political essays and all sorts of other things. This particular book is a very shabby old Penguin (number 633, with a dancing bird on the front) and I have no idea what to expect. According to the blurb on the inside cover:

Mr Petre was undoubtedly a financial magnate at whose name the stock markets of the world wobbled. And the Englishman in American clothes, who had landed at Southampton from New York was undoubtedly Mr Petre. Indeed, it was the only thing about which he has no doubt, that his name was Petre. Otherwise his memory was a blank.

Anyway, we shall see what I make of it. If I hate it, I’ll give it to Oxfam!

And I have another Penguin, though this one was published a little later – it’s a 1979 edition of The Enchanted Places, by Christopher Milne, and I have every hope that it will prove to be as enchanting as the title, and as pleasurable to read as the stories about Pooh and Christopher Rob written by his father, AA Milne. I’ve read reviews by other bloggers who adored this, but cannot remember who they were - Simon T at Stuck in a Book perhaps, or Claire at The Captive Reader. So, since I cannot refer you to a sensible writer, I shall have to quote from the Blurb on the Back, which states:

With deftness and artistry Milne has drawn a memorable portrait of his father, and an evocative reconstruction of a happy childhood in London and Sussex. It is a story told with humour and modesty.

And, while mooching around in a charity shop in Barnstaple I unearthed another autobiography, by author Noel Streatfeild. A Vicarage Family looks to be a gentle, nostalgic stroll through her Edwardian childhood, and I’m curious to see how it influenced her writing. I’ve yet to read any of her adult fiction, but I’ve read and loved many of her children’s stories, and would like to know more about her.

Hunt the Slipper by Violet Trefusis sounds very different. She and Streatfeild were born a year apart, yet their lives and writing are worlds apart. All I know about Trefusis is that she was the daughter of Alice Keppel (the mistress of Edward VII) and that she was the lover of Vita Sackville-West – didn’t they actually elope together at some point? And I seem to remember reading that their affair and its aftermath inspired Virginia Woolf to write Orlando. Anyway, once again my lack of knowledge means I’ll have to fall back on the Book Blurb for information:

Nigel Benson is a 49-year-old sybarite, living in comfort with his sister Molly in their gracious country house near Bath, occasionally indulging in the odd love affair. One day he visits his neighbour Sir Anthony Crome where he meets Caroline, young, restless, fascinating – and Sir Anthony’s new wife. They meet again in Paris, fall passionately in love, and their exquisite game begins!

Serendipity must have been at work here, because the very next book I came across was The Edwardians, by Vita Sackville-West, which I spotted in the shop at our local tip, or Household Waste Recycling Centre as it is now known! I liked All Passion Spent, which focuses on an elderly woman at the end of her life, but here Sackvile-West’s central characters are much, much younger. I’ve done nothing but quote from Blurbs in this post, but until I’ve read the books I can’t say anything else! For what’s worth, this one tells us that:

Sebastian and Violet are siblings, and children of the English aristocracy. Handsome and moody, ay nineteen Sebastian is heir to the vast country estate, Chevron. A deep sense of tradition and love of the English countryside tie him to his inheritance, yet he loathes the glittering cold and extravagant society of which he is part. Viola, at sixteen, is more independent: an unfashionable beauty who scorns every part of her inheritance – most particularly that of womanhood.

Finally, I bought a copy of Things That Are, Encounters with Plants, Stars and Animals by Amy Leach, because I picked it up in Waterstones in Birmingham, just to look at it, and ended up sitting on the floor reading it. On the back says: “This is a book about the Universe which begins with swimming salmon and ends with the starry sky.” That’s a pretty good description really, because it’s a series of short essays reflecting on life, the universe and everything, with snippets about nature, history, science, myth, and a host of other things, and as the author ponders them she also thinks about Man and his place in all this. She reminded me of Kathleen Jamie, and I’m enjoying this slender volume very much indeed.

In addition to my ‘new’ books I’m still exploring short stories, and will be posting my thoughts on Sundays (well, most Sundays), and I’ve been looking at Vere Hodgson’s diaries from January to June 1941, and trying to discover a bit more about life on the Home Front. And I’m trawling through my gardening books to discover what I should be doing in the garden – if I can spare the time from reading! All this will probably take me into October, but it’s nice to have a list, even if I don’t stick to it!

What plans does anyone else have for reading in September? Have you got a stash of new books to see you through the autumn, or do you turn to old favourites as the weather grows colder and the dark nights begin to close in?