Daffodils

Dora's field, Rydal. photo: Tony Richards

'....all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze '

From a Georgian Farmhouse- 3



‘I fancy a drift of daffodils at the near end of the orchard’, said Mum.

Her friend Margaret, who ran the Bellgarth Nurseries in Carlise gave her a large selection of daffodil and narcissus bulbs.


‘I’ll get Old Ernie to plant them on Saturday,’ said Mum (There were two Ernies - Ernie the Blacksmith, and Old Ernie who came to do the garden.)


Old Ernie was a gardener of the ‘Municipal’ type; he liked things ‘just so’. Mum’s front borders were planted with neat and even rows of alternating allysum and lobelia, with scarlet salvias lined up behind them. Patriotic and oh so formal.


‘Mmm…something a bit less...well... regimented would be nice,’ murmured Mum. But Old Ernie was in charge.


Mum explained what she wanted for the daffs, and Old Ernie planted them.




‘Oh, no!’ said Mum when the green blades pushed through the orchard grass in the Spring. ‘O, no! Just look at my daffs,’

There they stood, in three immaculately straight lines along the edge of the orchard lawn - like serried ranks of soldiers on parade.

It took Mum several years of surreptitious planting to soften the rows of Old Ernie’s planting scheme. And the result was never quite the ‘drift’ that she had envisaged - but the flowers were pretty all the same.

‘and then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils’
Wordsworth.

The Village Blacksmith

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

(Longfellow)

Tales from a Cumbrian Farmhouse - 2



'Support the Private Trader'

By the 60s horse-shoeing was no longer the most significant part of the smith’s trade.
Ernie, our local blacksmith, whose forge was in the next village a mile away, spent a large part of his time making and mending farm equipment. Dad believed in supporting the private traders (being one himself) and this included local tradesmen, too; any carpentry or building work was carried out by people from the village.

Ernie persuaded Dad that what he needed was ‘yen o’ thae thistle-cutters’ which duly appeared; it was a small trailer with a flat metal plate, under which were 4 rotating blades Then came a compact muck-spreader, both machines small enough to be towed by the Land-Rover.

Next Dad fancied an iron railing to replace the old fence at the near end of the orchard

Dad, - who was anxious to seem a true countryman - and Ernie sat in the morning-room having countryman-style conversations over a glass of Forest Brown Ale - (Dad was a tea-totaller really, but was happy to make the sacrifice for his country friends.)

I know that Dad envisaged a no-nonsense simple affair, in keeping with the farmyard, so he asked Ernie,

‘Now, Ernie - I need an iron railing for the orchard’

Three minutes pause

‘O, aye. I can do that fer yer alright’

Three minutes pause.

‘Right. That’s champion! ’

Men of few words.

So Ernie fashioned the railing in his forge, and eventually brought it down and placed it in position. Dad was at work, and later Mum rang him up.

‘Ernie’s finished the railings’, she said

‘O fine - how does it look?’

‘Wait and see,’ said Mum.

Ernie, who saw wrought-iron work as an escape from the more utilitarian tasks, had taken the opportunity to let his creative side flourish. He had fashioned an ornate panel with more curls than Shirley Temple :

Of course to Ernie, Dad said, ‘Oh, Grand. That’s grand, Ernie’

To us he said, ‘O heck, It makes the place look like a bloody dolls’ house’

An interesting word:

Atramentous \At'ra'MEN'tus\ adjective: of or pertaining to ink; inky; black, like ink; as 'atramental galls', 'atramentous spots'. (from the Latin atramentum - 'black liquid, ink')

Season of Mists

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all f ruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease
For Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells…

(Keats)

For 27 years my family lived in a Georgian farmhouse in Cumbria (which was then called Cumberland ) a few miles from the border with Scotland

Tales from a Cumbrian Farmhouse (1)

My mother decides that this is the day to harvest the plums from the fan-trained trees growing against the byre wall.

This afternoon she will pick the plums and make them into jam. Steamed jam pudding cooked with home-made plum jam is Dad’s favourite. But first she must go into town (seven miles away) to meet ‘the girls’ for coffee and to buy several bags of sugar for the jam.

She drives into town in our ‘second’ car - which is actually a Land Rover. This is not the fashionable four-by-four of today, but a grey-coloured heavy-duty farm vehicle. It has a cab at the front and an open back suitable for carrying bales of hay for feeding the cattle; we are always rather embarrassed to be seen in town with this rough and ready vehicle. She has her coffee, promises the ‘girls’ a pot of jam each, buys her sugar and drives back.

She prepares the kitchen for jam-making, rinsing out the jam-pan, and getting out a bowl for the plums, then changes her mind; it’s a particularly good crop this year - a larger vessel will be needed. She sings to herself, excited at the thought of the line of jam pots which will grace the pantry shelf later today.

First she must pick the plums
to make the jam
that goes in the pudding
that Dad likes

She bustles out to the front garden, and approches the trees. She looks at them, puzzled.

Something is wrong. This-morning the branches were heavy with purple-red fruits. Now - there is just green. She looks closer. Every plum - except for one or two small unripe ones near the top - has gone, neatly plucked from it’s stem.

She gasps, ’Oh’ out loud. ’Oh, no. Surely not?’ She is shaking now, her hand to her mouth in disbelief.

She goes in and collapses onto a ladder-backed kitchen chair. Mum is not a weeper, but if she was, she would weep now.


There was a boy of around 14 in the village, who often went up ‘our hill’ - and came down with his pockets stuffed either with pears from the tree halfway up, or in the winter with kindling. Dad good-humouredly called him ‘Whip-it-Quick’

We never did find out for certain who pinched the plums. But we had our suspicions.
So, Whip-it-Quick - if by the remotest chance you are reading this - well...you know who you are.
And, by the way, you owe me ten and a half pounds of plums.

Our dog, Rap, showing on the left the fan-trained
plum trees, bare this time due to heavy pruning!

A lovely word:
tatterdemalion \tat-uhr-dih--MAY-lee-uhn\,
noun:. A person dressed in tattered or ragged clothing; a ragamuffin.
adjective: Tattered; ragged.