Mayan plants in common use

   A bright day in Shropshire, and I've been putting off writing this until the time when the Mayans predicted the world was going to come to an end had passed, in case I was wasting my time. For a moment, when a strange ball of fire suddenly appeared in the sky after days of blanket cloud and rain, I thought they'd got it right. Then I realised that the strange object was only the sun making a very rare appearance above us.

    The Mayans were an ancient civilization, who lived in what are now Honduras, Guatemala and Yucatan in the south of Mexico, between 500 BC and 1241 AD and apart from what has now proved to be an inaccurate prediction, were probably best known for some of the plants they grew, and which were introduced to European use  by the Spanish after their conquest of the Americas during the early sixteenth century.

     The most important of these plants was probably Theobroma cacao, from which both chocolate and cocoa are produced. Zea mays gives us sweet corn and corn oil. The latter being added to a great many of the products we purchase from America. Not always to our advantage if the documentary about corn oil I watched on tv a month or so ago painted an accurate picture. Capsicum fructescens gives us Chillis, Paprika and Cayenne and Green Peppers. Nicotiana tabacum was first made into tobacco and smoked by the Mayans. It was introduced to Europe by Jean Nicot (hence its name) in 1558, and the habit of smoking it introduced to the UK by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585.

     In the garden, well in the house really, at this time of year look out for Euphorbia pulcherrima, the Poinsettia, which originated in Mexico. Its  artificially induced scarlet bracts brighten many a home from Christmas time until the New Year.

If you want to know more why not read Gardens of the Gods, by Brian Taylor, available from Amazon as a hardback book, or the e-book version of it, Sacred Plants of the World from Neanderthal Times until the Present Day, available from Amazon Kindle. 

Cinderella, last of the Vestal Virgins

    Winter Solstice, one of the great fire festivals of the year. People used to light their Yule log at the start of it and have it burning throughout the season. Oak if they could get it, because that was considered most sacred of all.

    Nowadays we are less likely to have a Yule log alight in our homes, but we may go to see a pantomime sometime over the Christmas season. Cinderella perhaps.

   Gustave Dore's illustration from the 1867 edition of Charles Perrault's 'Cinderella'

There can be few people who have never heard of Cinderella. The story of the young girl who overcomes adversity with the help of her fairy godmother is a popular folk tale throughout Europe, where at least 500 versions of it have been  recorded. Less well known, are her connections with vestal virgins, hearth spirits and the cradle of civilisation.

    The roots of the story as we know it can be traced relatively easily to Roman primitive religion, though it is undoubtedly much older than that. Reli­gion in ancient Rome was a family affair in the charge of the head of each family group. Concerned mainly with the personal and material welfare of those involved, it had little room for more than the most rudimentary of moral overtones.

    Worship centred on the home as the gathering point for the family and within the home took as its focus the hearth. Tending the hearth was the responsibility of the younger, unmarried daughters of the family.

    The practice mirrored that adopted by the royal family of Rome in the early days before the Empire. Though the rule was by king, succession was through the female line, as consort to the reigning monarch. This lent an importance to the royal daughters similar to that of the princesses of ancient Egypt.

    The hearth was the centre of Roman life and within it burned a perpetual flame, which was tended for longer or shorter periods, depending on the need. Whilst the royal sons were being sent out into the world to find suitable wives and foreign lands in which to settle, their sisters remained at home until such a time as one of  their number, having been chosen as consort to their successor, gave birth to daughters of their own.

    Proof that the cult was of an antiquity far  beyond that of the growing Rome rests in their choice of sacred animal and of sacred fuel for their fire. The latter - in common with that burnt on sacred fires in many lands which never fell under the influence of the Imperial Empire - was oak. The former was the Mediterranean ass. Basis enough for suspecting that this particular form of worship arose in ancient times in Middle East - the cradle of civilization.

    Wherever she originated, however, and  under whatever guise, there is no escaping the fact that Vesta  was greatly venerated in ancient Rome, where she was believed to belong to the inner circle of twelve gods. Patroness of fire and hearth, she was served by spirits who took responsibility for various parts of the home: the Penates, for instance, who  attended the penus (a cupboard near the hearth where provisions were stored) or the Lares, who were phantoms watching over the house as a whole.

    A legend which is seen as acknowledgement of the divine fire tells of a Lares who assumed the substance of a phallus amidst the the hearth, had intercourse with a slave of King Tarquin's Queen Tanaquil, who was  guarding the hearth, and thus became the father of King Servius Tullius, who arose from the flames like a phoenix.

    Servius Tullius was sixth of the eight kings of Rome, all of whom retained the  perpetual fire as the focus of the community, and their daughters as the most important of the hearth wardens. With the abolition of the kingship this was was no longer possible, however, and the College of Vestals came into being to fill the void.

   At first there were only two, then four, then finally six maidens who served in the temple, which was close to the the king's house in the forum, their own house being next door. They were chosen only from the best families and served under the direction of the chief priest, one of whose jobs was to whip them should the sacred fire  go out. Girls as young as seven years old were taken for training and obliged to serve for at least thirty years before they could retire and marry if they so wished, though few did.

    Vestal Virgins played a prominent part Roman life, particularly the religious aspects of it, and their house was a repository for wills and other important documents. Ordinary people regarded the maidens with the awe and respect such arbiters with the gods attract. They were even allowed the best seats at the theatre at cut price rates. Should the chastity of a Vestal Virgin be violated, however, it was a different matter. The unfortunate victim would be buried alive in the belief that her innocence would be proven should Vesta intervene.

                                Chief Vestal Virgin from a statue in Rome

    How the cult of Vesta came to be associated with that of Diana the hun­tress is not altogether clear. Certainly fire played an important part in the rituals of the latter and was celebrated with holy rites at every hearth on her feast day, 13 August. Her sacred grove at Nemi was guarded by virgins and a sacred fire burned in the round temple similar to that of Vesta in the forum at Rome.

    Nevertheless, Diana was a fertility goddess with a folk-lore reputation far removed from that of the chaste Vesta. Possibly as goddess of the sacred oak which provided the logs she became confused with the goddess of the fire which consumed them. Votive offerings of terra-cotta lamps which were a feature of shrines dedicated to Diana may well have been the forerunners of candles offered in the Catholic churches of the modern world.

    Worship of Vesta and her alter-ego continued throughout the years of empire until the decline of Rome brought an end to the trappings of Imperial rule. By the time the world emerged from the Dark Ages which followed, a new god had swept away the power of Mars, Jupiter, Diana and the rest. Only one of the inner circle survived in a form so altered by folk memory that the new order failed to recognise her and allowed the story to be told unchallenged. So it is that every Christmas, in countless panto­mimes throughout the world, Cinderella, the last of the Vestal Virgins, watches over the eternal fire.



All this information, and much more besides, can be found in the book, Gardens of The Gods, by Brian Taylor, recently given five stars by a satisfied reader. Available from Amazon as a hardback. Or Sacred Plants of the World from Neolithic Times Until the Present Day, its e-book version, available from Amazon Kindle.

A good year for autumn colour

   A foggy day in Shropshire, and I found myself humming the old George and Ira Gershwin classic about London Town as I went about my business, the colours of the trees and shrubs in the garden filling me with anything but alarm as they emerged from the gloom when the sun broke through.

   It's been a good year for autumn colour. Probably because of the mild, wet weather we've had. If it hadn't been for that one night when the temperature fell below freezing, followed by a day of strong winds, it would have been even better, but the vine lost most of its leaves to that, and other things were touched by it enough for them not to be at their best anymore.

    Not that the weather is the main reason we  have autumn colours to enjoy, only how long it lasts some years. The main cause of autumn colour happening is the increasing length of the night.

    Colours in plants are the result of the pigments present. Chlorophyll, which is present throughout the growing season, gives us the basic green. Carotenoids, also there all year, produce yellows, oranges and browns. Anthocyanins, which increase their presence in autumn, give the colour to such things as red apples, cherries, strawberries and plums.

    As night length increases in the autumn chlorophyll production first slows down, then stops, and the chlorophyll is destroyed, leaving the other two pigments free to display their own colours.

   When in early autumn, in response to shortening days and the declining intensity of the sunlight, the veins in the leaves gradually close off, a layer of cells forms at the base of each leaf. These clogged veins trap sugars in the leaves and promote production of more anthocyanins. Once this process is complete and the connecting tissues sealed off, the leaf is ready to fall.

     In the garden, look out for a plant which doesn't change colour in autumn, because it is an evergreen. Fatsia japonica, the Japanese aralia, has large, palmate, glossy dark green leaves all year round, but bears dense clusters of globular milky white flowers in November, which are followed by round black fruits. It is frost hardy, but needs shelter from strong winds in cold areas. The leaves of the variety 'Variegata' have marginal variegations.

Why Weeps the Willow selling well

Why Weeps the Willow seems to be selling very well now thanks to the promotion it's been given since I signed it up to Kindle Direct Publishing Select.

I always thought that people would buy the book if they only knew it was out there to buy, and that certainly seems to have been the case.

My father came from Norfolk and when I was a child we used to spend our summer holidays staying at my grandmother's house in the Waveney Valley.

After she died we continued holidaying in Norfolk, but on the north coast of the county, near Holkham Hall. It was Holkham which gave me the idea for Lacey Hall in my story.

Why Weeps the Willow grew out of a love of ghost stories as well as a love of Norfolk. It wasn't the first one I wrote, but it was the best.

I wrote it several times. Becky Melchin, one of the main characters in the final version didn't even appear in the first, but she grew on me somehow, and almost took over the story in the end.

The Calthorpes of Wiverton, whose story I used as the reason the Symonds Family pulled out of shipping, really existed. I read about them once in the Norfolk Magazine.

The County Agricultural Inspectorate was a real body during the First World War, and the agricultural practices recommended to the Symonds by them were accepted agricultural practices of the time, intended to improve the output of the land. Sugar Beet was introduced to East Anglia around the time of the First World War for the reasons given. Turnip Townsend and Cole of Holkham were landowners and agricultural innovators during the seventeen hundreds.

The treatment of amnesiacs by incarcerating them in an asylum was common practice at one time, so it would have been possible for Paul Kingdom's condition to have been treated in that way.

I  borrowed Paul's experiences at the Front from a number of books I read, which were written at the time of the First World War by officers serving in France, and the Zeppelin attack on the Marconi Works at Chelmsford, described by Reverend Melchin, really happened.

When writing the main version of Why Weeps the Willow I had a chart on my wall with Lacey and the Hall mapped out on it, so I could be sure that it was geographically possible for the things which I said happened there to occur. Such as the harvest moon facing Paul along the length of the ride at the start of Chapter Two.

I also had a time line on the wall, so that there wouldn't be any mistakes in the sequence of events as I set them down, and so that if any should creep in I would pick them up and put them right.

Why Weeps the Willow has been a labour of  love over the years, and I like to feel that my grandmother, whose picture as a young woman forms the cover of the book, would have approved of it being used in that way.

Summer's End

A cloudy day in Shropshire, and I've just been out in the garden surrounded by a plethora of holly blue butterflies flitting from flower to flower.
   There was a lot of debate earlier in the year as to whether or not we'd actually get any butterflies this year, after the heavy rains of spring and early summer, but the holly blues, of which I didn't see a single example in my garden last year, obviously didn't mind the rain at all. The common blue butterflies, of which I had a myriad in the garden last year, however, are not at all common this year. In fact I haven't seen a single one.
    It's been that sort of year all round. The honeysuckle, obviously enjoying the conditions we've had in the garden this year, is still flowering as if there was no tomorrow, and the Vitis coignetiae, which some years seeems to almost pause and mark time before it decides whether or not it's going to bother make any growth at all, has obviously decided to take over the world this year, starting with the bower at the end of the garden, which has almost disappeared beneath  the rampant growth of its stems and twining tendrils. The mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), on the other hand, which prefers drier, warmer conditions, refused to show any signs of life at all until I dug it up and moved it into the greenhouse, where it grew quite happily until I returned it to the garden, whereupon  it promptly went back to its earlier state of dormancy.
   In the garden, look out for the snow-white, pulpy fruits of Symphoricarpos albus, the snowberry, which appear in early autumn, and last well into the winter, because they remain untouched by birds.
   The common form of the shrub isn't one I'd ever recommend inroducing  into your garden, because it's practically impossible to get rid of it again if you do. If, like me however, you have inherited it as a constituent of  the hedge around your garden, you might as well enjoy looking at the berries when they are there to see, and try to forget how invasive those bits of it you can't see, because they are below ground, are being.

Harvest Customs

  
During the days of Greek influence in ancient Egypt, travellers were often intrigued to observe reapers huddled together in the harvest fields, lifting their heads and voices in a long melancholy and repetitive cry as they lamented the death of the corn spirit, which had fallen victim to the blades of their scythes as they cut through the final stand of corn in which it had taken refuge.
    It was a practice far more widespread than is generally appreciated. In Devonshire until comparatively recent times harvesters would circle and chant around a straw figure being lifted towards the heavens by the oldest man present, who had fashioned the figure out of straw from the final sheaf.
   Rituals such as these have been practised ever since early man discovered that certain grassses growing in the Middle East yielded fodder for his animals and food for himself. They have been passed from tribe to tribe, from nation to nation, and from religion to religion, but always they remain essentially the same. The names of the participants are all that vary - Isis, Ceres, Demeter, Earth Mother, Goddess of Fertility.
   Their importance began at a time when man the hunter was completing the metamorphosis to man the farmer and finding his new way of life to be just as precarious as the old. Aware that his survival depended upon the germination of his seeds, but uncertain of the elements which meant the difference between crop failure and life-preserving harvest, he turned to the family unit for inspiration. From the knowledge that the giving of life was purely a female characteristic, the idea of as supreme female deity developed, until it culminated in the sacred festivals held  at Eleusis during the first century BC, which were dedicated to Demeter and Persephone.
    The oldest literary document which narrates their story is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, dated about 7 BC. It tells of the youthful Persophone, kidnapped and taken as his wife by Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, who is saved by the intervention of Zeus after her mother, the goddess Demeter, witheld the germination of all seeds until her daughter was returned to her.
  Returned she was, for Zeus was supreme god and had to be obeyed, but before Persophone left Pluto tricked into eating a pomegranate - the seeds of which are a sacred symbol of faithfulness - with the result that she was compelled to return to the underworld for at least four months of the year.
   The Green Festival, held before the corn had ripened, and the later Festival of the Cornstalks, included sacrifices to Demeter and Persophone, but little else is known of them.
   Propitiation of the Harvest Spirit by human sacrifice was the practice of some primitive people until well into the nineteenth century, and was probably a part of the heritage of our own culture. Certainly the Bible hints at it, and the rough handling given to some of the characters in the harvest rituals in our own islands  has more than a suggestion of derivation from sacrificial rites.
   Less savage are the Norse legends of Frigga. One of her maidens - Fulla - was very beautiful, and symbolic of corn, for her hair was long and the golden colour of grain. It hung free from any restraint other than a circlet of gold, which represented the binding of the sheaf. In recognition of Fulla the girl chosen to be Corn Maiden at a harvest celebration often wore a yellow sash across a white dress.

   Also of Norse origin was the image arrayed in great finery, crowned with flowers, a sheaf of corn under her arm, and a sickle in her hand, which was set upon a pole in the corner of the final field on the final day of reaping in many parts of Northumberland. Known locally as the Harvest Queen, the figure was undoubtedly a development of the primordial monarch 'Sheaf'.
   Harvest customs practised in fields are, of course, aimed at corn spirits rather than deities, and are magical rather than propitiatory. The fashioning of a heavy female figure from the final sheaf of corn in order to get a heavy crop. Splashing or soaking it with water to ensure adequate rainfall the following year. Strewing grain from the final sheaf amongst the young crops during the following spring to induce them to grow more prolifically. Setting the oldest married woman in the village to make the final sheaf into human shape known as the Mother. Setting the youngest girl in the village over seven years of age to make the final sheaf into a human shape known as the Maiden. These and a myriad other examples of sympathetic magic are still encountered  in many places at harvest time, albeit only under the guise of country crafts, folk dancing and the like these days.
   It was Christianity which, as ever, was responsible for the loss of true belief in rituals as essential to a good harvest as the sowing of the seed itself. Once priests welcomed the harvest with peals of bells and blessed the corn puppet fixed above the chancel arch, but as the power of the Church grew this ceased to be the case. First the manikin straightened itself out into the shape of the cross, then the bells were silenced. Finally the tribute offered to the Earth Mother that she should smile on the coming season became a thanksgiving to the Christan God for that which had just ended. Thus a celebration of the old year was created from what had always been a preparation for that which was about to begin.
  In the fields, however - at least for a while -  things went on very much as before. There were counties where it was believed that the corn spirit withdrew from farm to farm before the advance of the reapers, with the result that it would be slain in the final field of the most laggard of the farmers.
   The moment the last stand of corn on a farm fell a reaper would leap onto a waggon to announce the fact to the spirit and tell it to whose fields it should go next.
   These, of course, were districts in which the corn spirit was considered to be an unwelcome visitor. In parts of Scotland, on the other hand, the final sheaf was held to possess curative powers because of the presence of the corn spirit within it. At the end of a year spent in a place of honour in the farmhouse or byre it would be burnt and the ashes used in ointments for various ailments. In some parts of England farmers would fashion a corn dolly from the final sheaf and in the centre of it leave a hollow in which the corn spirit could rest. Here it would remain in a place of honour until the following spring when, after being carried in procession around the fields, it would be released from the corn dolly to awaken the freshly sown seeds to life.
   That was still in the future, however. Once the final stand had been cut and the corn spirit either driven off or honoured, according to local custom, the dry corn had to be loaded onto waggons and taken to the barns to be stored until winter threshing.
   The final waggon, or Hock Cart as it was often called, was as important in its own way as the final sheaf which helped to decorate it in honour of the Goddess of the Corn.
   The horses which drew it wore sunflowers and scarlet ribbons on their blinkers and garlands of corn around necks and ears. The children who bore it wore branches of green foliage and festoons of flowers. The captain of reapers who walked alongside it wore a crown of flowers. The corn maden who rode upon it wore a straw bonnet decorated with corn and flowers and a yellow sash around the waist of her white dress. High above all of them the 'Ivy Girl' or 'Corn Baby' - a single sheaf from the best corn in the field, dressed by the women and adorned with paper trimmings cut to resemble a cap, ruffles and handkerchief of the finest lace - was raised upon a pole set in the centre of the waggon.
   A long way perhaps from the Eleusinian festivals of Demeter, or from the goddess Ceres, who gave her name to the entire range of corn crops, yet very similar to how far we have drifted from even those watered down  nineteenth century versions of the festivals in modern times.
   What the gradual suppression of the old beliefs by the organised church began, mechanisation, government subsidies, scientific 'advances' in agricultural practices, and EEC over-production completed. Now just the faintest echoes remain of the lost rituals and practices of ancient times, and though some of us may still remember the corn spirit, there aren't enough who lament its passing anymore.

If you want to know more, why not read Gardens of the Gods, by Brian Taylor, available from Amazon as a hardback book, or its e-book version, Sacred Plants of the World from Neolithic Times Until the Present Day, available from Amazon Kindle.

Summer Solstice

     A sunny afternoon in Shropshire, and I've been sitting admiring the plethora of flowers on the honeysuckle trailing across the bower at the end of the garden. The fine display possibly being a result of an abundance of rainfall. Something which honeysuckles revel in.
    Of course, to bring out what many people consider to be the best feature of those flowers, a heavenly scent intended to attract the moths which have to seek them out to fertilise them at night, warm and balmy evenings are also called for, and they have been decidedly lacking this year. So, unfortunately, has the scent.
    If left to their own devices, as I've seen happen in more than one park, honeysuckles grow and grow, covering anything available for them to twine their way through, until their centres eventually become choked with dead growth, and require a great deal of remedial work to bring them back under control. Much better to prune those honeysuckles such as Lonicera periclymenum, common honeysuckle, which flower early in the season, back by a third immediately after flowering, and the later flowering types such as Lonicera japonica, Japanese honeysuckle, which flower on current year's growth, by simply trimming back any over long shoots in spring.
    Where we were staying in Spain last year they had made a hedge out of honeysuckles and had obviously cut it with hedgecutters as if it was a hedge. It had grown into a very effective barrier as a result of that treatment, but I don't know that it's a management regime I would risk trying out on my plants at home.
     In the garden, from now until long after the honeysuckle's flowering season has passed, look out for one of the Crane's Bills, Geranium endressii 'Wargrave Pink', a semi evergreen perennial with small, lobed leaves and cup-shaped rose-pink flowers borne throughout the summer.

Winter weather lingers on through April

   A day of heavy showers and wild winds in Shropshire, as the weather makes a mockery of the fact that this part of the country is officially considered to be suffering a drought. And so cold too! There have been as many night time frosts in April as there were in March, but with much lower day time temperatures than there were at the end of that month. No wonder seeds are struggling to germinate in the garden. The ground is simply too cold for them to grow.
    I've just been replacing the fibreglass tubs on my patio, which succombed to the extreme frosts of the past two winters. The half whisky barrels I've replaced them with might not look as good, but they ought to last longer.
    One of the advantages of raised beds of any sort is that they bring the garden to a height that is more workable for those amongst us who find it difficult  to stoop or bend over to a flat garden bed. Another advantage is that the soil in them tends to warm up more quickly, so seed sown in them germinates earlier in the season than seed sown in the garden around. Use of a light, well drained compost in the container adds to this quality, but its benefit is offset by the fact that containers, getting sun, heat and wind coming at them from all sides as they do, tend to dry out more speedily in consequence. Plants grown in them need to be watered more often as a result and, because more frequent watering leads to nutrients being leached from the soil with more frequency, more feeding too.
    In the garden look out for the locket-like pink and white flowers arching above deeply incised foliage of Dicentra spectabilis "Bleeding Heart" or "Dutchman's Breeches" which may be brightening up a container near you from May to July, if the weather ever warms up enough to allow it.

Patron Saints

   A pleasantly sunny day in Shropshire, and I’ve just been out in the garden enjoying the peace and quiet of a Sunday afternoon.

   Listening to all that was being said about it being St Patricks Day last weekend set me thinking about another Irish patron saint who gets very little recognition of any sort these days. Saint Fiacre, the patron saint of gardeners.

   Fiacre was born in Ireland during the latter part of the seventh century, and brought up in a monastery, where he specialised in the study of healing herbs before going off to France to set up a hermitage there.

    He asked the Bishop of Meaux for land for a garden where he could grow food and healing herbs for his followers, and was told he could have as much land as he could surround by a furrow in one day. The Bishop, of course, had expected Fiacre to use a plough, but the wily horticulturalist used the tip of his staff instead, and in that way was able to outline a far bigger plot for his purposes. The garden thus enclosed, became a place of pilgrimage for centuries for those seeking healing.

   Rather unexpectedly, Fiacre is also patron saint of haemorrhoids, making him doubly useful for gardeners who spent too much time sitting on the cold stone seats which used to be found in parks and gardens in days gone by.

   In the garden, if it isn’t too uncomfortable for you to walk there, look out for the large bright blue flowers, and glossy dark green leaves carried on trailing stems, of Vinca Major, the Greater Periwinkle, still used as a topical treatment for haemorrhoids to this day. 

Winter's Ending?

  Winter, which seemed to be slipping by quietly and peacefully, as if apologising for the bitter weather we've had to put up with for the last two years, has turned suddenly and unexpectedly to snow, as if to remind us that it is still only January as yet, and time for  a lot more wintery weather before spring eventually arrives.  

    Mind, turning as it has just before February 2nd, which is Candlemas, or Imbolc, depending on your beliefs, when nature begins to awaken from her winter's sleep, might be a good thing because, as the old rhyme tells us, if Candlemas brings snow and rain, winter is gone and won't come again. If Candlemas be clear and bright, winter will have another flight.

   A good thing I got on with digging compost into my garden whilst the weather still mild and dry enough to do it.

  Compost made from rotted down leaves and vegetable matter you've gathered in your garden is an example of what used to be known as bulky organic fertilizer when I was a young gardener. Farmyard manure or stable manure were the best if you could get them. Circus manure was better avoided, especially elephant dung. That was so acidic nothing would grow in it, and the mountain of the stuff we collected one winter from a circus appearing on a nearby common remained mouldering an unuseable in a corner of the yard for years.

     Plants need adequate amounts of sixteen essential elements if they are to flourish. All of the elements, apart from carbon and oxygen, have to be absorbed from the soil. In the days before compound fertilizers made everything much less hit and miss nitrogen could be added by digging in shoddy (a by-product of woollen and textile factories), bone meal or hoof and horn, all of which contained anything from 1% to 12% of the element though, in those days, the latter two sometimes also carried the threat of the user contracting anthrax from them as a bonus. Phosphorus could be added by digging in basic slag. Not the body of a low life character done away with in an episode of The Bill in the days when it was still on, but a by-product from the steel industry containing anything from 10% – 19% of phosphorus.

     In the garden, beyond the compost heap you hope won't wear its covering of snow for long, look out for Viburnum tinus (Laurustinus), a bushy evergreen shrub bearing flat heads of small, white flowers opening from pink buds during late winter and early spring.

Twelfth Night

    A pouring wet day in Shropshire, as the weather continues to make up for all those dry days in early autumn by raining incessantly from dawn to dusk. Despite that, however, I'm not sure the amount we've had so far has been enough to raise ground water levels to what they ought to be.

     It's certainly been a milder winter so far than last year's was. And no need yet to "look to your stored fruit" as The English Husbandman  advised its readers to do during frosty weather in 1635. Adding that, covering their apples all over with fine hay, barley chaff, or salt, would serve readers better than hanging the apples in nets in warm air, which would "render them dry and withered".  For myself, I find that wrapping apples in sheets of newspaper, and placing them in shallow trays, as the Royal Horticultural Society's Fruit Garden Displayed advices, keeps those I've harvested edible well into the New Year.

     The RHS, of course, confines itself to practical gardening, so doesn't give any advice on whether or not there is any point in wassailing your apple trees on Twelfth Night in order to increase their crop.

     It is a practice dating back at least to the Vikings, by way of the Saxons. Was Hail, in their language, meaning Good Health. Wishes which were directed at both the apple trees and the cider drinkers.

     Details of how the wassailing was actually carried out varied from region to region around the country, but it generally involved placing toast soaked in cider in the fork of each tree, pouring a libation of cider around its trunk, and directing a loud noise of some sort into the tree's branches by means of a gun, a firework, or banging on a can, to awaken the spirit of the tree from its winter slumber.

     In the garden, quietly, so as not to awaken the tree if you're doing it before Twelfth Night, look out for the showy scarlet fruit of Malus x robusta, one of the flowering Crab Apples, which has attractive pink and white blossom in April, and keeps its crabs dangling on long stalks until February and beyond.

                   Photograph Malus x robusta Red Sentinel  Rasbak at nl.wikipedia