March is a month of MAGIC - strange things happen, stirrings, movements under the soil, buds open on bare twigs, and I itch to start gardening again. But March is a fickle month, and can confound my creativity with alternate days of winter and summer, one day snow and the next sunshine. But I am planning, and sowing seeds, and pottering in the greenhouse. This is what William Wordsworth wrote about March in a poem to his sister Dorothy It is the first mild day of March / Each minute sweeter than before; / The redbreast sings from the tall larch / That stands beside our door. There is a blessing in the air, / Which seems a sense of joy to yield / To the bare trees, and mountains bare, / And grass in the green field. My sister ! ('tis a wish of mine) / Now that our morning meal is done, / Make haste, your morning task resign; / Come forth and feel the sun. The Wordsworths, William and sister Dorothy, liked gardening, and Dorothy recorded their activities and plants in her Grasmere Diaries. 1802 19 April. A mild rain very warm. Wm worked in the garden ... 1802 28 May .... In the garden we have lilies and many other flowers. The scarlet Beans are up in crowds ... May roses blossoming. Nearer to home another diarist recorded his horticultural year in a brief diary kept between 1784 and 1785. There were other volumes but they have been lost. James Coates lived in a village only a few miles from me and recorded 1785 30 March Wheeling dung into our garden 1785 16 April Sowing our onions, reddish [sic], lettuce and cabbage seeds and digging till 6 o'clock. I have over a hundred Auriculas, all grown myself from seed, and they are just starting to come awake and show their gorgeous little faces. I just love them. Cucumbers and tomatoes. I normally sow far too many seeds and then have no room for them in the greenhouse, so this year I am being a bit more sensible. Four cucumbers, so far three have germinated. It is wonderful to watch them turn towards the light. Two different varieties of tomato, one red and one yellow. I have long had a passion for gardening. I just love growing things. And both my parents were good gardeners. Many, many years ago, in the early 1950s, they bought some roses from Braithwaites at Leeming Bar. They loved them and we knew them all by name. One was called Rosemary Rose. So when my first daughter was born in 1979, and I called her Rosemary, they dug up Rosemary Rose and gave it to me. It has moved house with us several times, and we still have it. When my second daughter was born I wanted to have a plant named after her, Anna, and as an avid listener to Gardeners' Question Time on a Sunday afternoon on the Radio, wrote to them to ask their advice on a plant called Anna. This was in the days of Fred Loads, Bill Sowerbutts and Professor Alan Gemmell. They read out my letter and came up with a vegetable, can't remember what it was ! But I had in mind a rose. However, suggestions came in from listeners. I had a lovely correspondence with the lady who sent this letter. Oh the joy of letters ! I kept them of course. Now it would all be by email and no record kept. She suggested several roses called Anna, Wheatcroft, Pavlova, Ford etc Anna as a little tot, and the red rose is Rosemary Rose. In the end I bought the rose Anna Ford for her, a lovely apricot coloured rose. And last year I dug that up and gave it to the now grown-up Anna who now has her first house and garden. Another listener to GQT sent me this gorgeous picture on a card. The artist was James Noble, well known for flower paintings, and the rose is called Anna Zinkeisen. Isn't it a joy ? So of course I wanted to know who Anna Zinkeisen was to warrant such an accolade. She too was an artist. Anna Katrina Zinkeisen was one of two artist sisters, the other was Doris. They were Scottish and excellent artists. They painted murals for the ship the Queen Mary. During the Second World War Anna was a medical war artist, and she painted operations in hospitals and medical staff and patients. She also painted flowers. Art UK has some of her paintings https://artuk.org/ Isn't this gorgeous ? This is one of Anna Zinkeisen's flower paintings which is at Imperial College. I also discovered the wonderful rose paintings of Henri Fantin-Latour. Roses dans un vere a pied by Fantin-Latour, 1836 - 1904 Birmingham Museum Do find more of his paintings they are exquisite. But back to my garden. I have more seeds to sow, already I have got the dahlias out of the boxes of sawdust in the garage, and so far have a remarkable success rate in geraniums. I dig them up at t'back-end, autumn to other people, and simply store them in dry compost in the garage. At this time of year I bring them back to life in the greenhouse, and already they have green leaves and some buds. Magic is all around, plants that one day were just dry twigs are bursting into life. The fuschias have tiny leaves unfurling, buds on the cherry tree are swelling. Oh joy ! So that is my creativity for this month, with some reminiscences about flowers and plants much loved and filled with memories. Primula Sinensis artist Charles Archer 1855 - 1931, Derby Art Gallery Primula Auricula with butterfly, artist unknown, at Haddo House I think my Auriculas are just as nice if not nicer. This was our back garden last year. Will the dahlias all come to life again ? Can we stop the slugs eating them ? More updates as the year goes on !
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We all have a distinct signature, and what we sign has a story to tell. Here are some lovely signatures of men in Coverdale who signed the Manor Court Roll in the 18th century. See my website about the history of Coverdale http://coverdalehistory.simdif.com Each signature tells the story that this person was present at this time and in this place. We sign all sorts of things, some might be threatened with becoming obsolete, such as cheques, but nevertheless we still have to sign our name most days. The postman or the parcel delivery driver expects us to sign a hand-held electronic gadget with a stick, my scribble never resembles my signature, but it is deemed important to sign for the parcel. The signing of important documents has to have witnesses and without them the document may not be valid. Often there is an affidavit accompanying a will that has not been witnessed, by people who swear that they recognise the handwriting of the deceased, and that the will is indeed in their hand and signed with their usual signature. Of course, there were those who could not sign their names, and made a mark. Still, the marks are just as fascinating and did not prohibit people from normal life which required written records. This is from the marriage register of Startforth Parish, I was interested in a marriage on the same page, but here , in 1784, neither groom nor bride, nor either of the witnesses could sign their names. George Heslop made a will in 1794 and could only make a very shaky mark and add his seal, whilst all his witnesses signed in very legible hands. Which leads to witnesses, they can be important pointers in historical research. These are the appraisers and witnesses to an inventory of 1675. Thomas Butterfield [Butterfill was probably how he pronounced his name] made a mark and two dots, Edward Horne manage a bold H, and the two Leonards, Spence and Tayllor signed. I now know that at a date before any Parish registers existed for this area, these four people were alive and living in Coverdale. So our signatures can be on legal and important documents, or quite ephemeral things that could be discarded in a moment. I acquired, by quite a miraculous chain of events, some postcards which had belonged to a distant twig on my family tree. They date around the early 1900s, the age when postcards were all the rage and people sent them and collected them. My collection belonged to a young girl in Manchester called Evina Croft (yes, lovely name) and I have managed to identify the different handwriting on the cards indicating which family members sent them. One was from her Uncle Duterau - yes another odd name, the family specialised in odd names (great for a family historian). He signed the back of his portrait with his name. He lived for much of his life in North Lincolnshire, in Crowle, he was a chemist. When he retired he moved to Darlington in County Durham, where he was a prominent member of one of the Methodist Churches in the town. I was delighted when a member of that same Methodist Church contacted me a few months ago to tell me that at a "Special Do" they had got out some of the chapel table cloths. One was embroidered with names, and on it was the signature of Duterau Croft. The same signature ? Well certainly the same name. Who else was on the table cloth ? Honour Gill Johnson was his sister, and as yet I am unsure who the Mary Croft was. This has the signature of a Lilian Lambert. Much, much later, she was my music teacher. At the time the cloth was signed she did live in Darlington. Later she married and was called Fryer, so I only have her signature as L M Fryer. This is what she would have looked like at about the time the cloth was made. She had had the photograph taken by Taylor of Bondgate, Darlington. She later married , as his second wife, a man called Johnson Fryer from Brompton upon Swale. Lastly, another source for signatures is the front cover of books. When you give a book as a present, do you sign and date it ? This is in the front of a book called True to His Colours [I have not read it - yet] or The Life that wears best, published in 1879 and by the Rev T P Wilson. On the front it also says "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap", so you can guess what sort of book it is. I knew Madge Plews, she married Arthur Darwin and she was a cousin of my father. But I did not know who Vina Gill was. But I have found her on a census, and she too was a cousin of my father, correct name was Evina M Gill and she was born in 1889 at Cotherstone. And her strange name ? She was named after Evina Croft, sister of Duterau, who sadly died in her teens. And the Evina Croft of Manchester who had the postcards was the niece of Duterau. My father was the youngest of his family, and his father was one of nine, and in his horizontal line of siblings and cousins there were fifty ! So the age of his cousins stretched over many years. In the 1911 census Evina Gill was living in the household of her brother, another of my father's cousins, at Lartington, and as the 1911 census is the only one to have the original signatures of the householders, I have his signature too.
So, think about what you are signing, it tells that you were in a particular place at a particular time. And perhaps next time you have a big gathering you will get everyone to sign a table cloth. And sign those books you give as presents, leave a trail for future generations to puzzle over in years to come. And keep writing by hand so that, like Paul at the end of his letter to the Galatians you can put "See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand" Galations 6 v11 |
AuthorThis is where you can share creativity with me. I believe that everyone has something creative within them, and it is a joy to find ways of being creative. Blogging is NEW to me, so here goes ..... Archives
January 2024
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