Book restoration

In my post 'Along the Grand Western Canal', I mentioned the wildflower book my parents gave me for my eleventh birthday in 1964 and which I’ve loved and used ever since, to the extent that it was falling apart. I couldn’t replace it, not only because it’s out of print but also because it contains six decades’ worth of my plant-spotting notes.

I am pleased to report, therefore, that it has now been meticulously restored by Celandine Books of Wiveliscombe and I’m thrilled with the result. The book has kept all its character and turned into something beautiful and usable again.

 

Before

After

I'm not sure the same can be said of me, but I'm working on it.

A Devon beach (Budleigh Salterton) a few weeks ago

Along the Grand Western Canal

Yesterday morning, while walking along the canal near where I live, I saw this beautiful wild plant for the first time.

Flowering Rush

My Book says it’s Flowering Rush, rather uncommon, flowering from July – and there we were, Ellie and I, on our nearby canal in June, and it was dotted all along the bank.

Well, My Book is over 60 years old and it gets a lot of things wrong because so much of both countryside and climate has changed, but I love it because it was given to me by my parents on my eleventh birthday and it’s full of my annotations and observations over the years.

Needless to say, it’s falling apart now, and if you know of a good bookbinder who could repair it for me, do tell.

My ancient and  battered Oxford Book of Wildflowers

Next I saw this tall scruffy plant which I find rather menacing as it grows in gangs and looks like a Triffid (as in the 1981 TV adaptation of John Wyndham’s book). It’s called Hemp Agrimony, but is no relation to Cannabis (sadly) or Agrimony  - which is a small yellow spike of a flower, and one I also saw yesterday along the canal.

Hemp Agrimony

Hemp Agrimony

Agrimony

The next plant to catch my attention was this Meadow-sweet, so-called I presume for its scent – a weird almondy one. I like its confidence and its scatty prettiness and am trying to grow it round the pond in my garden.

Meadow-sweet

Sunny St John’s Wort was in flower for the first time this year. As you probably know, the word ‘wort’ means any plant that was used medicinally and St John’s Wort is still used to cure depression (but take advice as it can also be harmful or interact with conventional drugs).

St John's Wort

Lovely Scabious, which actually prefers dry places, was in evidence from time to time, well attended by insects like all flowers of the Daisy family to which it belongs.

Scabious and Hoverfly

Yesterday was a good day.

 

The Grand Western Canal near Tiverton in Devon is a Local Nature Reserve and well worth a visit at any time of year. Yesterday it was full of birdsong as well as wildflowers, and when I find out how to transfer audio and video clips from my phone to my computer I’ll share some of that with you as well.

Wild Norway

I made it to Norway eventually and swept into a round of parties, meeting cousins of all shapes and sizes (my maternal grandmother having been Norwegian). The weather was atrocious – even worse than in the UK – but here are some pictures of the beautiful landscape.

 

On the first day I walked with my brother and sister-in-law and two English friends of my aunt to this lake, which Frog and I had found near the hotel five years earlier. In spite of non-stop rain, I thought the lake was prettier this time. Perhaps the heatwave on my previous visit had withered the greenery.

 Lake, jetty and granite

The jetty is for swimming. The Norwegians are very hearty and, even though the temperature was about 14, as we walked back two boys were leaping in and out of the water.

The rock in the foreground is not broken concrete but granite, which comes to the surface everywhere.

 

Here is the hotel garden on my last day, when of course the sun came out, and here is another lump of granite. How the trees manage to grow on it, I have no idea.

 

Hotel garden

As children, we spent our summer holidays by the sea in Norway and clambered over the rocks in bare feet, as this was the best way we found to grip them.

Also on my last day, I found this enticing path signed ‘Kyststien’ which I guessed meant coast path. I wished I’d found it earlier.

 Coast path

Most of the interior of the country (below the treeline) is forested with pines but here, by the coast, were some broadleaved trees – oak, silver birch, rowan. Also scrumptious wild raspberries, another feature of my childhood.

  

This is the beach in front of the hotel, but I didn’t brave the sea.

 

Hotel beach

On my penultimate day, I went for lunch with one of my aunt’s daughters. She lives on the outskirts of Kristiansand.

Here is her view.

The view from my cousin's house

 

And here is the path from her garden to forest and mountain.

The path from my cousin's garden

On my last morning, I walked round Kristiansand with my brother and sister-in-law. 

Here is the harbour, not what you’d expect next to a city.

 Kristiansand harbour

People were picnicking and swimming.

As you can see, nowhere in Norway is far from nature, although according to a cousin that is changing as the population expands.

That breaks my heart, as (in my experience) Norway is one of the last wild places left in this part of the world.

All will be well

I’ve mentioned before my guru Louise Hay and her book You Can Heal Your Life.

 

I’ve also mentioned my disinclination at the moment to get out of bed in the morning and face the world, and the bad back and leg that have crippled me since November.

Last night when I couldn’t sleep yet again because of the pain in my right calf, which paracetamol hadn’t touched, I decided to explore with the help of my beloved Notebook what was going on.

According to Louise, pain in the lower leg is caused by fear of the future and not wanting to move on. The affirmation (to counteract that) is:

I move forward with confidence and joy, knowing that all will be well in my future.

I said this to myself over and over and found myself sobbing so I knew she was right.

I’ve been through this process again and again recently and I keep forgetting, and falling into old ways, and believing what everyone else says instead of what I say deep inside me. For instance, out of fear I’ve been to see a physiotherapist, which is what my doctor recommended for my back and leg, even though I don't normally do conventional medicine, and all it’s done is make me feel worse. 

One day, I might manage to hold on to me.

And, of course, as I might also have said before, that is what this time since Frog’s death is all about. I have the idea that moving on will take me away from him, but actually it will take me towards him. 

Even though Frog and I had the deepest of connections, I couldn’t be myself when he was here because I was too preoccupied with being a good wife, with being what I thought he wanted. He removed himself in order to help me and now, in order to rejoin him, I have to face the world without him and learn to be me. It’s bloody terrifying.

Wish me luck.

And in case none of that makes sense, which is more than likely, here are some pictures from the last week or two. Isn’t the world beautiful? Why on earth should I fear it?

Floods

Shining Cranesbill, a tiny flower named for its shiny leaves (the small roundish ones)

The nearby Weeping Willow, waving its hair-like tresses

My Secret Wood, a fluff of greeny-brown about to burst into life

The buds of Holly flowers, another secret

Dandelions like suns and Dandelions with Speedwell, the colour of the sky. (Spot the dog.)

A benevolent tonal Buddha*

From 1977 to 2019 Frog (my late husband) was connected with Exeter University’s student radio station. He looked after the equipment and gave continuity and advice to the ever-changing student members. He also presented his own programme, The Frog Prog, on which he played his unique choice of music, both popular and classical, from all eras, and passed on his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things musical.

Last June, past members of the radio station put together a tribute programme for Frog

https://www.mixcloud.com/XpressionShowcase/john-frog-whitworth-memorial-show/

and I’ve been crying my way through it. Sometimes they really catch his character and talents and it’s given me a whole new appreciation of him.

I’ve been doing a lot of crying lately. Since November in fact when I acquired a bad back. The pain then went to my legs where it has stuck ever since. It’s terrified me because, now I’m on my own, I have to manage. I can’t be ill or incapacitated. I have a dog to mind.

Ellie at one year old. She's now twelve and a half.

But what I realised this morning is that the pain has made me get in touch with my feelings. It’s lowered my defences and let the grief come to the surface. It’s given me time. I haven’t been able to rush around clearing Frog’s stuff, forging a ‘new life’ and being brave. I’ve spent a lot of time alone, in my dressing-gown, writing in my Notebooks (a sort of diary), using up tissues.

In a funny sort of way, I think that realisation may help me to throw off the pain. It may be a sort of turning point. I hope so, anyway.

And at the risk of sounding crass, I thought I might link all that to the slow emergence of spring, another turning point, as evidenced by the following pictures.

Rooks' nests by the canal

The weeping willow over the lane below the house, always the first tree to burst into leaf

Ivy berries, like bunches of grapes, important food for birds at this time of year

Beech flowers

I've never noticed beech flowers before (in all my 70 years), which shocks me. How much else is there that I just don't see? Putting that in a more positive way (and I do try to be positive in everything), it shows that nature is always there to surprise and delight us - if we keep open to the possibility.

*This is how one ex-student described Frog in the tribute programme (at least, I think that's what he said)

Wild daffodils

Since Frog died a year and a bit ago, I’ve not watched or listened to The News. (I only followed it when he was alive because he did.) It’s too depressing and I think it’s designed to keep us scared and grateful. Those in charge (at the moment) don’t want us to be happy because then we might start thinking for ourselves and discover that we don’t need them after all.

Recently I’ve found myself less and less inclined to venture out and meet The World. I want to stay in my nice safe house and garden or, even better, cocooned in my duvet. A couple of days ago I realised that this is because I’m frightened. I have this idea of the world and I don’t like it. I’ve lost Frog, my buffer between me and the world. I’m ‘alone and naked in the dark’ as Frodo said on his way to Mordor.

So then I thought, well, this idea I have of  the world is only an idea. Somehow that horrible mainstream view has seeped into to me in spite of my best efforts. So why don’t I change it? Why don’t I start imagining the world as I want it to be? As I really see it?

And I began to put together a different picture of the world. My picture. And it went something like this.
 
 
My world
 -A place of kindness
-A place of meaning
-Somewhere I have a future (even female and at the age of nearly 70)
-Nature (not humans)
-Eternity
-Somewhere I belong and matter and have a place.
 
I might elaborate on those points in the future, but I hope each of them makes enough sense for the moment.
 
None of them accords with the mainstream view or that put across by the media, and you might think I’m deluded or flaky or worse. But what the hell? If I can’t stick my neck out at nearly 70, when can I? If it helps, why not believe?
 

A couple of days ago I was driving to fetch my sister off the train from London. She was coming to stay with me for a few days. I thought I’d left plenty of time but after a long diversion around a new housing estate in the process of being built and the discovery that my shortcut across country was closed (no reason given), I began to feel slightly panicky.
 
I had no proper map, I didn’t want to go miles round to get to the station and I haven’t yet got the hang of the sat nav (which was Frog’s baby). That panic is becoming rather too familiar. It happens every time I have to do something that Frog used to do.
 
Anyway, I headed across country by a different route, with no clear idea of where I was going except a couple of village names, my not unreasonable sense of direction and a compass.
 
According to my new world view, I thought, there would be no need for panic. I would be going this way for a reason. And if I kept my eyes and ears open, I would discover what it was.
 
And then I saw it. A bank of wild daffodils stretching as far as I could see alongside the road.
 
I haven’t seen wild daffodils in Devon since the 1970s, when there used to be meadows of them. They’re different from the cultivated ones you see growing wild - smaller and paler and much more subtle. They’re what Wordsworth saw. And when you see them, you just know they’re special.
 
I stopped in the middle of the lane, hoping some monstrous farm vehicle wouldn’t charge round the corner (as they do) and slam into the back of me, put my hazard flashers on, and took some pictures out of the car window.
 
And here they are. My proof.
 

 
And, yes, I did make it to the station in time. The shortcut proved every bit as good as my usual one. I might take it again.

A spell in the Garden of England

When I’m with my brothers and sisters, my grief for Frog is not so bad. They seem to fill in the hole that his death has left in my life. Sadly, they all live in the South East, four hours’ journey (at least) from me here in the South West.
 
Ten days ago however, I was lucky enough to spend a week with my brother J and sister-in-law K in K’s family house which happens to be in the same Kentish village as the houses of my two sisters.
 
Actually, it’s not happenstance at all. We were all brought up in that village. K’s house is separated from the house my family grew up in by only a couple of fields and a river, and K attended the same local school as me and my sisters. My brother therefore married the girl next door (and I hope J and K won’t mind me saying that).
 
Whereas Devon is wide open and rolling, cosy in parts and dramatic in others, Kent is unbelievably pretty, more like a garden than working countryside.

Not for nothing is Kent known as the Garden of England.
You can hardly see the village here for its thick cover of trees

K’s house is a mill house dating from the sixteenth century, with uneven wooden floors and a warren of rooms, easy to get lost in. It lives on an island enclosed by three arms of a river. Greenery abounds – both exotic and native, nature rules, and the whole place is full of magic.

The Mill House

The river and the Mill House garden

The village nestles in the chalky North Downs, where we walked most days. We spent nearly four hours in this nearby valley and didn’t see another person, even though from the hilltop the towers of London’s Canary Wharf are visible on the horizon.

A walk in a nearby valley

Parts of the valley are being rewilded.

Shrubs and trees are racing to re-cover what was once agricultural land and then a golf course

The swards were full of orchids and other wildflowers.

Pyramid orchid and Bacon and eggs (Birdsfoot-trefoil),
one of nature's stunning colour combinations

Another sort of orchid. (My sister A would know its name.)

On Friday, the hottest day of the year so far, we took refuge in the Mill House’s shady garden.

Drinks and lunch in the Mill House garden

Another day we walked along the river, past these hop fields, for which Kent is famous,

Hop field

and these lavender fields, which take advantage of Kent’s hot, dry summers as well as the rise in overall temperatures.

 

Lavender field, planted to flower in succession

The scent as we walked past was delicious.

Nearby the council has created a country park with a glorious wildflower meadow . . .

The wildflower meadow with neat paths and signboards (and my brother)

The wildflower meadow with rows of lavender just visible behind trees in the distance

The meadow's wildflowers, including more orchids

Imaginative seats (from handmadeplaces.co.uk*) are placed appropriately: a dragonfly by the river, a grasshopper here by the meadow.

The wooden seat in the shape of a grasshopper
(which has, inconveniently for the photo, placed itself half in and half out of shade)

It was a good place to sit and rest.

Brother J on the grasshopper

Heartfelt thanks to my family for giving me such a wonderful time.

*Blogger not creating links at the moment. Will try and rectify in due course