The Secret Garden

Last night I sat up late reading

My first Folio Society edition,

having boards and spine decorated by the artist comes in

a slip case bearing one of her drawings.

This delightful book, in fluent descriptive prose, charts the journey of Mary Lennox, born to an ex-pat English couple in India, until the age of ten when she was transported to Yorkshire. It is a tale of her transition of cultures and the consequent adaptations.

There is a touch mystery apart from that of the eponymous garden.

The prose contains many similes and metaphors, yet is itself a metaphor to the resurgence of neglected yet apparently pampered lives upon the introduction of loving kindness.

We learn how Mary encounters a kindred spirit with similar experience and emotional deprivation in the midst of wealth; and how this is balanced by a loving family with very slender means, but with a generous maternal mother who really knows children and their needs. Two of her children in particular are instrumental in Mary’s gradual learning to love.

We learn how crushingly destructive grief can be, but how it is possible to be helped to rise from despair.

I often find attempts at reproducing vernacular accents in speech, but Burnett uses it as a method of bridging cultures and engaging her characters. As Mary becomes closer to the Yorkshire people she learns their language. The dialogue in this book is faithfully rendered with the author’s perfect control.

The garden of the story, largely neglected for ten years, through the changing seasons, the gradual resurgence of plant life, and the lives of small living creatures, is the metaphor for life.

The robin, a particularly significant character threading a link through the story, first became imprinted on Ben Weatherstaff as a fledgling. Masterman’s drawings, although including many of the robin do not include a fledgeling. I am therefore taking the advantage to feature my

3rd August 2019 drawing of Nugget, who, still with blueish feathers and lacking his adult red breast, first arrived in our garden a short time before. Longer term readers will remember the many photographs in those earlier posts featuring him.

I have not included my usual quotations from the text, because there are many examples of the author’s prose alongside this selection of Dodie Masterman’s drawings. Those not taken from within the text are smaller tailpieces from most of the chapters except for the final one which might give too much away. I recommend enlarging these pages in the gallery.

Current Condition

Early on this unusually increasingly cloudy morning, clad in my dressing gown, in silence save for the sough of the unusually warm rushing winds, wandered around the garden with the idea of using the diluted light for photography.

When admiring yesterday’s further clearance work by Martin I had

noticed the amount of blooms gracing Lady Emma Hamilton, and determined to come back today with my camera.

More roses, in the Rose Garden

and elsewhere, are clinging on to summer

in this season of dahlias and

Japanese anemones.

I also admired pink petunias, white myrtle and marguerites, pale lilac crinum lilies, yellow St John’s wort, and red/purple fuchsia Magellanica.

Some areas, like the Pond Bed, the entrance to the Back Drive, and the patio, contain their own range of blooms.

As usual, all the images bear titles in the galleries.

When Jackie noticed me pointing in her direction while she was

working on the patio she hid behind an owl.

By lunchtime the Head Gardener had finished clearing the patio and its surroundings, including refurbishing the Butler sinks. The wind, though now much cooler, persisted in blowing down the pot planted on the water fountain – she had already righted it 5 times before I set it on the ground.

I have chosen to display these blooms in location and current condition.

Jackie rarely uses a recipe and is sometimes reluctant to apply a name to a dish she serves for dinner. So it was today; it was certainly a delicious minced beef sauce containing chillies, onions and stuff on a bed of pasta which probably has a name – it was one of those where you can stick the prongs of your fork into the tubes making it easier to manage than spaghetti. I drank more of the Merlot with mine.

Somewhat Confused

In my post https://derrickjknight.com/2024/08/02/bcg/ I described the treatment plan for my bladder cancer. When I was recently telephoned booking a date for this to begin, I was told I would not need another cystoscopy before it commenced. I therefore have been anticipating the vaccine installations sequence to start in one week’s time. It now seems this is wrong.

At 8.50 this morning I received a call asking me to attend a pre-assessment appointment, fortunately at Lymington Hospital, at 9.30. This would be a questionnaire from a nurse, checking on current details. We arrived at the hospital at 9.25 to be told that I was booked in for 9.45. I was called at 10.10, which was just after the nurse herself had been informed.

The staff were all very friendly – I attributed this mix-up at least to the fact that the arrangement had clearly been arranged in a rush.

Nurse Paula Rickard was thorough, friendly, and efficient. She was quite clear that my appointment on 21st is in fact for a further cystoscopy which does, as Consultant Miss Vickie Dawson had informed me, need to be carried out. The meeting with Paula involved much more than the usual questions: she gave me another ECG, checked blood pressure and pulse, followed by escorting me to a blood test and asking me to deposit a urine sample. We agreed there was no need to measure height and weight again.

Neither consultant nor nurse had, of course played any part in this confusion and the message from them is consistent. So – I think I know what to expect at my next procedure, and will await a date for the vaccine application thereafter.

This took the whole of the morning, after which I made good headway in reading “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a wonderful book making me feel very much at home that I will review when I have finished it.

Tonight we dined on tender baked gammon; piquant cauliflower cheese; spring greens and green beans; crunchy carrots; firm broccoli and boiled new potatoes, with which I drank Luis Felipe Edwards Gran Reserva Merlot 2021

Relief In Shade

On this cooler, pleasant, summer afternoon, after a visit to Ferndene Farm Shop for the purchase of vegetables and salad ingredients,

we took a forest drive via Beckley Common Road.

After passing ponies in shade alongside Pound Lane, we turned off into a car park whence we admired the

landscape with heather

and a variety of daisy slightly larger than normal but smaller than marguerites.

Further down the road we turned into Burley which

was pulsating with visitors.

Cattle having slaked their thirst in the stream under the ford on Forest Road wandered slowly up the road frustrating some drivers while

ponies further along sheltered beneath the usual trees,

adopting their customary head to tail fly whisk technique.

This grey seemed to have caused a kerfuffle resulting in thudding head butts, sudden scattering, and clopping on the tarmac. I was pleased I was no nearer these heavy animals whose hooves could have landed on my sandalled feet.

Along Holmsley Passage on our way home we followed a cyclist climbing the hill. When he reached the top, he pulled over to the gravel on his left and we exchanged waves.

This evening we dined on baked smoked haddock; piquant cauliflower cheese; tender green beans; boiled new potatoes and carrots al dente, with which I finished the Tempranillo.

Still, Silent, Sounds

Before the temperature soared, in the early morning of this, another hotter day, as I stayed inside working on my blogging comments and replies, a faint breeze entered through the French windows allowing admission to the occasional buzzing bluebottle while I listened to the gentle scraping of Jackie’s garden tools; the glinting tinkling of the wind chimes adjusted yesterday; the rattling clanking of the magpies which have wiped out our smaller songbirds whose eggs and chicks they have stolen; and the amorous cooing of mated wood pigeons whose size has protected them from the predators, despite their numbers being reduced by egg theft.

This afternoon I posted

The Lay, And The Tragedy, Of Horn-Skinned Siegfried

This evening we dined on tender roast duck in orange sauce; firm carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, and very flavoursome Brussels sprouts, with which I drank more of the Tempranillo.

The Lay, And The Tragedy, Of Horn-Skinned Siegfried

We have now reached Parts Three and Four of “The Legends of The Ring”. Each tells the story of Siegfried; Part Three as a poem and Part Four as a seven act play. Each of these has been translated by Elizabeth Magee who has done remarkably well to maintain the rhyming couplets and rhythm of the originals.

In her introduction to The Lay of Horn-Skinned Siegfried she tells us that it “is an anonymous work, written around 1500, probably in south Germany and possibly in Nuremberg itself…..Despite its popularity, no-one has ever suggested that [it] is world-class literature. Neither the quality of the poetry nor the structure of the poem would qualify for such an epithet.” I agree with her entirely. The lines are in ponderous iambic hexameter. Magee goes on to describe the work as “cobbled together……joints and couplings are so obvious, the starts and restarts, interpolations, contradictions and repetitions, that one begins to conceive an affection for the poet’s modus operandi and to regard these characteristics as part of the poem’s charm.”

The work does recount Siegfried’s full story of birth, adventures, achievements and death. “The youngster was so headstrong, so big and strong and tough/ , His father and his mother had soon had quite enough./ He wouldn’t serve another in all his livelong day,/ And all he thought and cared for was getting right away.”

The Tragedy of Horn-Skinned Siegfried, A Tragedy with Seventeen Characters in Seven Acts, by Hans Sachs, following the tale in the Lay, was written in 1557, with much smoother rhythm also in rhyming couplets. The speeches given to the dramatis personae, for example in the hammering of the anvil, add a certain comedy to the tragedy.

We have a prologue announced by the Herald who tells what the audience will be given and recounts the lessons learned in the Epilogue.

Both works explain “Horn-Skinned”

Here is a repeat of Simon Brett’s relevant engravings.

This completes my focus on The Legends of The Ring.

Adjusting The Chimes

For one reason or another the patio has been somewhat neglected this year, until the las couple of weeks when Jackie has been able to tackle it. Today has been the hottest so far this year, but she stuck with the task while she could find some shade.

As a work in progress, her implements will be in evidence until the job is completed. Mind you, the next two days are predicted to be even hotter.

Plants are being potted up;

the green one in this image was a Christmas present from Flo, Dillon, and Ellie and has spent 7 months indoors until now.

Troughs have been cleared and refilled;

a collapsed wooden table top leans against the wall beside its pedestal made from a newel post which now holds a lantern that lights up at night, beneath more potted plants.

This trug will collect green refuse.

As she said herself, I made the mistake of letting the Head Gardener out to Otter Nurseries on her own. Among other items she returned with a tray of scented cyclamen.

While we enjoyed our pre-dinner drinks Jackie decided to adjust the broken wind chimes which she had restrung, hung from an old lantern hooked beneath the parasol, and supplemented with two shells. She realised that the wind-catching shell needed to be lowered to help the clapper do its work.

We then dined on pork spare ribs in chipotle sauce, and the Culinary Queen’s colourful vegetable rice, with which I drank more of the Tempranillo.

The Power Of The Web

As we set out on a still warm, but generally overcast, morning for a

forest drive I noticed a feather hanging above a myrtle bloom.

A pigeon was in no hurry to move out of our way along Lower Pennington Lane, alongside which, from a five barred gate

Jackie photographed moorland, and, on the way back,

I photographed walkers pushing a small baby in a buggy.

Before then, we had watched distant geese approaching, then flying over a walking family. The birds travel every day each way between Christchurch and Lymington, presumably finding regular sustenance. (Enlargement by access to the gallery may make them more visible).

Along St Leonard’s Road Jackie photographed me approaching and leaning on a tree in order to

picture a field horse and foal.

Blackberries are ripening along all the hedgerows.

Jackie also photographed this five-barred gate and its view.

Outside the ancient barn ponies cropped the grass on the verge;the animal in the first picture of this gallery hopefully wet-nosed me as I disembarked; finding I had no treats on offer she

stuck her nose through the open passenger window.

This is what it looked like to Jackie inside, while I wandered off.

Joggers along these narrow lanes take their lives in their hands. Those in the first picture were in Lower Pennington Lane. The woman decided to wait until the two cars had gone by; the one in the second was about to be passed by a large tractor towing a long container vehicle.

When, after an hour and a half, we returned home, the feather, despite the stiff breeze had not detached itself from the almost invisible, sticky, thread that held it. Such is the power of the web.

After lunch I posted

From The Saga Of Dietrich Of Bern

This evening the Culinary Queen served up a meal both colourful and flavoursome consisting of lemon chicken on a bed of rice packed with peas, fava beans, red and yellow peppers, onions, and mushrooms, with which I drank Bajoz Tempranillo 2022.

From The Saga Of Dietrich Of Bern

This is Part Two of Book Two of Legends of the Ring. It “was most likely composed in Norway somewhere between 1230 and 1250 by a well-travelled or well- read Norwegian, writing in Norse for the culturally flourishing court of Hakon IV.” (Magee).

This Folio Society selection, focussing on the Siegfried story, does not include the whole of the Dietrich saga, but the last in a series of duels is one between the two heroes. The main thread stitches together bloodthirsty battles between the Nibelungs and the Huns. The translation is by Edward R. Haymes.

In my review of The Nibelungenlied I state that “The powerful prose narrative lacks the beauty of the Icelandic poetry of Book one, although it presents the tale in considerably more detail.” https://derrickjknight.com/2024/08/04/the-nibelungenlied/. Maybe the more fluent and attractive prose in this saga of a now familiar story reflects the writing of someone more akin to the Scandinavian Source.

Dietrich is described thus: “He was long-faced and regular of features, light in colour, and had the best eyes of all men, dark brown in colour. His hair was light and fair and fell in curls. He had no beard, no matter how old he got. His shoulders were so broad that they measured two ells across. His arms were stout like a great trunk and hard as stone. He had fair hands. In the waist he was slender and well-formed, and his hips and his thighs were so stout that everyone thought that it was very strange how the man had been shaped. His legs were fair and well-shaped. And his calves and ankles were so stout that they could have belonged to a giant. His strength was greater than any man knew and he himself scarcely tested it. He was cheerful and modest, generous and a giver of great gifts, so that he did not hold back from his friends with gold or silver or treasure or with almost anything they would accept.”

The birth of Siegfried and his fostering by a hind is beautifully expressed: “A hind came along and took the [baby] boy in her mouth and carried him home to her lair. There she had two fawns. She put the boy down and let him drink for her. She raised him like her own young and he was with the hind for twelve months. Then he was as strong and big as other boys four years old.” Growing thereafter into a perfect match for Dietrich. When Mimir found the youngster and took him in “a hind came running up, went up to Mimic’s knees and licked the face and head of the boy. From this Mimir knew that the hind must have fostered the boy. For this reason he did not want to kill the hind and he took the boy and kept him with him. He intended to raise him as his son and he gave him a name and called him Siegfried.”

This is an example of the greater detail given in this saga to the material covered in previous sections of Legends of the Ring.

We also have more details of lengthy individual duels and battles with fast moving action described.

The position of women in this society obsessed with beauty and strong men of honour is somewhat complex. It was a fate worse than death for a man to be beaten by a woman and fathers are always speaking of giving their daughters to valued suitors. Yet queens and wives can be powerful, scheming and influential. We have clear indication of this in Chapter 5 of the saga extracts, The Bride-Winning of Siegfried and Gunther.

The first of Simon Brett’s illustrations to this section of the book has been placed above the relevant quotation. The others are in this gallery.

Purchasing Prescience?

Martin worked in the garden all morning, and Ronan and Craig from Tom Sutton Heating checked faults in two radiators. The latter diagnosis was a blocked pipe which necessitates their returning in about a month’s time with a machine to clear it.

I therefore stayed at home while Jackie went shopping.

Today our gardening friend completed his work on weeding the gravelled Gazebo Path, thereby providing a clear walkway the whole length from the iron urn to the southern fence.

I had not noticed when photographing Jackie studying the contents of this antiques cubicle at the Redcliffe Garden Centre Emporium that there was a row of five cut glasses on the third shelf from the bottom beside her left elbow. Why not a set of six? The answer was because she was holding one. She made no purchase. I must have known.

While out this morning she returned to the antiques centre and came back with these cut glasses.

At intervals during the day I completed my reading of The Saga of Dietrich of Bern which I expect to review tomorrow.

This evening we dined on oven fish, chips, and peas.