Sunday 31 May 2009

Robin fest


This robin

kept a very watchful eye 

on our activities today.

We were clearing a yew hedge

full of ivy,

but more importantly - full of grubs

which the robin beaked up in size order
for his young.

Our grub was up for grabs at this NGS Open Garden.
I had my beady eye on these cakes,
and quickly spotted the largest one for my tea.

Saturday 30 May 2009

Blue blue skies











can't get enough of them.

Wednesday 27 May 2009

And is there honey still for tea?


Walking with our eldest by the River Granta, 


through Grantchester Meadows



past a casually parked punt



drowsing cattle



solicitous swans with their cygnets

and darting damsel flies

we came to

The Orchard.


First planted in 1868, it became a Tea Garden when a group of Cambridge students
 asked Mrs Stevenson of Orchard House if she would serve tea beneath the blossoming fruit trees and in so doing, started a great Cambridge tradition.
One of their lodgers at Orchard House was a young graduate of King's College - 
Rupert Brooke.
His poem 'The Old Vicarage, Grantchester', 
written whilst homesick during a trip to Berlin,
contains the famous final lines immortalising afternoon tea in the Orchard:

Ah God! To see the branches stir
Across the moon at Grantchester!
To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze
Sobbing in the little trees.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shades, in reverend dream,
the yet unacademic stream?
Is dawn a secret shy and cold
Anadyomene, silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea
From Hasingfield to Madingley?
And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill,under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty, And quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truth, and pain?...oh! Yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

We had scones and strawberries and clotted cream,
and then our son had to leave as he had
one more supervision 
and one more exam to take.

And now it is over.
Three years.
So fast and yet so slow. 
Just like their growing up.



Tuesday 26 May 2009

While my back was turned












there was some burgeoning.

Monday 25 May 2009

A Brambly Hedge moment



On a day that started early with sun backlighting the long grass under the apple tree,
(laughingly referred to as the orchard)


and the urban wildlife newly emerging from dreys


and nests



wearing its summer face,


what better way to celebrate than to indulge in a little gathering



and preserving.
So in fine Brambly Hedge style, with a friendly wave to Susan's family


I made rose petal jam using Elspeth's recipe in her Wonderful Weekend book


and elderflower cordial from



Sophie Grigson's Country Kitchen.
And then we took them on a trip to a proper Orchard in Grantchester.

But that is a story for another day.