Windfalls

 In other news, I knitted a bunny for grandson 

as a companion for the elephant I knitted granddaughter

using another one of Julie Williams' wonderful patterns.

I cheated with the jumper as I had some self-striping wool 

left over and it meant fewer ends to sew in.

The garden is getting tangled and unmanageable.

So naturally I turned my attention to something tangled that I could sort out -

the ribbon drawer.

This is kept in a small chest of drawers that used to house

 my father's wireless-making equipment.

Top drawer buttons,

second drawer spools of thread,

third drawer tape measures, needles, pins, fixings and scissors,

fourth drawer, ribbons.

As a child there was a ribbon drawer for my hair.

I loved choosing a ribbon for the day.

They didn't stay in my hair for long though.

Now I come to think of it, there was a handkerchief drawer too.

Does anyone still give a child a clean hanky each day?

We had a pocket in our school knickers for them.

How bizarre!

A colourful hanky was a vital accessory for the ferryman game.

You chanted in a line opposite one child,

Ferry me across the river,

do boatman do.

For I've a penny in my purse and my eyes are blue.

(They aren't but that didn't seem to matter.)

Then the boatman would say. 

I'll ferry you across the river if you can show me something with the colour ...

and then you had to produce said item.

If you couldn't and with a brown school uniform it was a challenge

for the unprepared,

you had to race across the invisible river without being caught.

Miniature autumn tints in the bonsai walk at Wisley.

Giant pale pumpkin looking like 

a giant something else in the vegetable garden.

Windfall apples in the orchard at Wisley.

Too tempting not to try several of them and lament 

the paucity of choice in our supermarkets and greengrocers.

They all tasted so different.

When I say all, I mean a few.

I so wished I could pick these for crab apple jelly.

I seem to have been waylaid by Instagram. I thought it would never happen.

You might like to pick up some windfalls over there from time to time.

Little Boy Blue

Little Boy Blue,

Come blow on your horn,

The sheep's in the meadow

The cow's in the corn.

Where's the boy

Who looks after the sheep?

He's under a haystack

Fast asleep.

Will you wake him?

No not I,

For if I do

He'll be sure to cry.

I'm brushing up my nursery rhyme repertoire.

You never know when you're going to need a diversionary ditty

with a little one about the house.

But I may have to rewrite this.

We've got quite used to

The ponies on the footpath eating bracken -

 but 

The cow's* in deep woodland eating ivy?

Where is Little Boy Blue when you need him?

*These are British White cattle, 

one of the oldest breeds of cattle in Britain 

with direct links to the ancient indigenous wild white cattle.

They thrive on poor pasture, rough vegetation and heathland

and have been brought in to help manage a coastal nature reserve.

The rake's progress

There was some lying in the long grass

but there was also an awful lot of

 raking.

The Retirement Home garden consists chiefly

of parched brown earth

and rocks and stones,

all of which have to be smoothed away

in time for the arrival of the turf.

Luckily there is always the chance that the rake will turn up 

a clay pipe, an old bottle, a button or some shards

of blue and white.

I find it quite therapeutic.

And when it gets too hot to be therapeutic

I go inside and eat cherries.

Tinker, tailor, soldier, raker,

rich man, poor man, beggar man,

thief.

Ode to beneficial insects

Ladybird,

ladybird,

stay where you are.*

The blackfly

are breeding,

I need your

larva

to chomp

and to chew

and remove from the scene,

the pestilent suckers

that spoil

my broad beans.

I have never seen this many different

spot combinations before.

One of them, not pictured

was entirely black.

Further rhyme variants.

See also

this site,

and of course this one

for all you ever wanted to know about

Coccinellidae

and this one

if you'd like to join in with a survey of

Harlequin ladybird sightings.

* Although if you are a Harlequin

you are not really very welcome 

as you out-compete and predate our native species.

With apologies to Miss Potter

Ours. Rather too often.

70% Green & Black's Chocolate, macadamia nuts, Turkish delight.

And so did I. But here is what happened.

Night after night the not-killing-trap was set,

just as I told you yesterday,

and each morning, the trap was closed -

but empty! Imagine my consternation.

It was all most perplexing.

 So we set the trap in a new and tempting place

with all manner of appetising morsels,

so convenient for a visiting mouse.

But the mice were too clever for us.

They had a plan.

And this is what it was.

They did creep into the trap

when everyone had gone to bed.

They ate up all the delicacies

and sure enough the trap shut.

But all they had to do was settle down for the night

with their full tummies

and wait 'til morning.

Then this was the very clever bit of the plan.

When they heard the noise of talking

they had to sit very tight at the other end of the trap

and when it was opened 

stay as quiet as a mouse

EVEN IF THE TRAP WAS SHAKEN AND TAPPED

quite hard on the ground.

And then they could tiptoe out later

when the trap was set open again

with some delicious new food.

And the plan was nearly perfect,

except that today,

the owner of the trap took it a long way away 

in her friend's car.

And then she tapped much harder than usual

because she was sure she had heard some scuffling and scratching

and the little mouse fell out.

I'm sorry to say somebody screamed when this happened.

 Even then, the little mouse

stayed very still just as she had been told,

and might have been believed to be dead

if she had waited just a little bit longer...

I don't know who jumped the highest,

the little mouse,

or,

well you can probably guess who.

...

With thanks to Beatrix Potter who illustrated mice so beautifully

in Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes

and The Tale of Two Bad Mice.

A frog he would a-wooing go

This song or this one, 

seem fitting theme tunes to the activity in the pond of late.

Not perhaps the most beautiful creatures, 

but I am assured that they are usefully clearing up slugs in the garden for me.

Nursery rhymes

I'm using these pictures of a vintage nursery curtain to experiment with picture layout.

And it's been fun spotting the nursery rhymes:

Simple Simon (met a pieman) 

Three Blind Mice (see how they run)

Sing a Song of Sixpence (a pocket full of rye)

Goosey Goosey Gander (whither shall I wander)

The Queen of Hearts (made some tarts)

Humpty Dumpty (sat on a wall)

Hey Diddle Diddle (the cat and the fiddle)

Little Miss Muffet (sat on a tuffet)

Old Mother Hubbard (went to the cupboard)

Bye Baby Bunting (daddy's gone a-hunting)

Are children still taught these I wonder.

Ha! I see it didn't work at all when I published - nothing like the preview.

Back to the drawing board.