Sowing Yellow Rattle

 

Before I went to Norfolk I harvested yellow rattle seed from the meadow, The plants, hand sowed last year had grown well as I got a good yield of seed with plenty left to self-sow.

This little triangular scrap of a field has always been called The Meadow. Our place is on the left of the picture, the field on the other side of the road is also part of our farm while the ground adjoining the meadow is not. A stream runs by the side of it. The wooded area is where Zoe grows willow for basket making and other projects. It is our dream to make this little place live up to its name.

Yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor) is an annual, completing its life cycle in one year. In early spring the seeds germinate and grow quickly. As their roots develop underground they seek out the roots of plants growing nearby, especially grasses. Once contact is made the yellow rattle draws water and nutrients from them, suppressing the growth of grasses by as much as 60%. In the resulting space, other flowers have room to grow.

The meadow in June. There is still a lot of ryegrass coming through. Clint kept it far too well fertilised when he had the run of it. Hopefully, the rattle will diminish the ryegrass vitality.

It's July and the rattle is flowering. 

So, this day - I sowed more yellow rattle in the patch outside my window and tomorrow I will go into the meadow and disperse the remainder.  I'll use my metal hoe to scrape the ground. Clint cut and lifted last week so the field will be in good order for sowing. When the corn marigolds and cornflower set seed I'll sow them around the edges of the field but what I really want to see are the seeds that lie dormant coming forth. I want cuckoo flowers (cardamine pratensis) more than anything, and orange-tip butterflies. Just like there were in Paddy's Field fifty years ago. Wish me luck.

Screaming At The Moon

It's the Wolf Moon tonight, the first full moon of the year and so-called because wolves howl a lot at this time of the year. There was also a penumbral lunar eclipse but too much cloud cover to see anything. It would have been better observed had it been last night when skies were clear and the moon, nearly full, was beautiful. No howling wolves here but foxes woke me from sleep with their screeching and screaming. It was close to the house, maybe as near as the orchard and when I opened the window I could hear twigs and branches snapping so maybe in the overgrown wilderness behind Hannah's rooms. 

I listened for a while. They were much too close to the chicken run for my liking although the hens were securely locked up. But, mating season and they were preoccupied with other matters. Hens were unperturbed as were the dogs. I closed the window and returned to bed. Excitement over.

Then dreamed an amusing dream about fervent Unionists rallying against Nationalism. A purple car containing Shinners was driving around Ballymena terrorising the locals. The Orange Order was mobilised, a pipe band skirled up and down Wellington Street and people strode purposefully around costumed as B Specials, WWI volunteers and nurses. There might have been wooden guns. My role was to pour oil on troubled waters, to bolster confidence, to explain that things weren't as bad as they thought. There was also something about working in a hairdressing shop in Harryville and wanting to give up the position, but feeling that I needed the money and then remembering that I was a pensioner and need never go out to work again. That was a relief. 

I woke up to Judy's cold, nudging nose and this gorgeous morning sky and...

wallflower in bloom. In January?

A Foggy Night

I set the alarm last night for 5:15am as I wanted to see the Super Blood Wolf Moon. The name alone was fantastic. I said to Bert,

No doubt, as per usual, there will be clouds and we'll see nothing. If it's good do you want me to wake you?

He said,

Only if it's amazing.

I went to bed, read from three books,

A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness
Who We are, Dee Roslyn
Human Traces, Sebastian Faulks...

Then turned out the light and tried to sleep which wasn't easy as my feet were FREEZING.

Jess wakened me sometime around three or four, whining, wanting to go downstairs. I looked out the window and saw it was misty outside. It turned out the dog was thirsty and as she lapped from her bowl I went outside. Despite the fog, the moon was visible and was mostly eclipsed.  Perhaps two-thirds. I returned to bed and slept almost immediately. Two hours later the alarm went off. Totality! I hurried downstairs. The fog had thickened and there was no moon to be seen. Back to bed with a cup of coffee and some more A Monster Calls then back to sleep until nine o'clock.

When I eventually got up I wondered if seeing the partially eclipsed moon had just been a lovely dream.

Pig Dream

I dreamed I stole a little pig that wore clothes. Not on his nether regions of course as that would be impractical, just a little jacket and a scarf. Bit Beatrix Pottery.

Anyway, I felt very guilty that I'd stolen this pig and decided to return him to his owner Mrs Hanna, the farmer's wife who in real life always baked cakes using Stork. Coincidentally Mrs Hanna was also the mother of a teacher at Cullybackey High who was there in Bert's time and was violent and slightly insane. Or so they said.

The Hannas were a very nice and respectable Protestant family who lived next door to us in Cannonstown. I have some very good memories of them and some not so good.

I remember Mrs Hanna being very kind. And George, her husband was the first person who showed me the stars above and told me about the constellations. I've gazed skywards ever since.

Their youngest son Alan would invite me over to watch children's programmes on their black and white television for at that time we did not have a TV. The only programme I can remember seeing was Captain Pugwash. Those were good memories.

Then there was the time I took their grandson Samuel Alexander for a walk. I'm not sure where but it wouldn't have been too far away. But it must have been very muddy because Samuel Alexander got his bright white socks and his shiny black shoes completely filthy. George was very cross with me. I was devastated as he'd never been cross before. I realise now that he was probably going to get into trouble with his son and daughter-in-law.

Mrs Hanna had a fruit garden full of currant bushes and gooseberries which she used for jam-making. She used to give my sister and me ripe gooseberries and I thought they were delicious. Once the family had planned a day to Portrush and I, ever wicked, said to my sister that we should go to Mrs Hanna's garden and pick gooseberries. We did and ate the fruit off the bushes. The next day we had upset stomachs and Mammy mentioned this to Mrs Hanna. She said,

That will be all those gooseberries they ate yesterday.

I was mortified. It turned out that only the men of the family had gone to Portrush. Mrs Hanna watched from her kitchen window as Jean and I stole her fruit.

I was very, very young when I first encountered the future teacher. Maybe three or four and despite his chosen career path I don't think he had a lot of time for children. I was annoying, kept knocking the front door and he came out and chased me down the path. I thought it must be a game and called him a bugger, a word I was trying out for the very first time. Where I heard it, I don't know, as my parents did not swear. Well, maybe Daddy did, among other men but not in front of children. Mrs Hanna told my mother and she brought me home and smacked me around the legs, very hard. I was heartbroken as I didn't feel as if I'd done anything wrong. But I had. I had embarrassed her in front of her respectable neighbours.

The very worst memory was the day they killed the pigs. I don't even know why I was there. The most horrific part was how they screamed when they were being brought to the killing place. I cannot bear to write the details of what happened next but it is imprinted in my memory and will be forever.

I was seven when we left Cannonstown for the Murphystown Road. It was only a few field lengths away but I never saw much of Mrs Hanna after that. Her oldest son, the very handsome Josie, used to do contract work for local farmers and would be around our place occasionally. I had a big crush on him when I was about thirteen. They are all gone now, every one of them.

In my dream, when I took the stolen piglet back to Mrs Hanna, she listened to my apology in her quiet and familiar way then she said,

You can keep it. I don't really want it. It's far too much bother.

Seven Years

 It's been an ordinary day. I woke up far too early, got up, went back to bed with coffee, then fell asleep again and had a crazy dream about being in a crowded, confusing house with far too many disparate people. This is becoming a recurring dream and it all seems so strange. Actually, that used to be my life and sometimes, even in waking hours, it still is.

I forgot that it was Mammy's anniversary.

Instead of remembering I had one of those pleasant, mooching about days. Bert and I went out for breakfast and when we came back we both pottered. I've been admiring the primroses that are naturalising at the edge of the old laneway that backs our yard. Sometimes it is good to just let nature take its course. Matty would have approved.

Bert was wondering what he should do next. It's good when that happens on a pottering day. A day when you don't have to do anything. The birds had other ideas. They started to scold because their feeders were empty. He knew what to do next. Matty would have approved of that too. She always took notice of the birds.

It was London Sister who reminded me of the day that was in it. And I remembered that last year I met the occasion with a great deal of melancholy. Not this year. She'd have approved of that.

Tomorrow we are going to her house to remove the last bits and pieces of furniture before we put it up for sale. I'm not sure what she'd have thought of that. I'm not sure what I think of that either.

Seven years. Where did it go? I think I might have spent it pottering.

Another Normal Day

I woke just before 7am and decided not to get up. Immediately I fell into dreams. I dreamed that my mother was dying and that I held her in my arms and would not let her go. We lived in a succession of damp, dilapidated and tumbledown sheds and still I would not let her go. She got frailer and smaller and eventually she was as small as a baby. She was my baby, she was also another person called Shirley and still she was my mother. She was dying and I had to get her a coffin. She was small enough to fit in an infant's casket but I knew that because she had been a woman I needed to get her a woman-sized coffin.

These are the dreams I have without opiates. God only knows what Matty dreams. She told my sister, in one of her lucid moments, that it was like 'being in two places at once.'

Today was my Miss Martha day. We went to Matty's then out for a run with Great Aunt Ganching (with whom Miss Martha has become most enamoured). Next home to see Bert, a picnic on the lawn and a very relaxing afternoon with toys and pigs and dogs.

When Martha went home I spent a while watering the vegetables (this will be my role and it is a very important one) and then gathering sticks, a proper outdoor barbecue (no charcoal) and pork chops, spinach and baked potatoes for supper.

Another normal day. Tomorrow I go shopping for funeral clothes.