Gardens and Gardeners

Well fortified with Easter chocolate, I am tilling the soil and uprooting weeds this beautiful Easter weekend. There are beds to be raked, perennials to be divided and moved, planter pots to be emptied and refreshed, and seeds to be planted all over the garden. The gardening year has begun.

Who are Hedge & Hogg? "Specialists in the maintenance of Fairy Gardens" proclaims their advertisement in the Illustrated Fairy Gazette,

"Complete garden care. No job too small.
Lawns rolled, bulbs lifted, borders planted.
Molehills our speciality."

The Etsy shop is reopening for spring with Hedge & Hogg cards from the fairy realms,

and new fairy cards, all from the Fairy Gazettes.

Would that Hedge & Hogg were my gardeners. I would don a flowered shady hat and stroll the garden, nodding approvingly at their lively and expert ministrations to the lawn and flower beds.

"'Springs unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil"

Reginald Herber, 1783 -1826

Palm Sunday

"Hosanna, loud hosanna the little children sang;
through pillared court and temple the lovely anthem rang"

Spring has sprung (and so has the roof)

Snow drops have bloomed at last and the green spears of scillas and lillies are coming up all over the garden. I took an hour away from sorting papers this evening and raked the garden, well into the twilight, and found early periwinkle blossoms looking like pale stars against the tangled ground cover. Drenching rains a few days ago have revealed a leak in the roof and I could use the services of Wren's Nest Roofing and Thatching (from the fairy realms).

Frances in New York has tagged me to reveal what is in my handbag. Even I wasn't sure what lurked at the bottom of the Big Aubergine.

Zippered side pockets first:
Pocket #1, A little round tin of Rendez Vous Lemon drops, a lipstick, a car wash receipt, and a slip of paper with email addresses (to send art students photos of our still life of the day), and a receipt from the video store (rented Jane Campion's "Bright Star", which was beautiful).
Pocket #2, a scrap of paper with a phone number written as small as the Tailor of Gloucester's "no more twist", a fine liner pen, a notebook and a sample menu from a local restaurant where I recently lunched with author friend Alison Baird.
Pocket #3, spare glasses, cough drops, a pocket-package of kleenex tissues, another fine liner pen (so that's where they have been going), and a church bulletin with "Mothering Sunday" and "Simnel Cake" underscored in fine liner ink.
Pocket #4, keys and cell phone.
Now diving into the main holding area: Wallet, cheque book, address book, 2010 pocket diary, a spiral notebook, an envelope with a nice supply of my printed bookmarks that double as business cards, yet another fine liner pen, a hairbrush, another lipstick, a bill, a hair grip, a 5 page print-out of "Sanctuary Servers Duties" and some post-it notes with relevant scribblings (eg, "candles out at lst verse Recessional", I haven't been a server long enough to have it down pat yet) and, last but not least, a white Crayola crayon that I had been looking for in my art-class bag. Wax crayon is an effective resist for textured whites in watercolour and I will use it in an upcoming class.
And that is everything.
Looking at an article on AccessoryWeb I read that the above is fairly typical, representative of a normal woman, and has at least a couple of points in common with Eleanor Roosevelt!

I have enjoyed this first year of blogging and the friends it has brought, highly creative individuals of generous spirit. I wonder if some of them would like to share the handbag reveal?
Middle of Nowhere
Acornmoon
Oasis Writing Link

Well over a whole month ago (sorry for the delay)Land of Shimp was kind enough to tag me for a Kreatif Blog Award, a very nice surprise and one which I will properly acknowledge in the next post.

Strawberries in the Snow

Illustration by Charles Folkard for
The Three Dwarfs in the Wood, Grim's Fairy Tales.

Growing up with books like this, how could I not want to take up my brush and paint? That very world of snow and magic was right outside our door in Montreal: the deep woods and heavily laden trees, the glittering outlined branches and the long lines of shadows across the snow. Except for the strawberries, the dwarves and the maiden in her paper dress (for the dwarves' little house would not have looked out of place in our nearby St. Genevieve, Quebec) this was just how the maple woods appeared in those long winters. Incredible complex snow gardens bloomed along the lower edges of the window panes too, and like Kay and Gerda in Hans Anderson's Snow Queen, as children we used to press heated coins into the frost to make peepholes to look through.

A walk down the 16-mile Creek ravine on a recent sunny day took us by familiar sites made new with ice formations. An earlier freeze and thaw have turned the flood plain into a tumbled checker-board with slanting table-top sized slabs of ice, and delicate plates of patterned ice are reforming along the banks.

This one was as hard as parquet flooring,

while ice ledges with patterns like broderie-anglais were as brittle as thin glass

(so we stick together on these walks).

Turning to designs made by human hands, the Three Bears appeared close to home

and Queen Victoria, petite and poised, is right outside the door.I can do better - tomorrow I'll improve the shape and add a companion snow dog or two.

It is snowing outside (and snowing heavily as I type this, a good packable snowman-weight snow that will, tomorrow, make the neighbourhood ring with the sound of shovels on driveways) and inside, in progress on my worktable, is a summery fairy scene. But it isn't incongruous, for in both delicacy and transformative power the falling snow and bells of Elfland go hand in hand.

A Valentine

Good morrow! 'Tis St. Valentine's Day
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your valentine!
Wm Shakespeare, Hamlet

Sunshine

Cold and wintry as it has been outside, in the art classes we are already talking about bulbs and seed packages and plans for the coming garden year. Rows of potted daffodils, tulips and hyacinths greet us at the supermarket entrances and I cannot resist them. Snow is falling tonight, it will be weeks and weeks before even the first snowdrops bloom, but indoors the magic begins.

Notes from Fairy Land

The deep freeze has given way to milder weather and every slope, every frozen creek and pond, is merry with the sound of young voices.

"Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone", wrote Christina Rosetti. The older ones have been busy with snow clearance, making smooth places for skating on the ice and preparing snow jumps on the hills.

"Up and down, up and down, I will lead them up and down"
(Puck, quoted Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, but isn't it always true)

When the short afternoon turns to dusk the younger ones go home to warm up and enjoy hot chocolate in a mug, but the boys always stay out for longer, playing the age-old game.

I must spend the coming beautiful weekend indoors, armed with paints, brushes and determination, with the merry voices outside for inspiration.

Robbie Burns day is coming up, an occasion for some singing and dancing. To quote,
"O wad some Power
the giftie gie us,
To see oursels
as others see us",

and here is just such a glimpse, a few words from the Green Man Review .