The Extraordinary Dandelion

"Has there ever been a year for dandelions like this year?”
Standing in the kitchen, after his walk with the dog, he looks wistful, undecided.

Gathering and preparing dandelions for wine-making is labour-intensive;
dandelion heads must be plucked when in full bloom,
preferably late in the morning or early in the afternoon,
and always on a dry and sunny day.
Leave it too late and the flowers will be half-closed and difficult to handle.
Make sure that every trace of stem is removed,
and also remove as many as possible of the green sepals that enclose the yellow petals.
If you don’t, your wine will be bitter.
Kitchen scissors are the tool of choice.

He has decided, he will make dandelion wine,
the first in many years.

Be warned, however.
A strong bladder and digestive system are essential if you want to come away unscathed.
The dandelion’s other names are:

Jack-piss-the-bed,
Pissy beds,
Pittley beds,
Tiddle-beds,
Wet-the-bed,
Dog’s posy,
Old man’s clock,
Peasant’s clock,
Swine’s snout,

the seeds are known as:

Fairies,
Parachutes,
Sugar eaters.

 

Dandelions mean carpets of golden-yellow flowers, jagged green leaves (the dent de lion - lion’s tooth) and clouds of featherweight seeds blowing in the wind. Albrecht Duerer saw the appeal even of the closed and withering flower-heads and included them in his extraordinary close-up portrait, painted in 1503, of a square foot of meadowland, "Das Grosse Rasenstueck". Shakespeare included the plant in the elegy in Cymbeline : “Golden girls and lads all must / As chimney sweepers come to dust.” Keats imagined “The soft rustle of a maiden’s gown/ Fanning away the dandelion’s down.”

Children still blow dandelion down from the round dandelion clocks - the ‘chimney sweepers’ - to ‘tell the time’. The number of blows needed to remove all the seeds gives the hour. if you can catch one on the wing. you can make a wish.

Lastly, dandelions appear more and more on menus; the traditional French dish Pissenlit au Lard has fried bacon scraps (lardons) and croutons served on a bed of dandelion salad; dandelion leaves can be found in ordinary pub salads. There’s dandelion pasta,  pickled dandelions, and stir-fried dandelion.

In spite of all the above I have spent a good part of today’s gardening gouging out dandelions in my flower beds. Lesser celandine and dandelions are this gardener’s greatest enemies, no matter how highly tradition values them.



Tess Kincaid used Jamie Wyeth’s image
`’Lighthouse Dandelions” for her prompt
MAG 169.

This post is loosely connected.

Where I’m From

Molly of The Molly Bawn Chronicles posted a wonderful post about Where She Was From and at the end of the piece suggested that those of us who had not been around when the meme first appeared  in 2003 might like to give it a go. It’s interesting what comes up; there’s even a kind of template if you want to try it.

This is what came to mind when I mulled it over:


I am from the banks of a river which travels halfway across a continent, South to North,  starting out fast-flowing and angry in youth, slowing down and settling into a broad expanse before meeting and marrying the waters of the ocean and thereby losing itself.

I am from vineyards, craggy castles, black bread and Sauerkraut.

I am from a land monotonous in its repetitions of fields of wheat and cabbage, copses of beech and oak, silent bogs and waterlily-strewn ponds, peaceful behind curtains of tall poplars. 

I am from sleepy villages with low church towers, four-square farms with sturdy gates, and black and white cows under  big-bellied clouds.

I am from deep blue cornflowers and red poppies, from hedgerows of hazel and hawthorn and country lanes, dead straight, dissolving into shimmering horizons.

I am from a poor people’s kitchen with a large table, a range to one side, and a bed in the attic, heat and ice flowers, summers and winters.

I am from weavers and dyers, from men called Peter and women called Katharina and Anna, from hard work and long hours,  from dogged endeavour, leavened by laughter and song.

I am from aunt Kathy with the twinkling eyes and warm heart, who fed me and hugged me, when others wouldn’t, from aunts who disapproved and uncles who smiled forgivingly.

I am from people who survived hardship and trouble, and stayed true to themselves; people whose determination and courage overcame great danger; afraid, they yet clung to what they believed to be right.

I come from people with roots in other countries, whose ancestors were blown across borders by the winds of many wars, who came to rest in the fertile plain by the banks of the great river.

I am from the teachings of all religions and none, from black-robed nuns and angry-eyed, loud-voiced firebrands, who took for their religion the well-being of all mankind in the face of greed and injustice.

I am from Linden trees lining avenues, mists rising from verdant meadows and pollarded willows stretching out their ghostly arms. 

I am from windmills, bicycles, chestnuts and herbs gathered in high summer, from apple pancakes and pickled roasted beef, from christmas trees and Silent Nights.

From grandfather Peter who buried his young wife and brought up his children by telling them stories of ghosts and goblins, from uncle Gottfried, the black sheep, who fell into the ditch and died of TB, from uncle Johann, club-footed and lame, thrown into prison, again and again, because he wouldn't stay silent, from uncle Peter, POW in Russia, who met his child for the first time when she was seven years old and frightened of him.

I am from two sides of a family riven by ideology, war and religion, black and red, the colours of deep conviction.

I am from boxes of photographs of people long dead, whose bitter arguments and life-long feuds are like wisps of smoke in the wind, blown about into nothingness.  

I am from people who left me a heritage valuable beyond rubies, a mind to question and probe, eyes to observe and ears to hear and dismiss the meaningless bluster of voices calling me to follow the herd and a heart unafraid to stand alone. For that I am truly grateful.

It’s Equally True

that one can never rely on the weather, particularly English weather. Last weekend I was drunk on sunshine and gardening, the whole of this week I have been fending off the black dog. Overflowing with the joys of spring one minute,

miserably staring out of the window at grey skies the next. Even a rainbow doesn’t help, it’s so short-lived it’s hardly worth getting excited over. Instead of being able to relax into a pleasantly reliable summer season, we feel that we must rush out and make use of every drop of sunshine there is; you never know, there might not be any more.

This business of ‘making the most of it' is really exhausting. It’s like having to work to a deadline, having to cram everything that normally happens over a period of three months into a weekend; at the seaside towels are spread out with inches to spare between tribes, other people’s brats kick sand into your picnic; roads to beauty spots are clogged with day trippers and, unheard of with modern cars, some idiot has managed to break down at the narrowest bit. Motorways have road works going on and witches’ hat cones wait to pounce on the hapless motorist. Even sensible people like us, who stay at home, can’t allow themselves to relax. Tables and chairs have to be brought out, meals have to be taken out-of-doors, and there has to be a constant flow of “what a lovely day” - “look at that sky” - "isn’t this wonderful”, as if not mentioning your good fortune might make it disappear again.

Mention it or don’t, it’ll disappear again before you can get get the chairs back under cover.

On a completely unrelated subject: I took Beloved to the eye clinic for another injection. He went in to see the consultant, while I stayed in the waiting area. A short while afterwards a chap from the other end from where I was sitting came up to me, in a hurry, and greatly disturbed. “That gentleman you came in with, well, he came out of the consulting room and marched off, down the corridor.” “Really? I wonder why”, I said.  “Yes, he was actually striding down the corridor”. The chap was obviously inviting me to get up and see where my ‘gentleman’ had disappeared to. Sometimes people have this effect on me, they become earnest and urgent and I feel obliged to fall in with their wishes. I passed a small group of people waiting and they all sped me on my way as I walked by. “Down that corridor”, they said as one man, “he was going really fast.” They had obviously discussed this phenomenon amongst themselves.

You know how this resolves itself, don’t you?

At the other end of the corridor is a Gents. I opened the door and Beloved was just washing his hands. I told him about having been sent on a mission by a gaggle of excited patients. He laughed. “I asked the consultant if there was time for a pee before the injection,” he said.

When you are sitting waiting in any kind of clinic, bored, with nothing to do, you might pass the time by examining fellow patients and it is all too easy to make up a story and come to the wrong conclusion, a kind of mild mass hysteria. The benevolent kind in this instance. I suppose dementia is fairly common now.

I should have thrilled them and said “Just managed to get hold of him before he threw himself out of the window”, but one always has the best ideas afterwards.

Green Man Day 2013

The Green Man may have won the battle for supremacy over Frosty, the cruel Ice Queen, and installed the May Queen on her throne for what is laughably known as summer hereabouts, but there’s no guarantee that he can defeat regular English weather gods, who have been throwing bitter winds and driving rain at us today, just three days later.

The Battle on the Bridge is the dramatic focal point of the Green Man weekend, and always takes place at noon on Mayday (Spring Bank Holiday Monday). The Green Man and Ice Queen each have their entourage and approach the Bridge in procession from opposite sides. The Green Man comes down the hill from the Church with the May Queen, whilst the Frost Queen descends Bridge Street with her little icicles. Thousands of visitors come for the weekend to join in the spectacle, while half the inhabitants barricade themselves in and don’t appear until the last teacups and beer mugs have been fished out of the river and village dogs have retrieved and eaten all remnants of burgers, stuffed bread rolls and ice cream cones.

The weather was glorious, the crowds lively, and the many different bands, canned music, the man with the chainsaw carving animal shapes, and whistling public address systems, all competed with each other for attention.

 Mid-morning stallholders set up tents and gazebos.

 Getting in supplies for the tea tent.

 Portable toilets handily placed behind the large beer tent.

One in - one out, 

quick turnover assured.

 Let the fun begin.

It’s true,

there is life after winter.

I am beside myself with joy,

drunk on sunshine,

fresh air,

and hard work.

 Just look at that lovely, crumbly, compost waiting to be spread.

Gardener has emptied the compost bins

and there are dozens of such loads ready to sweeten the ground.

 Daffodils and cherry blossom,

need I say more?

 Another corner under cultivation.

Weeding and snipping and pruning and propping.

The joy is endless.

Beloved keeps the tea coming.

Millie can’t believe her luck;

this is her first spring with us and she has a wonderful garden

as well as a river on the doorstep.

All her very own.

It’s all good.

Throw A Ball And Reap A Rock

People who walk dogs meet dog walkers. Dogs who’ve met before need time to reacquaint themselves and those who haven’t,  need to exchange visiting cards. All this is a roundabout way of saying that dog walkers spend a lot of time gossiping with each other. I  met Dave today. Dave throws a ball for his two collies, over and over, and Murphy and Badger go fetch, over and over. You’d think they’d get the message that this endless throwing and fetching business is never going to get them anywhere. As soon as they have found, collected and returned the ball, their stupid human throws it away again. Some humans don’t deserve such devoted doggie services.

However, this story is a sad one, about humans who are even more stupid than Dave, although from a human point of view, Dave isn’t really stupid. Dave’s neighbour, a lady called Maud, died recently. She left behind a husband and four children. I say children, because, to Maud and Bernie they always were and always will be, although the eldest of them is in his mid fifties. The youngest, the twins, are well into their forties. Apart from the eldest, who says of himself  “I’m the one who got away”, the five of them all lived in a very small terraced house.

Dave and I said how sad it was that Maud had died, seeing as she was such a rock to her family and the village as a whole.  The sort of thing one says when someone well respected, bossy, yet charitable, and very determined, dies. We also said that her death wouldn’t free up any space in the house, except in Bernie’s bedroom, and the others would still be as cramped as ever. What one calls ‘close-knit family’, if one has learned the English way of saying things without saying them.

“Did you know that Stan tried to buy the house next door?” Dave asked. Stan is the male half of the twins, a jobbing builder and painter, who does small jobs around the village. He is bright enough to drive a van and organise his customers, although I wouldn’t exactly recommend him for a job that needs expertise. No, I hadn’t heard. “Good idea”, I said, "put a bit of farting distance between them, get a bit of room for air.”

"O no,” Dave said, “ Bernie put his foot down, he was absolutely dead against it, and Stan had to give up the idea.” My mouth fell open. “O yes,” Dave said, “Bernie insisted that they all stay together, that at home with him and their mum was were they all belonged.” Bernie is god-fearing and righteous, and like Maud was, a rock.

I huffed and puffed a bit, but didn’t really want to say very much, Dave and I are relatively new acquaintances and I wanted to avoid getting it wrong. Dave looked at me,  threw another ball for Murphy and Badger, with Millie waddling along in their wake, and decided to tell me his father’s story.

“My dad was in the war, unlike his brother, who was declared unfit for service due to severe and debilitating eczema. When the war was over, and my dad came out of the Army, he didn’t go home to his parents, but decided to try and find work in London. He found a job and fell in love with my mother. They married and had us children. My granddad never really approved of us and we saw very little of him and gran. They got old and dad tried to mend fences but it didn’t work. My dad’s brother, whose eczema got worse over the years until he could barely face going out, and my dad’s sister, who looked after them all, stayed with the old people until they died. Neither of them was ever allowed to form a relationship of any kind, they had no friends at all. After both granddad and gran  died and the will was read, it turned out that granddad had disinherited my dad and divided his meagre leavings between the two children who had stayed with him. His reason was stated as “because he left home.

My dad’s sister and brother - whose eczema cleared up within weeks  - overturned the will and divided everything three ways.”

Dave finished his tale by saying: “ My uncle spent the rest of his life travelling and taking photographs, thousands of them. We have boxes and boxes of them. Sadly, he never made any notes where or of whom he had taken them.”

Dave said his granddad was a rock too, god-fearing and righteous, just like Bernie and Maud.

Drama In Two Acts

Act I

We were off to the theatre. “As You Like It”, one of Shakespeare’s comedies with a silly story and lots of fun.  Our friends were on the doorstep, it was time to go; we had a long drive to Stratford-upon-Avon ahead of us.

Kelly was in the house, wielding a noisy vacuum cleaner and all we had left to do was to shoo Millie back inside and set off. Kelly knew that Jay, Millie’s dogsitter, would arrive before she left the house. Jay’s key and pay was on the kitchen counter. Kelly had her own key which she would leave behind when she finished her job.

The drive was uneventful. It was a pleasant day and after a good two hours' car journey we enjoyed sitting on the terrace above the river, eating our sandwiches and watching the ducks. Absentmindedly I pulled a sandwich out of the bag on the table.  “Something wrong here,” I said, "the filling is cheese, I can’t eat cheese.” Sally and Frank had been watching me. “It’s wrong,” Sally said calmly, “because your hand is in our bag.”

Standing in the long queue for the Ladies is never a pleasure; I pass the time by watching myself and all the other ladies dying for a pee before the show in the tall mirrors, as we slowly shuffle towards the tiny cubicles and relief. Standing in line seems to drain the life out of you, we all have a vacant look, intent on getting to the promised land before the last bell.

Beloved and I had seats in the centre front row, we were close enough to the stage to lean on it and I was sitting directly beside and just under one of the two walkways the actors use for their exits and entrances,
often thundering past me but sometimes just standing quietly, alone, or in pairs, silently watching or performing 'off-stage', while the main action takes place in the centre. At a very quiet moment my phone went off, right under the feet of the banished Duke Senior, whose well-turned calf muscle didn’t even twitch.

I hate the morons who can’t remember to switch off their phones; I had pressed the off button long and hard before the show started; surely, it couldn’t have been my phone. Besides, it was a brand new phone, never used, and only one person knew the number,  Jay. Why would she ring me? The faint ringing stopped. Ten minutes later it rang again, still faintly and for just a few rings. I shifted in my seat, getting uncomfortable. I was sure I’d switched the phone off. Concentrating on the play became an effort. Sure enough, the damn thing went off again, just three rings this time. Theatre auditoria provide no holes to crawl into, nor could I interrupt the performance by creeping out; the whole theatre’s attention would have been focussed on me. Sitting so close to the stage, I would have created a huge disturbance. I was stuck.

When the interval came I shot out, examining the phone. It was on and the display showed a 'locked' symbol. I couldn’t do a thing to it, neither switch it on nor switch it off, check for messages or retrieve missed calls. Apparently, the only thing it would do was to sound the ringtone.  I was desperate now and ready to grind it under my heel, when I had a better idea: I removed the battery, which killed it stone-dead.

Act II

All was calm when we arrived home. Millie was alone, hysterically happy to see us, but fine. Jay had taken only a small part of her pay and left a long, apologetic note to say that there were details she would need to tell us as as soon as possible. Within minutes the landline rang.

Jay had been delayed in getting to our house and when she arrived Kelly had gone. Kelly is a very nice woman but she spends more time concentrating on a constant supply of desinfectant and rubber gloves than lubricating thought process mechanisms. Being a brush short of a broom cupboard, she had left the   door locked and shoved the key back in through the letterbox; Millie inside. As well as Jay’s key. The normal arrangement in such cases is for the person leaving to put the key into a hiding place known to all and sundry for the next person. We are nothing if not trusting.

Jay tried all doors; all were locked except for the small, integral, garage door, which leads into the house via another (locked) door. This internal door was the first one she tried to force. No luck. Ditto the front  and back doors; the conservatory doors were open but the inner glass doors were locked. No luck.

Through the letter box Jay could see Kelly’s key on the mat. She went into the village and borrowed a couple of magnets on a stick, a kind of fishing rod for keys. No luck. Jay is not very strong but she has a friend who is. Jay fetched Linda and took her to the up-and-over garage door to see if Linda could push the inner door open. Linda walked straight into the not-quite-fully-open garage door, hitting her forehead on the metal edge, and briefly knocking herself out. Head wounds bleed profusely, Linda went straight to the surgery where the gash in her forehead was cleaned and glued back together. After that she decided Millie would have to chance her luck without her.

Jay hadn’t given up yet, she went to fetch more help, a man this time. A chap’s brute force might succeed where a woman’s feeble efforts had failed. Robyn tried his best, using burglar’s tools on keyholes, but short of actually causing damage he saw no way of getting in.

Poor Jay was in despair. “ I need a magic wand”, she wailed. Angry and frustrated, cursing Kelly, and worried about Millie, who had been locked in for hours, she grabbed hold of the handle to the front door and rattled it as hard as she could.

And the door sprang open!

Perhaps Robyn’s efforts had dislodged the lock, perhaps the combined heaving and pushing had had some effect; whatever the cause, the door opened as freely as a bank’s door when a rich man enters.

So Millie had her walk - albeit a short one - and her dinner after all.

Epilogue

Things rarely work out the way you plan them but All’s Well That Ends Well. We also now have a specific lock in the house which appears to be badly bent out of shape.

“But other than that, Mrs. Friko,  how did you like the play?” “Not bad, not bad at all, thank you for asking."