A Washout?

Ms Mova and Ms Tagalong rubbed the sleep out of their eyes as they unpacked the car with the carefully prepared packs of chillies, lemon verbena, lemongrass, bunches of rosemary, pots of aloe vera and paraphernalia for the first appearance of a community garden at the Newcastle Show.

It was not promising. The rain had fallen all night, the ground was waterlogged, but inside the marquee it was dry if not cosy and warm.

The table was set, arranged and down came the rain. Streams, nay torrents raced through the marquee under the table and out the other side. Habitant in Harmony volunteers emerged from the sheeting rain like drowned rats. They should have got up early like Ms Mova and Ms Tagalong! Shouldn’t be rude, they dispensed some wonderful hot carob milk. (More about that at a later date)

As it was, it made for a very long, wet day with few viewers and even fewer takers. There was a highlight (there always is) Ms Mova and Tagalong were asked to judge the school scarecrow exhibition.

The task taken seriously they pondered, scratched their heads and carefully judged according to the criteria given.

Such wonderful prizes it seemed a shame more schools hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunity to show their artistic side.

Ms Tagalong dodged the showers and looked at the piglets, the baby goats and the very entertaining chickens. Some of them definitely needed to be kept behind bars.

Later, it was a damp, cool night for the Film in the Garden, but those who dressed up and came along enjoyed every minute of it. The group decamped to a member’s living room and were captivated by the charismatic Diana Vreeland.

The opening salvo set the scene.

‘You just have to arrange to be born in Paris. The rest is easy!’

What a character.

So don’t let the weather put you off, here at Tighes Hill Community Garden – it’s never a washout! 

It's great to have some feedback, so please leave me some comments.

Scarecrows are Us

Especially for those of you who have been enjoying the posts on country life in Dorset I have managed to persuade the lovely Maddie Grigg from The World from my Window to guest blog and this is what she wrote:

Behold the humble scarecrow.

In The Enchanted Village, various weird and wonderful figures come out once a year to compete in our annual scarecrow competition.

We’ve had monks and kings, cartoon characters, clowns and corgis. We’ve had cowboys and Indians, Cavaliers and Roundheads. We’ve had all sorts.

And occasionally, some stay in situ, scaring off the birds and becoming a permanent fixture until they rot away into oblivion. This one was on our allotments for some time.

Our scarecrow competition is a relatively new fixture on the village calendar. However, the keeper of our village history, the late Leonard Studley, who was born in 1909, tells us in his book, My Story, (ISBN 0 9514849 0 7) it’s nothing new:

As soon as the corn was sown in spring (or autumn) my father would construct a ‘mommett’ to keep the rooks off. Mother would have to supply a hat, preferably a straw one, ladies or gents didn’t matter, an old jacket, and if it was to be a posh ‘mommett’ a shirt, and a linen flour bag which would be stuffed with hay or straw to form a head.

The eyes, nose and mouth would be put in using the wet cork of the ink jar. He would then cut two sticks about 6ft long, one would have to be sharpened at the bottom end to enable it to be driven into the ground, the other would be tied across it to form the arms, and the clothes would be draped over the form.

Sometimes his nakedness would be hidden under a pair of trousers, sometimes not.

Leonard Studley says in the ‘earlier days’, boys were employed to scare off the birds and were known as bird starvers. This is the bird-scarers’ song his grandmother told him:

Heigh Ho Old Jack and Jennie Crow,
Let’s lie down and have a rest.
‘Spose my master was to come,
Thee must fly and I must run.

Sow four grains in a row,
One fer the rook, one fer the crow,
One fer to rot and one fer to grow.

It’s lucky for our children the practice has fallen into disuse. Or, if you’re inundated with birds on your patch of ground, maybe it’s something worth reviving…

That’s about it

Love Maddie x