Cats in the Kitchen, Flora in the Garden

I have just been so busy these past two days, I had to prepare for my Local History Group meeting last night, loads of art and craftwork to do and a mountain of housework seems to have accumulated, so much in fact, that I just couldn't ignore it any longer and had to grit my teeth and get down to it. At the moment there are not enough hours in the day, well there are if I never slept, ate or had any relaxation. I don't mind the cooking, we both just help ourselves to breakfast cereal, we just have a lunch time snack such as salad and quiche or sandwiches, so there is only the evening meal that is true cooking. Occasionally my husband even cooks it, though I do like cooking the evening meal. Its the boring old housework that I wastes my time. Something, I thought, has got to be done about it. I pondered and I thought, then just as I was falling asleep last night with the beautiful ripe full moon's rays shining on my face and pillow, inspiration arrived. Here below is the answer to my problem.



ONE RELIABLE HOUSE FAIRY WANTED

To scatter magic dust overnight
To keep country cottage clean

Will be well treated and fed honeyed milk and sugared violets
Lovely small garden to choose her flower dresses in and lots of garden fairies to be friends with

Allowed to be carefree all day just required to sort the housework problems out through the night so owner can have more time with her arts and crafts

A bijou residence is available in garden and employer will be happy to help you furnish it

Please apply here to daisy lupin

If anyone has a house fairy you don't need or know of one looking for a new job, please tell them about me.

Life can be so strange sometimes, you remember when I was talking about my love of hares and asking if anyone knew anything interesting about them? When I was in my local town on Tuesday, I dropped into the library and browsing the just returned and new shelves, staring me in the face was this book The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans & David Thomson, the blurb says it is a reissue of a rare and remarkable book from 1972 about every aspect of life and legend of the wild hare, much of it from oral testimony, from nature to folklore, poetry and art. I am the first person to take the book out. I think there is something amazing at that book suddenly being there.


It was my Local History Group last night and we had a very good meeting, I have got the group focused on publishing locally a pamphlet about the village in the last century. The older members, and the parents of members have interesting memories of past events which I feel should not be lost. I told everyone to come back next month with either written or bullet point form, memories, which I will edit and then we can sort out some photographs to match.

I was given some wonderful copies of photographs of how our village used to look, which I have scanned into the computer. If you remmber a good few posts back I uploaded a photograph of the long house, well above is photograph of it in 1905 when it still had a thatched roof. At one point it was used as the local R.C. church, before reverting to a dwelling place again.


This is a row of cottages down at the bottom of the hill beside the river that are still there today. The did used to flood and looking closely at the photograph I tried to make out if that was a large pool of water in the road beside the swans. it is hard to make out, if it was it could have been taken after a flood, perhaps the swans had been swimming there.


This photograph judging by the little girls' outfits is late Edwardian. The building on the left is the Co-op shop and the one one the right is the pub called at that point The Co-operative There is still a pub on this spot, but different in style, I am trying to work out, I think that a new frontage of one storey may just have been added to the pub, with the original two floor building incorporated behind it. Inbetween the two buildings you can see the mill chimney towering into the sky. The mill is now a series of small business units, the cottages are still lived in and if you remember, I posted photographs of the mill allotments [ gardens that were rented out to mill workers but now to villagers to grow vegetables in]. I have wanted one of these allotments but they are all in use at the moment, and now I have heard some bad news, they not be there much longer as planning permission is being asked to make a larger carpark for the mill. I find it very sad how even rurally now carparks are becoming essential, items everyhwere. Too much tacmac in the country spoils it and tacmac is encroaching upon the green and pleasant land faster and faster. I have not found out yet if anyone,such as the allotment holders, are objecting, and will tell you when I find out.


Sandy, of Vintage Collage and Quilts made this lovely collage and sent it to me. Everything that is on the collage has come from the photographs I have uploaded onto my blog. Even the floral images are the photos I had of the clematis, the people are all my past relations, such as my great- grandmother and my grandmother and grandfather's wedding photo. There is even a little soul fairy Pixie flying about. I just love it and am looking for a lovely vintage frame for it so I can hang it in my bedroom where it will fit in wonderfully with the colur scheme and ambience.