Mistletoe

Mistletoe growing in Oxford Botanic Gardens

Travelling south on the train near Bristol I was surprised to see trees festooned with quite large quantities of mistletoe (Viscum album). I don't know why I was surprised, since it's not uncommon in the south of England, but I've spent so much time in the north that I just don't expect to see it, I suppose. With my interest in folklore it's not surprising that I've always rather wanted to grow it, and always lived in the wrong places.

I think most people know about its pagan associations and have a mental picture of it being sought by druids in oak groves for use in their rituals, where it had to be cut with a golden sickle to preserve its qualities. Such images probably arise from Europe, since in England it's rare for it to grow on oak, being much more common in old apple orchards, and therefore somewhat under threat, as our old orchards are a dying breed. Mistletoe is difficult to get established, which is why I'm not wasting my time trying to persuade it to adopt one of its alternative host plants, although I would be happy to see some of our hawthorns supporting this particular parasite. Not, I might add, that any plant in our garden is allowed to bear its berries for more than a day or two, before hoards of marauding blackbirds descend to strip them.

Here for your delectation is a link to a mistletoe blog – who would have thought there was such a thing? It, and the accompanying Mistletoe Pages will tell you far more than I ever could about this fascinating plant. As usual, though, Christmas in our house will be mistletoe-free.

What I like about Christmas...

A simple thing, but I was enjoying my contemplation of this basket of goodies, and reluctant to end the pleasure by actually starting to wrap presents. However, final posting dates loomed, as does my imminent departure for southern climes, and yesterday I thought I had better make a start. Now, thank goodness, various parcels should be en route to friends and family, a bag sits ready for the Devon visit, and even the family packages are enveloped in tissue and tasteful silk plissé ribbon (well, apart from those that are still on their way from Amazon). Because, of course, I have been utterly stupid, in committing myself to a filial visit the weekend before Christmas - what was I thinking? When am I going to make the mince pies and sausage rolls required by my own dear children? What about the Christmas cake? (Yes, indeed, it's much to late to even contemplate now, it should have been steeping in brandy for the past month.) Because on Christmas Eve, when I get back, I am going to be hoovering, making beds, tackling endless quantities of washing and cleaning out the chickens. The gentle ritual of making cheese straws while listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols - you're joking, I shall to be rehanging the bathroom curtains. Ho hum (bug).

The Children of Lir

These creatures of the mist are whooper swans - cygnus cygnus - the Children of Lir, and winter visitors from Iceland and Scandinavia. I first saw them in Perthshire when I was eleven or so, when we walked across the hills to see them on Loch Moraig (you can see a photo of them on the loch here). It was a special day, and I fell in love with the romance of the swans on the water, and their wild wailing.

Last weekend, however, it was on a misty loch in the Scottish Borders that I took this picture. Sadly my camera battery was failing, and I was too slow to photograph the group that flew past mere yards away, just as I was too slow some days later when five flew past our kitchen window, honking mournfully. Nearby Berwick is famous for its huge wintering flock of mute swans, and I love to see them, but the whoopers are special, second only to unicorns. Fated to spend 900 years as swans, the Children of Lir were transformed by their stepmother Aoife, but were allowed to retain their human voices when she felt some remorse for her dreadful act:

And the Sons of the Gael used to be coming no less than the Men of Dea to hear them from every part of Ireland, for there never was any music or any delight heard in Ireland to compare with that music of the swans. And they used to be telling stories, and to be talking with men of Ireland every day, and with their teachers and their fellow-pupils and their friends. And every night they used to sing very sweet music of the Sidhe; and every one that heard that music would sleep sound and quiet whatever trouble or long sickness might be on him; for every one that heard the music of the birds, it is happy and contented he would be after it. (Lady Gregory, The Fate of the Children of Lir)

Happy dogs

I woke yesterday morning to that peculiar silence that denotes snow. It didn't last long: two delighted dogs announced their intention of spending as much time as possible playing snow ploughs, so could I please get up now, and get my boots on?


Admittedly, it wasn't a great deal of snow, but the dunes were almost deserted, and the girls rushed about like puppies. I honed my tracking skills - lots of activity here at Rabbit Central (a large windswept thorn bush): while no-one had been up the main path before us except for a solitary fox:
By the afternoon it had all thawed, and there was the sound of dripping all evening. The Cheviot, however, remains white, and today there have been several squally hailstorms. Brrr. I hope the fingerless gloves I've ordered arrive soon, my hands get cold when I type. The dogs, meanwhile, are stretched out in front of a warm stove, basking.

Flower of the week

Not much time this afternoon, but it's wild and windy, exactly the sort of weather I dislike most, so I thought we might briefly revisit some of the best moments of the past year:


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The Prize Cat

Franz Marc, Two Cats

This is the day when Cat Musings, usually a rather doggy site, celebrates its namesake, the Cat. This is on behalf of T., and since I can't put flowers on his grave, this year it's a poem.

The Prize Cat

E.J. Pratt (1882-1964)

Pure blood domestic, guaranteed,
Soft-mannered, musical in purr,
The ribbon had declared the breed,
Gentility was in the fur

Such feline culture in the gads
No anger ever arched her back--
What distance since those velvet pads
Departed from the leopard's track!

And when I mused how Time had thinned
The jungle strains within the cells,
How human hands had disciplined
Those prowling optic parallels;

I saw the generations pass
Along the reflex of a spring,
A bird had rustled in the grass,
The tab had caught it on the wing:

Behind the leap so furtive-wild
Was such ignition in the gleam,
I thought an Abyssinian child
Had cried out in the whitethroat's scream.

Yarrow

Photo by haledavid1@msn.com

This week's flower is yarrow, mainly because at this time of year it is one of relatively few plants still blossoming on the dunes. Also known as milfoil, for its feathery leaves, achillea millefolium is named for Achilles, as this has been a wound herb from early times, used to staunch bleeding (it may also help that, like willow bark, it contains salicylic acid). However, it is also supposed to promote bleeding – one of its common names is nosebleed, and this characteristic led to it being used as a cure for migraine – I don't know, having a nosebleed might take your mind off a mild one, I suppose, but I don't think I'd want to try it as a cure when suffering from one of those three-day affairs. A kinder local tradition says that if you stuff the leaves up your nose, you will bleed if your love loves you – a bit more dramatic than picking the petals off daisies and, presumably, all the truer for it. Alternatively, just place it under your pillow and you may dream of your lover.

The word yarrow comes from Old English, gearwe, and its use in medicine is discussed by Dioscorides in his De Materia Medica. Not surprisingly, perhaps, for such an old and valuable herb, it has magical properties too, for divination (yarrow stalks are used in casting the I Ching) and as a protection against evil. Hang it up on St John's Eve (23 June) to ward off illness (oddly, there is a folk story that says there is a fern which flowers only on that night, which can give the power of second sight – it occurs to me that yarrow has very ferny leaves, though it flowers a good deal more prolifically). In Scotland, where it's also called Moleery tea (from the French millefeuille, perhaps?) it's also a dye herb, giving a pale yellow colour. Gardeners should plant to attract useful predators like hoverflies and ladybirds, but it also has a reputation for soil improvement so it makes a good, and attractive companion plant. There are cultivated varieties in deep pinks and oranges, but one of the things I like best about the wild white plant is the occasional rose pink flower, unexpected amongst its white sisters.


I will pluck the yarrow fair,
That more benign will be my face,
That more warm shall be my lips,
That more chaste shall be my speech,
Be my speech the beams of the sun,
Be my lips the sap of the strawberry.

May I be an isle in the sea,
May I be a hill on the shore,
May I be a star in the waning of the moon,
May I be a staff to the weak,
Wound can I every man,
Wound can no man me.

from Alexander Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica