Willothewisp

Archive for the ‘Gardens’ Category

Picture from Tyjardia's B'berry

Last night was movie night,  we do not have a TV in our household so on movie night we hook up one of the laptops to a projector and a set of speakers. The main living room is equipped with a screen that folds up into the ceiling, but on summer nights when good weather can be assured we sometimes move the entire evening outside. The kids have the choice of the main film, the one shown right after evening dinner, it is largely their movie night after all. Last night’s choice was Mousehunt with that very funny English comedian Lee Evans, a man whose face seems to be made of plastescene which can produce this stunning array of expressions. If he were ever laid deaf and mute he would have no trouble communicating with the rest of the world, his face is a shout in the quietest of rooms.

It was a glorious day here yesterday with next to no breeze, so with the weather holding I prevailled on Ty and Nonke’s boys to help me set up out in the garden so we could have the movie after dark. At least the lawn area was clean and clear ready for the movie, unfortunately with me ill for the last week with a stomach bug no one had trimmed back the outdoor dinning area Wisteria Vines. I had trimmed them a few weeks back before they flowered but now they were a riot of uncontrolled growth that I had to crouch under. Using my shears I was part way through cutting back to the trellis when big Nik dropped by, poor fellow, it was such bad timing on his part. I set him to work immediately. Nearly two hours later I realised the time and sent a long cold fizzy fruit cordial down to him and some food to sustain him. He did a wonderful job even though he is not a natural gardener himself. He even managed to muster most of my mismatched garden chairs to the table and cleaned the table down, great going Nik. Between food prep and garden chores I had to root through the store room for an hour looking for the big container of Christmas lights. This was much to the joy of my guide dog Sissi and my cat Pip’s delight, they love rooting around in there for some reason which is a pity because they rather get in the way when trying to neatly work my way through dozens of storage containers. I finally found the lights in the last box I looked, isn’t that always the way, it seems the Universe does enjoy it’s little jokes ! The boys strung the lights in the shrubs behind where the screen was going to be. It would make a lovely back drop with some five hundred grain-of-wheat size bulbs strung out across the vines and shrubs of the Roman wall, even though I was not be able to see it properly myself.

This time the choice of film for the grown ups fell to me, <Sigh>, I hate having to choose. I was going to go for De Vierde Man (The Fourth Man) but in the end decided something lighter would be better. I settled for La Dolce Vita, the 1960 Fellini film. It stars Marcello Mastroianni, probably not really known much outside of Europe and the delicious and sexy Anita Ekberg (ok, so my lesbian leanings creeping in there !), and Yvonne Furneaux. I picked it because I felt it would most suit the feel of my summer garden and the lovely family and friends that would be in it. Several of our number speak Italian and those who do not would still enjoy its wounderful lyrical ride while reading the Dutch subtitles. The subtitles would also equalise the gap between the deaf and hearing members.

Picture from Nik's iPhone

Food was a tricky balance. It was primarily the children’s evening so the food needed to have a distinctly Mousehunt orientation. I made up a Swiss cheese soup as an easy quick win with sunflower seed crackers. Keeping to theme I prepared grilled cheese toasties with some Dutch cheeses. A Roomano cheese, grilled with some pine nuts because as the cheese has a butterscotch flavour so they go well together. Yet another version I used Parrano, it is a Dutch take on an Italian cheese and cooks well as long as you are gentle with it. In fact I guess our version of grilled cheese is more like a bruschetto than an American idea of grilled cheese, as it employs good hams, sun dried tomatoes, garlic and half the bread of American grilled cheese. There is just too much bread in the American version of bread top and bottom. I made up salads using the first of the seasons leaves and herbs from the vertical garden in the solar with a Honing & Mosterd (Honey & Mustard) dressing. For deserts I baked a Mouse cake, Mouse Moose (mouse moulds), then mouse cookies for during the film. I was at the market stalls in town at six that morning, just as they were setting up stalls, and got some great early English strawberries. There are two types of strawberry that are supreme in taste, Alpine Hautbois vine strawberries and English Chandler strawberries, and to get the English strawberries from the Kent area so soon was a real coup’. I stood there in the cool of the early morning sun and dropped the most wonderfully vivid red berry into my mouth, pressed my tongue against it to squeeze it until it blew apart inside my mouth in a fireworks of sweetness, utterly, totally, perfectly balanced. My focus on my pleasure was broken by Sissi putting a paw up to ask for a taste of what was so obviously pleasing me, a moment later her disappointment with her taste of a strawberry was clear, definitely not doggy food ! It was only then I realised my strawberry tasting had gained a number of male on-lookers, all starring intently at me. I glanced down in a hurried check that my girls were behaving and had not leaked milk or risen in the cool air but all appeared well. Clearly someone thought I had put on a good show though because my order for six boxes had been supplemented with three more. It was only as I walked back thinking about the looks that I realised I was bouncing more than I should. With a bit of a start I realised I had forgotten to put my bra on when I dressed, and my white blouse was just a touch too thin for wearing bra-less against a low morning sun – Oooopps ! Still, it had been a fruitful mistake. Back home I turned one third of the stawberries into sorbet, a third into ice cream, a third as they are. I did not think that much would actually be eaten but I have learn from much entertaining to always have a little something in reserve.

Picture from Nik's iPhone

I was still preparing food when the first guests arrived early evening and so I set them to work setting the places, checking on the boys, entertaining the children. If I am providing the food and facilities I have no problem in making my guests work for their supper ! With the arrival of Jette (God daughter) and her little charge I had someone I could set to chasing Nina and finding out where she had got to. As I expected the report soon came back that Nina had spent the last few hours between the open thighs of another woman, but she was now, finally, on her way home. Some people might expect me to be angry at learning that my wife had spent the afternoon between the thighs of another while I slaved away in kitchen and garden, but I am pretty relaxed about such things. It is not the permissive Dutch attitudes that produce this sanguin approach’ but rather the nature of Nina’s job of midwife. I have often thought of having a bumper sticker made up for her and her colleagues – “Midwives Do It Between The Thighs Of Other Women”. I sent Hilke upstairs to pick out some fresh clothes for Nina, get her shower ready and stay up there to chivvy her along as soon as she got in, while at the same time more guests let themselves in.
I was throwing the chesnut sized new potatoes into the steamer, peeling garlic for the boiling water, chopping mint and getting the last of the breads ready. Somewhere in the back of my pantry was the butter from my parents farm that I wanted for the potatoes when cooked but goodness knows where, yet to be found. The slightly tangy smell now filling the kitchen was the roast peppers about to pass that point of perfection and trip down the road to oblivion unless I got to the oven double quick. It was in the midst of all this when Tayeska (deaf friend, mother of a deaf baby girl – remind me to tell you more one day) comes in ask where she can find four more chairs and place setttings. So imagine me, knife in one hand slot ladle in the other try to sign “What do you mean FOUR more ? The table sits sixteen, I am expecting twelve, what is the problem ?”

To which Tayeska replies, in sign; “Table sits sixteen, BUT you now have twenty guests, not including children !”. My reply was un-lady like and not suitable for children, but as it turned out it was the least of my problems as I dropped my knife narrowly escaping skewering my bare foot, and hit myself in my face with the ladle as I signed my expletive. Cursing further I had to rescue my grilling cheesed up breads.

Picture from Nik's iPhone

Cursing the day I had agreed to “having a few people over on movie night” I was vowing to myself to never do this again and about to have a bit of a hissy fit when Nina, along with her little chivvy shadow, wandered into the kitchen. She looked wonderful and fresh in her long white summer dress with a white and gold shawl drapped over her shoulders. She gave me a hug and I drank in the freshness of her recent shower, while still being able to pick the hint of a scent of a newly delivered baby (it tends to have a distinct smell). I told her we now had twenty guests, not sure how, and food for twelve.

“No problem, I will go and sort them out, the invited can sit at the table the self invited will have to fend for themselves. You work a miracle in spinning out what we have. It will be fine, go, go, go”

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And saying so it really was, as my Mother says, “Faith manages“.

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Picture: Tyjardia's B'berry

The light was just beginning to fade as food went out and by the time everyone was squeezed in around the table the light had gone and fairy lights and candles and table lights switched on. I could not see details by that light but I was told many times it was a good table. In the end there was enough food, the ice cream was called upon to give the ultimate sacrifice in the end. Our own little mice enjoyed their mouse hunting movie, but twenty minutes into La Dolci Vita they were asleep against various owning adults. By two am everyone had exhausted the supplied vittles, as well as conversation and had gone home to their beds and we finally locked the doors and went to bed as well. Putting the children and baby into our bed Nina and I tucked up on the bedroom couch. As I settled down I realised that through the open French doors I could see a cloud of blurry lights down in the garden, it took me a moment to realise what it was, but I asked Nina why she had left them on;

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“Well” she said, “I thought five hundred lights was appropriate, one light for each un-inivited guest that has turned up over the last eleven years by my reckoning, each leaving us only when fully fed, appropriate don’t you think. So you can see the lights then darling?”

Me; “Nahhhh, just a blurr to me now”

“Just like all those un-invited guests, how apt” she said as her white dress slipped from her shoulders to form a rippled white pool at her feet. It seems she had also gone light on underwear that day, the naughty girl, she had been naked under there all evening !

Me; ” So, tell me about this woman who kept you so late this evening.”

“Mother to her first, a boy, both well, getting to know each other now, changing each other’s lives for ever.” She said with something of a reminiscent sigh. I knew she would be recalling her own first moments with our little ones even as she said it, recalling those unique first warm minutes together with her own newborns, now sleeping in our bed. Drawing her mind back to the present she said;

” Now, how about you just show me your thighs my good Wife………………………………………………….”

The perfect ending to a movie night, and maybe the start to another, not so public story, one day.

Author: Judith.

Foot Note by Nina:-

With everyone seated, and the table fit to bursting with all manner of, well manner I guess, one of the un-invited (a Canadian lady) asked loudly if she could say grace to thank god for the food. Nik kindly replied with a hearty suggestion that HIS thanks would be going to Judith for the food and that god would do well to know that his place was to not go anywhere near Judith’s kitchen if he knew what was good for him ! The laughter was the signal to tuck in.

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Come, into the circle, come,
Raise the song of Harvest Home.
All is safely gathered in,
Let the winter storms begin.
Now our Goddess does provide,
For our needs to be supplied.
Come, into the circle come,
Raise the song of Harvest Home.

All the earth is her own field,
Fruit unto her praises yield.
Wheat and corn together sown,
Unto joy or sorrow grown.
First the blade and then the ear,
Then the full corn does appear,
God and Goddess grant that we
Whole and pure as grain shall be.

from a Pagan Harvest Prayer.

Boerderij Dronkers

Autumn, beautiful, wonderful autumn, my favourite time of the year. Here in the northern hemisphere autumn officially began Tuesday, September 22, the autumnal equinox, for me it began this weekend.

On Friday Nina and I marshaled our troops, that is to say three children and two guide dogs, packed up our rugged country clothes for a long weekend and set off to invade Nijmegen. We moved, lock, stock and barrel to my parents for the weekend, for a few days of autumn celebration on their farm, the Pagan festival of harvest.

Pagan Festival

Each autumn, usually on the weekend nearest to the autumn equinox, for longer than I can remember they celebrate the Pagan harvest festival. This is much to the irritation of the local Dutch Reform Church minister because my parents celebrations are better attended than his church ! Even more irritating is that the whole event is filled with the pagan stories of harvest festival which show rather show up the Christian event for the fraud it is. Typically of the Christian faith harvest festivals were hijacked from Pagan celebrations.

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The weekend is actually pretty hard work setting up tables, tents and facilities. The farm animals have to be moved to enclosures for the weekend so that they will be safe and yet guests can pay their respects to them. The harvested produce of the farms is set up into displays so that people can see the variety of things our organic farms produce. The yards have to be cleaned, a job I have always done since childhood, while the farms hands laid on power and water so the local sellers can set up stalls in the yards to sell their very fine produce.

This year with Nina being with child she was let off the heavier duties but she helped set up the story reading circles in the fields and down by the lake. We make them out of semi circles of straw bales with a radiant gas burner in the centre to provide some heat. This year Brigita had the idea of setting out a screen on a boat on the lake with a PC driven projector on another craft close by so that pictures of the ancient pagan gods could be projected out over the lake. I could not see it so well having limited night vision but I am told the effect was rather good.

And Hundreds Came….

All day Saturday parties of people were shown around the farm, given the chance to touch animals, taste produce fresh from the fields, drive some of the machinery and even try and plough a few lines on a field. On another field my dad ran a ploughing display using steam traction engines. They are a wonderful sight and beautifully atmospheric with the smells of hot oil, coal smoke and steam. They are our sons’ favorite and he always manages to get up onto the footplate of one of the huge machines!

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All through the afternoon people wandered about the farms visiting the animals, the great barns, and the produce market. For children and families we lay on nature walks and field competitions, treasure hunts that ranged through the woods and fields. The woods are home to many rare flowers and plants and these in turn support many insect types so during the summer months they are largely off limits to the public but this time of year people are free to roam. In the barns children have a chance to stroke, feel, feed and hold animal such as goats, lambs and horses. This is my favorite part, watching the expressions of children as they discover the animals. All children respond well to animals, but it is especially rewarding to see how children with problems react to animals. To hold an autistic child in your arms and lift them up to the massive bulk of a Belgian draft horse and feeling the child’s body go from tense apprehension to total relaxation as the horse so very gently nuzzles it’s massive head into the child is wonderful.

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Come evening the fires are lit and supper is cooked. All the food is made from locally harvested ingredients with soups, broths, baked vegetables and stews. In other words food you could easily wander about with from story circle to story circle. The story tellers are all volunteers from around the country and their stories ranged in tales just for children to tales with a more adult theme for much later in the night but all linked to the land, the fruitfulness of it and the cycle of life, growth and death.

Demeter & Persephone

My personal favorite harvest story is of Demeter and Her Daughter. Demeter was a goddess of grain and of the harvest in ancient Greece. Her daughter, Persephone, caught the eye of Hades, god of the underworld (not to be thought of as hell). When Hades abducted Persephone and took her back to the underworld, Demeter’s grief caused the crops on earth to die and go dormant. By the time she finally recovered her daughter, Persephone had eaten six pomegranate seeds, and so was doomed to spend six months of the year in the underworld. These six months are the time when the earth dies, beginning at the time of the autumn equinox.

In some interpretations of the story, Persephone is not held in the underworld against her will. Instead, she chooses to stay there for six months each year so that she can bring a little bit of brightness and light to the souls doomed to spend eternity with Hades. Either way it’s a lovely story and worth learning. I learnt it as a child listening to my father who is a wonderful story teller, recount it to an audience by the light of the harvest campfire one chilly autumn night. Even now as I remember that time I can hear his voice so clearly in my head even though I cannot hear it for real any more. He would weave this wonderful stories that encompassed thousands of years, about the cultivation of food plants, what we think of as farming now, and it came into being about 12,000 years ago. The ability to grow food had a dramatic impact on the human way of life, we forget this from our easy, comfortable lives now. Farming meant clans and tribes could settle in one area, creating communities and commerce, the foundations of villages, then towns, then cities, then city states and finally countries. Rather than living a nomadic life of stalking herds of edible animals, people could settle in one place and venture out of their growing communities to forage only when hunting and the gathering of non-farm plants were needed. These settled communities grew fast. Our ancestors discovered that this was an excellent arrangement for raising children, teaching survival skills, sharing work, and sharing food during the long winter months.

The last point is often forgotten today, but thousands of years ago entire populations could, and frequently were, wiped out by one bad winter. These farm weekends and picnics is to teach children where food comes from and just how precious a thing the land and farming is. By linking the event to mysterious pagan origins, complete with hedge magic and more than a little mystery it is made interesting and engaging for them. Throw in the old connections to Halloween and the time of spirits, the one time of year where our ancestors would trespass onto burial lands and go into the tunnels of the burial mounds and pay their respects to the dead and take it from me, you will completely engage with anyone.

And Into The Night & Next day….

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Some hardy souls stay the whole night around the fires or sleeping in one of the barns. For those brave enough to weather the first frost of autumn we reward them by providing hot breakfasts of farm fresh bacon, eggs, tomatoes and lots and lots of granary toast all washed down by big mugs of coffee. In return they had to help feed and tend to the farm animals before helping the farm hands move them back into their respective fields. Sunday was mostly friends and family day. We spent the morning clearing up then had an al-fresco lunch and an afternoon walk with all the children. The teenagers tended to slip off into the denser areas of the woods to do what teenagers do best together to reappear a little later still straightening up clothing !

It was a terrific weekend and well worth the day spent clearing up afterwards. Now the farms will settle down for the long pull through winter, Many of the farm workers will take their holidays heading off to their homes in other parts of Holland, or in the case of some others to Latvia, Poland, Ukraine. For my parents they will have a period of peace until the Sinter Klaas celebrations start to kick in, made even more interesting this year by our baby being due in December.

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For me the weekend has felt like an awakening as much of my acquired anxieties have fallen away and confidence has returned. On the train journey up I was aware of being very on edge, taking my finger nails right down, but on the journey home I realized that I was actually enjoying the trip. I feel I have reached some resolution inside myself to accept the fears that this comprised eye sight brings me. In a few days the girl who ruined my sight will be released back into the world and expelled from the country so I think it is time that I got on with living fully again. I will never see as well as I once did, but I can still see (mostly) so I think it time to get used to being frightened when I am out and just push on. I have neglected friends to catch up with and obligations to fulfill so I need to get to it !

Enjoy your autumn, appreciate the changing world about you at this most beautiful time of year and see the approaching winter and be ready to embrace it.

Love to you all,

Judith van der Roos

 

Sex, summer and sensuality

 

As I meander through my paradise I think of Primavera, that beautiful painting by Botticelli of spring. Venus, precious and beautiful Venus is standing in the centre of the picture, set slightly back from the other figures. The Charites, also called Three Graces, are elegantly dancing a rondel. The garden of Venus, goddess of love, is guarded on the left by Mercury. The myrtle plant that surrounds her is a plant that represents sexual desire, marriage, and child bearing. From the right, Zephyrus, the god of the winds, is forcefully pushing his way in, in pursuit of the nearly naked nymph Chloris clad only in a diaphanous gown. Chloris gave her name to chloriphil, the substance that gives all plants their green colour. Next to her walks Flora, the goddess of spring, who is scattering flowers. Flora tells how she was once the nymph Chloris herself, and breathes out flowers as she does so. Aroused to a terrible fiery passion by her beauty, Zephyr, the god of the wind, follows Chloris and forcefully takes her as his wife, raping her. Regretting his violence, he transforms her into Flora. He makes his gift of contrition to her a beautiful garden in which eternal spring reigns. The painting actually depicts the two separate moments in the narrative, the erotic pursuit of Chloris by Zephyr and her subsequent transformation into Flora. She is beautiful with a rich flower garland on her head and delicate spring blooms erupting from her dress, arms full of flowers. Chloris/Flora, nymph, lover, mother, giver of life, force of nature. I would love to be Flora.

One summer when I was in my very early teens I was in my grandmother’s sprawling garden. As we wondered arm in arm down her rose tunnel her lovely, lyrical, aging voice spoke a verse I had never heard before…..

“Spring-time and Venus come, And Venus’ boy, the winged harbinger, steps on before, And hard on Zephyr’s foot-prints Mother Flora, Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all, With colours and with odours excellent.”

She lent down to me and told me that some of her best times with lovers had been in gardens. My Oma was famous for the long string of male and female lovers she had had in her life. Amidst stories of some of her lovers I found I was seduced by her garden, it was the first time but not the last, I have been a prolific lover of gardens ever since. In my time I have flitted from one garden to the next enjoying every brief liaison, and in some I have even indulged my own passions and lusts and given myself over freely to the botanical and the human delights with equal abandon.

But this night I was wondering through my garden as I often do on summer nights, naked. I had shrugged my nightshirt off my shoulders as I left the hardness of wooden deck and stepped onto the cool grass. As my feet touched down on the soft, cool carpet of grass the first caress of the garden came and touched my feet, tickling little teases of grass between my toes, cool and soothing. Away from the house lights I was now blind but it did not matter, I know my garden so well I do not need my now failing eye sight, I fancied I could almost navigate by smell alone. Turn left, ah yes, there is the clematis along the Roman wall, turn right the first burst of early Honeysuckle by the first border. I turn right to walk alongside the big stone and flint wall and my guide dog Sissi though will not let me be out alone and walks past me brushing my leg just enough to tell me; “I am here, I am watching, call if you need me” as she wanders off to take her own pleasure in the garden’s scents. Imagine if I had a dog’s nose, how wondrous my garden would seem then. I could smell every tiny little bud, every mote of soil. I wondered if she could smell ladybirds, do caterpillars have a smell ? Does she see the smells of my garden as a haze of intermixing colours in the air? One thing was certain, she must be able to smell the wild garlic I sow in the borders to keep pests at bay.

The air of the night wrapped itself about my naked body pushing away the fog of the warm indoors and breathing freshness over every part of me with a kiss as sexy as any lovers kiss. Just as with a lover’s kiss this one also swelled my breasts and firmed my nipples sending an electric tickle down into my belly. As I walked by memory I marvelled at how well I could move about despite not being able to see. Under foot I could tell where I was on the grass paths by the feel under my feet and by reaching out I could feel by the plants location where I was placed. Fox gloves came to my hands, their tall bell like structures filling my hands so I had to be alongside the wall. I love to feel for the separate little fox bells in my fingers and feel their delicate little structure.

Then I turned towards the long wildflower grass and stepped lightly into the patch and enjoyed the caressing of thigh high grasses and wild flowers. As I pushed through the light sea of grasses as the lush smell of them washed about me, and all over my thighs delicate thin fingers tested and teased their way up. I bent forward and pushed my hands down into the gently rolling surf of grass and meadow flowers, the little strands and stalks between my fingers, crisp tight heads of grasses popping past me. The swaying heads played against my breasts, naughty little fingers reaching up to tickle and tease until I felt the familiar warmth of milk starting to let down inside them. It feels like grass and meadow flowers are growing out of my legs, as though I am becoming Flora, how wonderful would that be, to breath out sapphire cornflower heads and golden Marigolds, sowing my garden afresh with each exhalation

Then Sissi has circled back to me and pushed her muzzle into my right hand, the message for me to look about and pay attention. I looked.

I cannot see detail in such darkness any more but I can see shapes and coming towards me siloetted against the light from the house was a very familiar shape indeed. My very own Chloris clad in a diaphanous gown of fine white linen. I could make out the roll of her hips, that gentle swaying saunter she has that exudes sensuous sexuality. Wading through the floral surf she reached out and put her hands onto my hips and pulled us together. I smiled to myself as I realised her scent was “Flowers’ a vivid mix of Jasmine, sweet pea and rose. I reached under the edge of her nightshirt and traced her nakedness underneath with my fingers, from the smoothness of her thighs, across the curves of her waist and across the flatness of her belly. Exactly a year before that same belly had been great with child, from womb to home our baby now slept soundly while we reconnected with each other and with the nature in our garden.

I un-did the buttons on her shirt and pushed it off her shoulders. As it dropped to form a white pool amid the darkness of the grass about her feet I stepped back . Chloris naked before me. She took my arm and we walked the night time paths of our garden past Amethyst, Summer Sorbet, Wisteria and Akebia. Come sunrise the amazing dance of life in the garden would continue. The reproductive structures of the flowers and plants form pistils. The stigma at the top of the pistil would go back to catching pollen so that sperm from the pollen will travel down this tube to the ovules. The ovules, or eggs, in the ovary are then fertilized, in short, sex.

Gardens are definitely sex made manifest, wonderful fertility and pulsing with life. So one night this summer take your lover out into a garden, walk naked together and really feel the magical dance that goes on all around you. Close your eyes and let it soak through your senses to warm and arouse you and then…………………….celebrate life !

Author: Judith.