Signs of Spring

For those of you still under several feet or inches of snow, some green shoots, the first a delphinium which may live - or die - to regret this spurt of new growth.

 More promising are these buds on the espaliered pear, although the blossom needs to wait a while.  This, in a week when the temperature has fallen again, so that it is actually painful to be outdoors without mittens.


Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while will know that I enjoy a bargain almost above anything.  Clothes for which I have paid the full price almost never become my favourites, while something picked up at Oxfam will be never off my back.

Here a little treasure trove of items acquired over the years in Essex, some three hundred and fifty miles from Cumbria.  First, the woven mohair scarf, in such wonderful deep-dyed colours.  Someone obviously found it too tickly to wear next to the skin.  It was brand-new when I found it in a charity shop.

Then, this little dish made in Borrowdale by Lakeland Rural Industries.  Once there was a thriving art metalwork industry based at Keaswick.  Even in the early Seventies, items made in stainless steel were on sale.  This is descibed as Hand-beaten and bears the characteristic markings of that process.

Finally, the larger bowl by John Harrison, a craftsman in metal based at Penrith.  Again, this was in a charity shop in Essex.  It has a mirror finish, so shiny that you can see our stained glass windows reflected in the surface.

This week's words: My younger sister gave us a Voucher for Christmas.  It's a voucher for meat from Heritage Meats at Yew Tree Farm, Coniston.  The web-site offers cuts of pork, beef and Herdwick lamb and mutton, using the word "Hogget".  My father kept a flock of sheep on our small fell-farm, but he chose Cheviots, on the grounds that they are  larger animals with light coloured wool.   No one ever suggested processing the wool at home; fleeces went into a large wool-sack and off to the Wool Board.  Even the daggets were bought by the travelling scrap metal merchants.
So there is a repertoire of words for sheep: hogg, gimmer, wether, twinter, yow, tip.  "Smit" was the red marking pigment, used to identify the sheep as ours: two pops on one side.  "Ratch" is a verb, meaning to go in search of forage.  In our house it was also used for looking in drawers or cupboards which were not one's own!