Butterflies

I’m sorry, butterflies. The buddleias are in such a sorry state, like the rest of the so-called garden and it’s my fault. I’m not responsible for the lack of rain or the heatwave – did I miss that? – but we went away for weeks on end, leaving plants to look after themselves. Garden neglect. No sooner were we back from our travels south, when we were off in the caravan. We didn’t go far, probably only a half hour walk away from home to Marton Mere for a Haven break. It wasn’t a holiday, though being there made it feel like one. We left our house to the mercy of the company entrusted to replace our damp course. We relaxed with ice creams, beer and whatever was on the menu in the Boathouse, then returned home to a job perfectly done. Thanks, team. Within days we were missing caravan life and quickly organised a trip north to join family and celebrate our wedding anniversary. The garden was beyond all hope, so I left it.

Buddleia, white blooms and quite majestic, fared better than the purple or pink and a few butterflies were enjoying themselves, but not the abundance we’ve known in previous summers. Those summers when we’ve stayed at home and I’ve tended the garden properly.

One dry day when the air was still, I spent time chopping up bramble that had crept along the ground. At last, a path for me to reach the marigolds and dead-head them.

Not a single nasturtium has graced us. Lack of water, so down to my absence again. The grandchildren were fascinated with watching the caterpillars that fed from them, growing from tiny to huge. The survivors would go on to become butterflies. The grandchildren have grown out of the story, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, but I haven’t. It continues forever in the infant’s library I help to look after.

When I started school, age 4, 1959, my coat peg had a picture of a butterfly above it. Each child could identify their peg by a picture. Children have names, now. I would have recognised my name at the time, but it’s just the way things were done in those good old days.

I found this poem,

In the middle of our porridge plates
There was a blue butterfly painted,
And each morning we tried who should reach the butterfly first.
Then the Grandmother said, ‘Do not eat the poor butterfly.’
That made us laugh.
Always she said it and always it started us laughing,
It seemed such a sweet little joke.
I was certain that one fine morning
The butterfly would fly out of our plates,
Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world,
And perch on the Grandmother’s lap.

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry 1888 - 1923

The butterfly cross stitch is one of mine, from when I could see what I'm doing.

Thanks for reading, Pam x      

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A Favourite Poet - Too Many to Mention

Poetry books are in abundance on my book shelves and bedside table. I love poetry. I love words, artistically shaped into meaningful phrases. I wish I had the talent to do it better and I keep trying, but I think I peaked some time ago. My head is packed with stress and nonsense which I hope will eventually spill out and evaporate, giving me back some clarity and concentration, and something to write about.

As for choosing or having a favourite poet, for me, it’s like music and depends how I feel. They all have a place.

I suppose we all start as children, learning nursery rhymes and progress into poetry from there. My first poetry book must have been A Children’s Garden of Verse by Walter de la Mare. It’s a slim, hardback, well-used and dog-eared, still knocking around my house somewhere amongst my saved children’s books. I enjoy sharing books with the children at school. I often choose something that tells the story in rhyme, like Dr Seuss and ask the class if anyone can guess what word is next. I like to make it fun. I’ve borrowed a poetry book for children by Michael Rosen which my elder grandson enjoyed. I recently introduced him to my poem about Blackpool Tower, written a few years ago. He was arguing about when it was built, how long it took and I couldn’t convince him that it was less than a hundred years, so out came the book with the poem in it. I read the poem out aloud, not letting on that I’d written it until the end, when I showed him the name. Now he knows that I’m a published poet, I might have gone up in his estimation. I’m not just Nanna, who makes delicious muffins.

When I was a child, we had to learn poems or verses off by heart. It was part of English and usually set as homework to recite to the class. No escape. Here’s a favourite,

From Home-thoughts From Abroad by Robert Browning.

Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England – now!

Later it was Shakespeare’s sonnets and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath from the Canterbury Tales.

My fondness for Dumfries & Galloway began with a visit to the birthplace of Robert Burns when we were on holiday near Ayr. Our first stay in the area was never going to be enough and over the years we may have traced his steps from Alloway to Ecclefechan and back again many times, visiting his various homes and his resting place in Dumfries. I wrote this some time ago,

You captured my heart with your words of romance,
I would have embraced you, if given the chance.
We might have been lovers and perfect soul mates,
What a shame I was born two centuries late.

John Betjeman, Simon Armitage, Maya Angelou and Lemn Sissay are all dear to me. How wonderful to see the work of Lemn Sissay displayed as artwork on the side of a Huddersfield University wall, and another in Manchester. We haven’t met, but I feel like I know him through his life story and his daily quatrains, and I want to hug him and say, “Look, at that! Look how far you’ve come!”

I have met Manchester poet, Mike Garry. His poetry still takes my breath away and I’ve seen him many times. The first time was 2012 at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal when he was on with John Cooper Clarke. Mike Garry, totally different to JCC, with an equal talent that blew me away. Read him, go and see him, listen to him on YouTube.

Dr John Cooper Clarke, he’s gone from strength to strength. Punk poet in the 1970s to GCSE and A-Level Curriculum inclusion now. Clever, witty and great in concert, with all his handwritten poetry on loose sheets of paper. That’s how it was in Kendal. I wonder if he ever got my Terza Rima?

When Manchester became Mad-chester.

Those of the time embraced every word,
Listening in wonder to John Cooper Clarke,
The Bard of Salford who had to be heard.

Rapid from the mouth and skinny and dark,
‘Evidently Chickentown’, effing good,
He’s magic with words, bright as any spark.

His wholesome description meant that we could
Smell the inhabitants of ‘Beezley Street’,
Rich mixture of urban decay and blood.

Life, humour and truth, a picture complete
And painted with colourful language that
Reaches all listeners not just the elite.

So thanks, JCC, I know where I’m at,
Laughing out loud at the poem called ‘Twat’.

PMW 2012

I haven’t got a definite favourite. I’ve missed lots out and there are people I know through open-mic and similar formats who write some terrific poetry and make me want to snap all my pencils.

This is a long blog, but thanks for reading, Pam x

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Flowers - Bloomin' Lovely

The garden is looking sorry for itself. Chopped down for winter, the three intertwined buddleia are naked sticks protruding from the soil, shorter than the fence. They look dead, but I’m sure I haven’t killed them. I can’t say the same for the annoying bindweed that was wrapped tightly around more branches than I realised. It has disappeared for now. Springtime will see it re-emerge, ready to attack, and once again I’ll be fighting the losing battle of trying to keep it away. I’m considering training it on to some trellis somewhere at the side. It is an attractive plant, just damages other things. We’ll see. The buddleia didn’t flower very well and I didn’t see a single butterfly, though I was away for most of the summer.

I'm not a good gardener, home or away, but I make an effort and do my best. Bulbs are planted for spring. I look forward to daffodils, tulips, irises, grape hyacinths and something I’ve never heard of that looked very pretty on the box. I do this every autumn, full of enthusiasm, expecting to grow the best spring garden ever and the wonderful flowers will compensate for every ache and pain. Something is always lacking – green fingers – so, in all seasons I try to plant things that will flower nicely and look after themselves. A favourite is the Totally Tangerine geum. They come back stronger each year. There are two, in different flower beds. In bloom, one is more stunning than the other. The slightly weaker one was bought when I was feeling cross about someone connected to football and I think it shows, but it doesn’t matter now.

I love to have flowers in the house. Last week I was overwhelmed and delighted to be given beautiful roses including yellow ones for friendship from a lovely friend of many years. She didn’t know this, but things have been tough for me lately. The flowers, with their special significance, really helped to cheer me up.

I always have daffodils in remembrance of my father. When he passed away, his garden path was lines with an abundance of shades of yellow, cream and orange created by an amazing display of various daffodils. It’s nice to see them appear in my garden.

I hope I have success with poppies next year. They always look lovely, but can be so delicate that they don’t last very long.

I’ve chosen two poems,

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth 1770-1850

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae 1872-1918

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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