I have been listening to Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum debut book. A good read for all you that chase your ancestry through the archives by the way. It is a long journey from a great, great grandmother who ran off with a French photographer through the lives of her four children and then their stories culminating in the 20th century stories. Just imagine one of those ancestry trees with all the branches going everywhere, which always confuse me. The narrator Ruby Lennox, starts from inside her mother's womb. - original.
It is beginning to feel that this is happening in my life as well. I seem to have acquired several half brothers and sisters along the way, and my daughter corresponds with one of her 'cousins'. I had come to the conclusion that I was too old to start new family arrangements, though I have a feeling it would make a good story for someone ......
The world, or at least United Kingdom, is seeing cowslips everywhere they have blossomed because of a rotten winter, that makes me giggle - bad winters equal abundance of cowslips. Did you know they can become promiscuous and mate with the gentle primrose and produce the oxlip (Primula Veris). Grigson would say, "lacks the charm of either parent", reflected in the naming of the plant, Bedlam Cowslip or Bullslop.
Grigson's book on plants gives the colloquial names of the wild plants for the different areas of the countryside. It is something we have lost, as was pointed out in a webinar on Curlews the other night. In the olden days people walked everywhere and took note of the wayside wild flowers and gave them distinctive names. Nowadays we zoom past in our cars, or speed walking up a mountain and miss these little plants.
I came across a good name for dandelions the other day 'Golden Misfits' describes them beautifully as they are hunted out of the lawns. Well maybe you will need them one day in these Brexit poor days, to grind your coffee from the roots, or eat the flowers and leaves in a salad!
On ancestry - my first husband was of French descent. The first Rivron came over here as a prisoner of war in the Napoleonic wars and was imprisoned in Dartmoor prison. After release he married a Devonshire girl and settled here. My husband researched the family up to the present day - and it was the reason we called our Son Dominic - to keep the name going. As to Cowslips - they are seeding themselves happily in my back garden )there are cowslips in the field over my garden wall. I get a few more each year (same goes for dandelions but sadly I root them out although their flowers light up the garden they are such a bright yellow. Nothing subtle abou the dandelion whereas the cowslip is a gentle colour.
ReplyDeleteFrench Rivron that will explain it Pat, we trail our history after us. Might get a DNA test eventually to quantify who I am, but does it matter, except to the children. It is obvious why the dandelion spreads with its umbrellas of thousands of seed pods. Dandelions worked out their survival kits pretty quickly.
DeleteI heard today that 2023 is an exceptionally good year for Cowslips. Something to do with all the weather we have been having.
ReplyDeleteThey have also been planted over the years on grass verges and traffic islands, though how the insects manoeuvre around rushing traffic is a mystery,
DeleteRather a heavy post, Thelma. From plant genealogy to your and Pat's!
ReplyDeletePlant genealogy is more interesting than human Joanne!
ReplyDelete