Sunday School and Onions

Gentle Reader ~~~

I am sitting in my living room, overlooking the garden, sipping a mug of warming, *spice infused almond milk, and watching the small, delicate garden birds feed from the few remaining apples that still, miraculously, cling to the trees ~~~ As ever, I am praying for snow, but all we have is rain, and now there is hail. Please, may I have a cross between the two? That would be snow, wouldn't it?

WINDY NIGHTS

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Whenever the moon and stars are set,

      Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet,

      A man goes riding by.

Late in the night when the fires are out,

Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,

      And ships are tossed at sea,

By, on the highway, low and loud,

      By at the gallop goes he.

By at the gallop he goes, and then

By he comes back at the gallop again.

I wonder if, in the dead of night, a man on horseback goes riding by in the storms that pelt over us as the wind howls down the chimney making such noise that we would never hear if one did ~~~ don't you think this is quite a scary poem for children? It comes from one of those most loved books of childhood ~~~ "A Child's Garden of Verses" which most of us probably read as children ~~~

How the weather has changed, so suddenly, about ten days ago. While we previously enjoyed one of the mildest Octobers, and November began in similar vein, we are now paying the price for deliciously crisp Autumn days by enduring gale after gale after gale.

We now name our late Autumn and Winter gales and storms alphabetically, in similar nature to the hurricane system.  Oh, I do think someone in the Met Office has a dry sense of humour, for our first big blow was aptly named Abigail, which I may have mentioned I re~spelled ABigGale. After ABigGale blustered past with winds of 70 mph, we were welcoming the remnants of hurricane Kate, who was quickly followed by Barney {barney is UK slang for a fight} and last night we were battered by yet more high winds, this time from the North and bringing colder temperatures too.  so, the last ten days has been one wind storm after another. We now have a welcome break until Tuesday evening when the winds pick up again. Until then, they will be a comparatively calm 15 mph average.

I hope the garden is secure. It is as secure as I can make it, unless I have overlooked something.  It is definitely indoor weather now.

~~~~~

Do you recall that last year, one of my last gardening jobs was to plant some onions and garlic? I have never planted them so late before and wanted to see what would happen. Well, I was not impressed. I tended them well, but nothing happened. When harvesting time came, there was nothing to harvest, and the garlic was puny and not worth taking photographs. I was very disappointed.  Then, my circumstances meant I could not garden this summer and, with grace, I had to give in and accept that I could not garden and let the weeds take over.  The onions were forgotten, that is until two days ago when I was taking compost to the bin and noticed some familiar, bright green shoots sticking above the weeds as they die back. Investigation revealed that the onions that were lost are found! All are now growing!  I will leave them in peace now, until next Spring and see what happens. There may be onions yet.

As to the garlic, the cloves are many but dreadfully tiny, almost too tiny to peel, so last night I was roasting up a big pan of root vegetables and just threw in several of the miniature cloves to let them at least add some flavour. Wow! After forty minutes roasting with the veggies, the tiny cloves were perfectly cooked to the softest, sweetest, nuttiest, fragrant garlic flavoured purée I have ever tasted.  I will be roasting them up later and freezing the delicious purée for use over the Winter.

~~~~~

Recently, on a clearing trip to the attic, I found the following. Some of you may have seen these before, but I don't think I've shared them on here.   They are sheets of perforated tickets that were given to children to mark their attendance at Sunday School.  I have been trying to date them, and to find out more about them, but am not having much luck. I guess I must try to refine my search words some more.  So far, these ones seem to date from the early 1900's but were in use up until around the 1930's. I have no idea how they came to be in my attic, other than my strong family connections with the Cathedral, and the possibility of one of my forebears teaching Sunday School ~~~

This is the building where I attended Sunday School, and where these tickets would have been given to the children of the early twentieth centure too ~~~ I was a rebellious child and was expelled from Sunday School twice for being a "disruptive force" which I prefer to think of as being a

~~~ a Free Spirited, Independent Child ~~~ 

Until next time ~~~

Sincerely yours
Deborah xo

*to make a mug of spice infused milk, gently simmer 1/4 teaspoon each of cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, and two cardamom pods in 8 fl. oz of milk of your choice for five minutes. Strain into a cup or mug. I used almond 'milk' today, but coconut milk is sublime, and regular cow's milk works if you like it. I don't drink cow's milk.  You can adjust the spices to include personal favourites too. Sometimes, I add a spoon of cocoa powder.  It is warming and comforting when the weather outside is less than pretty.