Skip to main content

Fruitful Trees

wassailing in pensford fieldsLast Friday I went to a Kew Wassail in aid of making the apricot tree fruitful for the year. It was very exciting because I also met a woman with a sheep, and another woman who has a spinning wheel - and knows how to use it - so I think it was a very fruitful occasion already.

AND I met a woman who keeps bees there (its called Pensford Fields and its a hidden gem of a kind of naturalness, behind some houses in Kew) and she wants help looking after the bees, so one day I might know enough to have my own honey. If there are any bees left, that is.
wassailing in pensford fields
Anyway the Wassail is meant to be around Twelfth night, when we know we are safely through the dark Solstice, and its time to get things going again so we have food for next winter.
So we all pile down to the orchard and sing a song to the tree to ask it to be fruitful - and make it a toast - and make a lot of loud noise to chase away evil spirits ("and pollution" - maybe a reference to the pending expansion of Heathrow nearby), and wear silly clothes. The Mayor was there as well as the sheep and some nice local people.wassailing in pensford fields

Lets hope it works and the trees are Fruitful, and the bees come back, and then I will have plenty to talk about on this blog.
wassailing in pensford fields

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Water, Water, Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink

Water, water, everywhere, and it's all a lot of poncey crap from Italy and France, beautifully packaged and carefully marketed, that wends its way into the receptacles of Londoners who use it as prop to help them make believe their city is chic like Paris when it is nothing of the sort, it is just the grubby old capital of a country that obtains its water from across the sea. The point I am trying to make, through this un-dignified rant, is that water is indeed everywhere and it all tastes the bloody same. Perrier, for instance, though I could have easily picked out Badoit, Barisart or Pellegrino, arrives on the shelves of our abundant supermarkets in sexy looking, stylish bottles that are pleasing to the human eye. There is little wrong with this, beauty has its place. The home should be filled with gorgeous things. But it's the human tongue that counts here and mine says the only dissimilar thing its buds can gauge between the continental waters and our very own mountain spri...

Christmas Pudding - A Book

I have just become a publisher - with the production of a book about the English Christmas Pudding under the publishing name 'Spiderbooks'. The book is a tasting sample of some of the stories behind the ingredients of the Christmas Pudding. it will be in some local shops in the Kew and Richmond area, and should be on Amazon soon too. Your feedback is welcomed! Find out more at http://www.spiderbooks.co.uk

a Plea for Butter

The one item we are struggling to locate a regular supply for within 100 miles, is butter. Please help! The butter we found so far is either made from the cream on the top of the Duchy Milk or else from a tiny place in sussex that we cant go back to for a while.