I had an interesting experience. I may have mentioned that after reading several reader reviews on Amazon.com I check out a particular reviewer and found a comment she made regarding another book - "Elizabeth and Her German Garden."  It was published in 1899 and something caught my interest. As an aside, my mother's name is Elizabeth, she was German and she was a wonderful gardener. But it was something she said that piqued my interest so I looked for a used hard copy on Amazon and found one.  The date on my copy was 1901. When it came I was fascinated by it. It was reclaimed copy that must have sat in an old barn....smelled mildewy as all heck and wrapped in protective cellophane.  Of course the first thing I noticed was the paper pages which had the uneven cut and thicker pages of an old book.  But then I looked for the author's name and found nothing. Was there a lost title page, or was the author's name somehow erased from the cover through age......no.  The cover was in very good condition and nothing seemed to have been lost here.  I went to check if their was a back page regarding the type of print and paper but found nothing. Publisher -  Macmillian & Co.  Ok....so went back to Amazon to see if I could find the author's name.  Ahh, Elizabeth von Arnim.  So she used a pen name.....Elizabeth and in subsequent books ....the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden.  But no biographical sketch of the author in her book or books.

 

I was fascinated.  Who was this woman who wrote this book more than a hundred years ago? So I did an internet search and came up with a fair amount of information equally as fascinating.  Mary Annette Beauchamp born in Australia and author of many, many books. So where to begin.....

 

The setting of the "Elizabeth and Her Germany Garden" is the large and neglected estate "Nassenheide" in Switzerland owned by her husband Count Henning August von Arnim. After her family left Sydney, they resided in London where she meets this German nobleman - Count von Arnim. In her book she never refers to her family's names but does refer to her husband as this "Man of Wrath."  Her time spent at Nassenheide is without husband or children who are being taken care of by servants back in London.  She becomes so fascinated by the grounds of the estate that she decides to spend time living in this country estate. It also has its origin as a convent.  This period of time covers several seasons and although the book focuses on the grounds and gardens, it also highlights her awareness of the lack of feminine power in a male dominated world. The book is semi-autobiographical, a feminist protest and observation of life in provincial Germany.

 

A subsequent book was "The Enchanted April," the story of 4 woman leaving gloomy London to embark on a rejuvenating trip to sunny southern Italy. If this isn't empowerment!  To think that this occurred in the early nineteen hundreds.

 

I was equally fascinated with her life.  She was the sister in-law to John Middleton Murray who wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. In the early nineteen hundreds Count von Arnim's fortune turned and he was convicted of fraud and spent several years in prison. He died in 1910 - several years after his prison term.  Elizabeth then had a three year affair with H G Wells. She later married the elder brother to Bertrand Russell which she regretted and then fled to the U.S.

 

She died on February 9th, 1941 in South Carolina  and her ashes were burried near a magnolia tree in the churchyard of St. Margarets in Buckingshire, England.  The epitaph on the marker stone reads "Small but Appropriate."

 

And so the life of Elizabeth.

 

 

Well St. Patrick's Day has come and gone except that we are left with 20 inches of snow. And it is every bit of 20 inches if not 25. Just as the snow was dissipating from St. Valentine's, and I finally saw my snow drops, we get hit with another.  What is it with these Saints? Are they doing God's bidding?  One day last week we hit a high of 65 and then we are plunged right into the heart of winter.  And to think tomorrow is spring.

 

Our spring birds have arrived. Lots of red-winged black birds, starlings and my beloved blue birds. They are such delicate gentle things. The males arrived about 2 weeks ago looking around for places to start their nests.  They usually arrive 2 weeks ahead of the females and their job is to find and secure a home  for the females. My kind of bird.

 

Thank you to all who read and commented on my poem. I'm slowly going through my poetry of the past 6 or 8 years and that was one I wasn't sure about. There are some conflicting opinions about it garnering many thoughts about the content but I wrote it for the emotions that it engendered. I do have this old apple tree that sits on the knoll and it sits there alone hammered by the wind and the elements. One day I was looking at it from inside the house and I just shuttered at the thought of being out there. So I sat down and let the poem evolve on its own. I started with the concrete and then shifted to the mystical and Gothic. I was pleased with the emotions/feelings and the shift to this undefined being. As a piece of work I am pleased but it still it still falls into the "uncertain" category.

 

Now I must confess.  I bought 7 orchids this weekend.  At the moment I'm blaming it on St. Patrick.  I'm conjoling myself by saying.....'they are only little ones....plantlets that seem to be as costly as some of the older ones.  Maybe its just that I like a challenge....not sure what.  Or maybe I'm trying to justify a small greenhouse!  I think you may have figured it out.  But at least I said it. 

 

Anyway, some are mounted with very little growing medium which means they get their nourishment through their waterings.  I also bought one that is called a ghost orchid; very few leaves and the blooms  come off of the root system.  So a lot to look forward to.  I am spending hours reading about the habitats and how best I can marry them into one environment but I think I have to come up with something different for some of them since some need a very very humid environment - like 70 percent humidity.   So now you understand the need for a greenhouse......don't you!

 

Have a good day and yes, by Friday we'll be up to the 50's again.   Blessings........Bittersweet on the hill.

 

 

Remnants of winter - blasts of northern air.

Cold and raw yet earth's cover begins to thaw.

Trees tapped and the running of sap are drawing power from those mighty roots.

 

Protected by my winter's  frock, I pull the collar and start my solemn walk.

A chill descends more bone chilling than the winter air portends.

I walk across the open fields and stop at the crested ridge.

 

A lone tree captures my gaze and I am spellbound by its power.

Sweaty palms and rushing heartbeat momentarily claim my body.

What draws me to your naked state?

 

No leaves or blooms adorn your aging limbs.

Your mystic power draws me to your solitary place on this empty hill.

Your spring will come when I atone for acts of old.

 

Alone you stand knowing I would come.

I reach to touch your craggy bark - sharp edged and cuttingly rough.

Your sap turns to weeping tears and I cry with you.

 

Your empty limbs know of darker moments.

A secret shared by more than you and me.

I touch your bark and know that penetrating edges have opened wounds on softer flesh.

 

My arms wrap around your trunk and I slide weeping to my knees.

And now I feel her limbs wrapped tightly around you - her hurt becomes my pain.

She sobs alone and only the night able to release her from your hold.

 

I never intended for those edges to be blood letting;

nor for welts and scrathes to cover her body as she crumbles to her knees.

You let her recover from her dizziness - strength growing from her pain.

 

And as I open my swollen eyes, I glimps the binding cords laying at your base.

Weathered and beaten I reach to draw them to my breast.

I shall always hold them sacred - braiding them into night garb.

 

A season passes and I walk among the fruit trees draped in summer white.

The flow of evening's dress - soft eyelet and a waist band braided from those remnant cords.

I listen for the rustle of footsteps knowing that once again I shall walk the night alone.

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Well....it almost took us 24 hours for the hot water pipe to thaw out.  The cold water pipe was running several hours later or I should say before we went to bed but the hot water pipe gave us a run for its money.  We kept a space heater on for the duration of the night and by morning she was flowing again.  The kitchen is its own wing and does not have a cellar under it like the rest of the house. There is a crawl space under it with only about 2 feet of crawling room so you really don't want to send a plumber under there knowing how claustrophobic they could become. So I'm thinking of having a new kitchen put in where the pipes are all on an inner wall. At the moment they are on the farthest outer wall and will always be susceptible to the elements.  Enough about frozen water pipes.

The weather.....well equally as bad. More wind and artic blasts for Thursday and Friday. Winter is hanging in there and making sure we pay for the unseasonably warm weather we had in December and early January.  At the moment it is more than we bargained for. I have to contend with reading seed catalogues.  No fair!

Now that I am a bit more in tune with myself, I'm hoping for a little reading this morning.  Still working on Deborah Santana's book "Space Between the Stars. It really is a fast read but have been too pre-occupied to spend much time with it. I came upon an interesting and unknown author to me - Elizabeth Von Arnim. She wrote a number of books the more familiar being "of Elizabeth and Her German Garden" and "The Solitary Summer."  The first was written about 1898 and the second several years later.  I read the reviews in Amazon.com and I think I came across them as other books I might like. Bought some older and used orchid books and they made the suggestion I might want to look at "of Elizabeth and her German Garden." So am curious whether these two books can catch my fancy.

I did manage to divide my dendrobium.  It had two keiki's  - plantlets growing off of one of the canes so managed to separate them.  So I hope they take.  I did discard one of my failing phals.....he suffered from root rot and over feeding - but as I said, it is a learning experience. All I can say is that orchid growing is a 20 year project. Plan on two or three years before you see the fruits of your effort.

Be well and stay warm.    Bittersweet on-the-hill.

 

At the moment I am not a happy camper! I let my bathroom and kitchen pipes drip last night knowing that we'd have sub zero temperatures and with wind could expect -20 degree temperatures. We made coffee this morning and the water ran fine but the winds are brutal and three hours later they were frozen. So now we look for space heaters and hair dryers and try and do our magic.  So frustrating but they are saying that today may be the coldest March 6th in a hundred years. Now I know I am ready for spring!  Elizabeth is catching snow drops, Siberian Squill and crocuses on her digital camera and here I'm worry about frozen pipes.  Just no equity among the continents!  lol

Other than that all is well.   Will come back after the pipes are thawed.    Bittersweet

 

For some reason I wanted to use "Beware the Ides of March" as a title heading.  I always used that title as it relates to the winds that come in the middle of March. After I wrote it down, I thought  - now what do I really mean by that?  We all know it in the context of "Julius Caesar," but there has to be some other meaning besides the ill-fated meaning for Caesar. Well there are 12 ides in a year and the ides fall on the 15th of every month.  It meaning is to divide; 15 days before and fifteen days after.

 

Now back to Caesar.  It was the astrologer Spurinna who portended Caesar's fate.  "Beware the ides of March."  Unfortunately Caesar chose to ignore the advice.

 

Today I'm planning to work with my orchids.  I have a keiki which is an orchid plantlet with roots that grow out of the side of an orchid cane. I am planning to cut the keiki off of the main orchid and plant it as a new plant.  I have an older orchid that is down to a half-a-leaf and maybe a few roots and I'm going to try and save it by soaking some spagnum moss, and placing what is left of the orchid in a plastic bag with the moistened moss and hope I can generate more of a root structure and hopefully a few new leaves. This was one of the phalenopsis that a woman gave me when she was relocating to Florida and I feel a great responsibility to save it.  They were so healthy and big when I got them and I just shake my head at what has become of them. And despite the convenience of the plant stand, I think I need to find a cooler spot for some of them.

 

I picked up some new and used orchid books and I have focused on them as my primary reading material this past week.  It is amazing how orchids can take over your life!  But it is a wonderful hobby.  Least I forget, I just might try and mount my first orchid on a bark slab. It might require more attention since they don't have a lot of medium to receive nourishment from, which means more frequent watering with some liquid nourishment but they say they grow very well from mounts.  So we will see.

 

Be well.  Bittersweet on-the-hill.