Every sheet music cover holds a tale ...

 

Having disappeared back to the C19th century, and discovered the wonderful piece of sheet music for the Emily Soldene hit 'Launch the Lifeboat', I, of course, lingered longer, back in those days, and came up with more delightful musical discoveries: songs and dance music from the Victorian era. This one is a beauty ...

Title? I don't know exactly what it means, but soldier (see striped pants) no1 seems to be scraping down his horse. Soldier 2 seems to be hanging up a saddle/harness. I see a stirrup dangling. Nice hay-racks. Ah! OK. Giggle tells me that a Stable Call was a trumpet call, alerting cavalry that it's time out to care for their horses.

There was a piece, apparently by Wellington Guernsey, entitled the Stable Call Waltz (for six or sometimes seven trumpets and military band) being played by the band of the Queen's Bays in Ireland in 1844. Colonel Charlton. Then they played the Stable Call Troop. Composer? J Holt.

Date. Late 1848 to January 1849. It was advertised in the provincial press, and reviewed pleasantly.

Captain Coster. Who was he, and why was the dedicated to him? Captain James Coster. Facetiously described as 'gallant and far-famed' in the press. Not. By 1850, he was out of the Lancers and up in court for ungentlemanly pubehaviour.

 

Some years later, he met his nemesis. A military band frightened the horses of his phaeton and, at the corner of Halkin Street, they ridded themselves of the not-so-gallant Captain who landed head first on the road .. fracturing his skull ..  It wasn't terminal, however. Not just yet. He lasted till 22 January 1863, when he died, aged 46, at 14 Cornwall Villas, Willis Rd, Kentish Town, described as formerly Captain in the 16th Queen's Regiment. Seems like he never got another job. He left 'under £2,000' to be administered by a wine merchant named Smith.   Oh, he had two (successive) wives, the second of whom, well off, survived him by 28 years and left a small fortune ...

I see that during his soldiering years, he took part in Garrison theatricals. Perhaps that's why he became a dedicatee.

And, lastly, the composer. Josiah George JONES. I spent a wee while exhuming Mr Jones, because I didn't expect him to be Josiah rather than James or John, because he didn't remain Bandmaster of the 16th long after this, and what had looked like a promising career in churning out 'well written' polka arrangements for the rising firm of Joseph Williams somewhy fizzled out. 

Josiah was born in Hunslet, Yorks in 1818. He seemingly married Mary Ann née Summerhayes as a teenager, and I see him in 1841 at York Buildings in Bridgwater, Somerset, with a couple of sons, already, and running a business as music and musical instrument-seller and a 'toyman'. I don't think that is a parallel to 'toy boy', maybe he was selling toys as well as music. Welll, it all went wrong. He was declared bankrupt later that year, and scooted out of town to settle in the High St, Taunton (Castle Hotel). Quite what he did there, I hav'n't been able to winkle, nor have I been able to discover when he chucked in shopkeeping and joined the military -- after Taunton he was doing something in Portsmouth -- but he was, anyway, with the 16th regiment, in Norfolk, in 1848.

And in 1848 his name started to appear on sheet-music covers. The 'Douro Waltzes', 'The Bixley Lodge Galop', 'The Good Night Polka'.'The Abbotsford Polka', 'The Military Schottische', 'The Carrawroe Polka', 'The Bridal Wreath', 'The Hardwicke Polka' ... published by Williams, and collated into a guinea Polka Album 'containing alll the popular polkas composed by ..', 'containing as much music as is usually published for 2gns') by the composer ... 

But 'The Military Steeplechase Polka' was published circa 1851 by D'Almaine. As was Jones's Military Band Journal. And Mr Jones had left the army and -- advertised as 'pupil of Bochsa on the harp' --  had settled at 3 Trinity Terrace, Radford Rd, in Coventry. His wife 'pupil of H Field' taught piano. But that didn't last long. He advertised that he had been 'advised by several eminent physicians to leave the army and settle in some mild climate'. The mild climate he chose was the Isle of Wight, where he opened a music warehouse in Union Street, Ryde. He founded the Ryde Philharmonic Society, gave concerts with his wife and teenaged cornettist son, acted at Church organist in Cowes, staged Balls, gave classes on the Hullah singing method, conducted the Rifles Band, imported some well-known singers for concerts  ... 

The Jones family (seven or eight of them now) can be seen in Ryde in the 1861 census, but soon after they removed to Winchester ... Josiah died there 27 April 1887, Mary Ann 13 October 1891. Josiah junior followed where his father had led. After a period with Kirkman's pianos in London, he returned to the Island and held positions in Cowes and Newport, up to his death in 1907.

Hic iacet Josiah Jones

Another inviting music sheet also led me into previously uncharted (by me) territory

Both Tinney and Saville were well-known in the area of 'fashionable dancing': the former as a skilled composer and arranger of dance music the latter as 'one of the most successful cotillion leaders ... in fashionable London.

Frederick George TINNEY (b Marylebone 21 February 1815; d Pimlico 13 November 1860) was the son of another musician, William Tinney and his wife Chressy Ann. He ventured as a composer at a young age, but found his niche as an arranger of popular operatic fantasias and, above all, as the pianist and musical director of Charlies Ollivier's Quadrille Band. In 1848 he joined with the equally successful Charles Coote, and Coote and Tinney's Band became one of the most fashionably patronised of dance orchestras. The partners ran their business in tandem with a music publishing firm, but the whole went down, in 1857, in bankruptcy. Tinney was, by thi time, in poor health, and he would die, at the age of 45, 13 November 1860, leaving a widow and seven children.

Augustus William Saville Lumley or Lumley Saville (b 5 December 1828; d 13 April 1887) was a sort-of-aristocrat. One of the four illegitmate sons of the unmarried Earl of Scarborough and his concubine Agnes something. Number one son went on to become a Lord, a Privy Councillor, a diplomat  in high places etc. Number two son went, of course, into the church. Augustus led cotillions.

He attended Corpus Christi, bought himself commissions in the Life Guards et al during a decade, but doesn't seem to have actually fought anyone. He became an adjunct to the Prince of Wales, was named a Colonel, was nominated Marshall of Ceremonies to the Queen ... but was sued by his tailor for 'neglecting' to pay for his ceremonial uniforms. On that occasion he was listed as 'artist'. And he was. In 1880 he exhibited a full-length portrait of his friend, the Prince, at the Royal Academy. It wasn't much liked. And he led cotillions.

"Cotillion"

I don't think this was one of them. In spite of its 'credits' it doesn't seem to have been performed much. A W Nicholson's Avalanche Polka, twenty years later, did rather bettter. Anyway, I see this piece being played, naturally, by the still-thus-named Coote and Tinney's Band in 1859. I think the quality of the cover engraving shows sign of declining days. But it got played at HM's State Ball (Coote, its publisher supplied the music) before Leon Leoni, then W C Levey brought out their Avalanche Galops ...

Alpine motifs seem to have been popular.  But I'm not getting into researching the poundingly prolific Mr Charles Handel Rand Marriott ... another year.

I like this one better. Kiko? Qui ça? No idea ...  Even Yves Ballu can't catch her! But she reminds me of my mountaineering great-grandmother!

https://yvesballublog.canalblog.com/archives/2009/12/06/16056872.html

Date? Well, after 1865. When Hutchins and Romer sold up in 1884 they were still in the same premises. I'd say probably 1860s. Alpensteigerins were à la mode at that time.

So the tale beind this one stays hidden. I'll try again another time ..

One more.

This one I can date to 1845. The troupe, after successful showings in Paris, opened a season at Her Majesty's Theatre 8 April 1845. After, it was reported, 'difficulties' which seem to have involved the Austrian and French governments, and the German gossip press, on the 'across the state line for immoral purposes' lines. 

They were a huge hit ...

Who were they? A group of thirty-six children, girls and boys ('all Jewish' affirmed one memoirist), said to be aged from 10 to 14, trained by Frau Josephine Weiss of Vienna. And what made them special? Apparently they were lively and natural, and Fr Weiss's joyous choreography allowed and encouraged them so to be.

So, who was Fr Weiss?  Josephine MAUDRY. Born in Alserstadt, Vienna in 1804, the daughter of Johann Maudry and his wife Constantia née Franeck. Married at eighteen ....

And had already found her metier in her teens, for I see her in 1823 (11 March) in Klagenfurt taking a Benefit at Carl Meyer's Theatre, at which she staged a ballet, Die schlaue Liebchen, with a cast of children.

At some stage, she became ballet mistress and choreographer at her 'home' theatre: the Theater an der Josefstadt -- I see her there first in 1841 -- where has she been?  After several hours digging I came upon this .. 1840 ...

'Formerly solo dancer at the Kärtnertor ...'. Husband a performer. Coming from Hamburg .. been teaching children .. a six-year-old pupil dancing the Cachuca ... she is an established dance-teacher, especially of children. So the troupe which was to make her name didn't spring from nowhere. Yes, there are 'her pupils' performing .. and she choreographing ... at the Josefstadt in October 1841. Music by Lanner and Suppe. Conductor: Suppe. Her name was seen as a dance arranger in all sorts of festivities, as far afield as the Deutsche National Theater in Hungary in -- ahha 'the 36 pupils of Mme W .. 'Todtentanz'. Will make a tour of Germany. Königstadt Theatre, Berlin September. Frankfurt October. 

Then: 'Das Kinderballet der Madame Weiss wird in Paris erwartet'. Here we go.

The Paris season was the turning point. The little dancers became the craze of the city. Much to the miffedness of the Opéra's regular dancer. Anything so huge naturally attracted attention, and the Frau Grundys of Germany, Austria, France and England leaped to pile accusations on Josephine who was depicted as running a child prostitution ring ... they would all be proven liars in time, but 'mother' must have had a time organising a travelling troupe of more than 50 people and coping, at the same time, with the busybodies of the continent.

Summary. The English season was as big a success as the French one, and it too provoked its share of squabbles. When Josephine fell to taking Benjamin Lumley to court -- and he, her -- the impresario accused the manageress of false advertising. Her dancers weren't Viennese, most of them were English. Well, the Frlns Weber, Werner, Kock, Pirock, Sperl, Darebny and Florianschütz who returned to their mothers around this time certainly weren't English. Though their replacements certainly were. And Mr Lumley's 'Italian Opera' heberged a good number of fake 'Italians', singers and dancers.

Céline Moncelet, HMT 1845

Josephine took her troupe to the provinces, to Ireland, back to Paris, back to London (Drury Lane this time, with the personnel increased to 48), then to America ...

Back to Paris-- to the Théâtre de la Porte St-Martin, around France -- Dijon, Lyon, Bordeaux -- nearly everywhere with success. With most poeple. The baldheads in the front rows in some provincial towns preferred their dancing girls to have a little more age and a lot less clothing.

Berlin, once again took the Grundy prize. Someone got the police to stop the show, charging Josephine with cruelty, underfeeding, prostitution and kidnapping of 30 English girls. Once again, there was no complaint from the girls or their families and the thing faded away.

1852, however, marked the end. On 23 December Josephine died at the age of 46. It was rumoured that she had left a keepsake to each of her girls. Unlikely, there had been a heck of a lot of them.

A memorial service was held at the Parish Church of Maria Treu. The Mozart Requiem was sung, with such stars as Staudigl and Erl in the solo parts. I suppose the foul-minded Frau Grundy didn't attend.

The other interesting thing on the English sheet music is the attribution of the music. I suspect -- just suspect, mind you -- that it may be a bit .. er .. woolly. Or, shall we say, 'of convenience'. Maretzek? Yes, it's that Maretzek. Maximilian. From Brünn. Born there 28 June 1821. He wrote an autobiog which I used to have, but I opshopped it after catching it in .. um .. inaccuracies. 

Why do I suspect this credit? Firstly, because Josephine's group has been dancing their routines for several years now. Surely they didn't change the music for London. Secondly, Mon Jullien is involved and anything involving that gentleman is always 'problematic'. Maybe I'm unduly wary .. but ... it don't seem quite right ..

Maretzek began his career in his home town, and his operatic Hamlet was produced at Mlle de Tref[f]z's Benefit in 1840. He went on to Prague, to Bamberg, tried his hand at French romances, an overture Agnes Sorel, then published six mazurkas and some polkas in Paris. Did Josephine pick up his tunes there and then? Or just him? Was he the troupe's conductor? Or not even him? Just his name? Or .....  Ahha!!!! Advertisements in the Paris press during the troupe's January-February 1845 date.  'Bernard Latte, passage de'Opéra 2. 'L'Allemande', 'Le Pas des Fleurs', 'La Tyrolienne' 'La Mazurka', 'Les Moissoneuses' dansés par les trente-six danseuses Viennoises'. Arrangés pour piano par Maretzek'. 4 francs 50 apiece.  Et voilà!

     

After the vast success of the little dancers and Josephine's dances in London, the opportunistic Jullien announced that he had purchased the rights to ALL of their music

Well, of course, you couldn't, of course, buy up the copyrights of thirty odd German composers, new and old, so .. what easier than to credit them enitrely to a young musician who would be only too glad of the réclame? Oh, Jullien rewarded Maretzek a couple of years later by giving him a job as chorus master for his ill-fated opera season at Drury Lane, and produced his ballet, Génie du Globe, there. Some reward! Maretzek went on to America and memorableness. But I'll bet he didn't compose Josephine's music. Piano arrangements, I'll allow. I suppose they have 'EXCLUSIVE COPYRIGHT's too. Whose?

 

Emily Soldene: LAUNCH THE LIFEBOAT!

 

Awwwwwww ....

You publish -- after twenty years research -- your huge, excruciatingly detailed biography of a Victorian theatrical megastar .. dripping with illustrations and photographs and programmes ...

And then, another twenty years on, you find a wonderful piece of her sheet-music which would have been worth a double-page spread ...

Before Emily Soldene was Emily Soldene (her father was Lambert, her mother was Swain, her bigmaous stepfather was Solden ..) she was 'Miss Fitzwilliam', star of the top London music halls. As 'Miss Fitzwilliam' she introduced two songs, in particular, of the 'heroic' kind which were splendid hits. One was Captain Collomb's Crimean War song 'Up the Alma's Heights' the other, the equally vigorous and dramatic 'Launch the Lifeboat'. Neither subject was particularly new -- Alma's heights had been scaled years earlier, and Henry Russell had memorably manned his lifeboat back in the 1840s.

But, twenty years later, a J Beaumont Fletcher Esq., M.A. 'respectfully dedicated to the National Lifeboat Institution' his version of the theme ... The full lyric is in my book. The lines were set to music by Alfred Plumpton, the house pianist at the Oxford Music Hall, and Emily 'milked its maritime melodrama' up to her ringing Azucena top f-natural, at the end of each verse, until the sailors were rescued ...

'Launch the Lifeboat' was a huge hit. Alas, when I wrote my book, I simply could not find a copy of the published music. Now I have. Now that I have crippled hands, and cannot play it ...

Mr James Bealey Fletcher MA (b Stepney 22 August 1826; d Ainger Rd London 26 Aptil 1870), 'son of the Rev Joseph Fletcher DD' was, of course, a clergyman, educated at the University of London, who took up, in preference, supervising the education of the sons of the gentlefolk of Clifton. His occasional ventures into lyricism included 'The Outcast' (mus: Bennett Gilbert). 

Alfred Plumpton (b 4 Eagle St, Shepherd's Walk, Hoxton 3 March 1840; d Islington 27 March 1902) was the son of music-hall tenor Josiah Plumpton, and had begun as harmonium player at the Canterbury Hall in 1858. He worked for Charles Morton for a goodly number of years, and turned out regular songs ('I Like to be a Swell', ''The Railway Guard' &c) and operettas (Married by Compulsion, Sly and Shy, Who Is She?). He married pianist Charlotte Tasca (TASKER), and the couple toured the Indies and spent considerable time in Australia where Alfred was, for a time, choir director of Melbourne's Catholic Cathedral (soprano, the future Mme Melba). In 1887, his opera I Due Studenti was produced by the Simonsen company (Alexandra Theatre, Melbourne 24 December). He returned to Britain as musical director for Abud and Greet's Blue-Eyed Susan, featuring Australian, Nellie Stewart, and again in 1897 for a second attempt by that lady in Musgrove's production of the The Scarlet Feather. Latterly, he became director of the music at the Palace Theatre, and was yet in harness when he died aged 62. 

Of Emily SOLDENE (Mrs Powell) nothing remains to be said or written. She is the subject of perhaps the vastest theatrical biography ever written!

Morlet: the lacunae in Louis ..

While looking up something else altogether in my 'incomparable' Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre,  I noticed that my article on the grand French opérette baritone, Louis Morlet, had a lacuna or two. So I thought I had better fill them ...

MORLET, [Auguste Louis] (b Vernon, Eure 1 March 1849; d Rue Mirabeau 29, Paris 9 March 1913). Star baritone/actor who had a fine career in the fin-de-siècle Parisian musical theatre.

Briefly, a pupil of Duprez, he made his first stage appearances at Angers (1871-3), Antwerp (1873-4), Rouen (1875) and Brussels (1875-7).  

Brussels

In 1877 he became a member of the company at the Opéra-Comique, where he made a considerable effect in his début (31 October) as Harlequin in Poise’s La Surprise de l'amour (alongside Irma Marié and Galli-Marié). However, Morlet found that he was decidedly under-used at the Salle Favart thereafter, and after appearing there in Membrée's La Courte Échelle (Chamilly), Le Pré aux Clercs (Comminee) and the première of Chabrier's one-act Une Éducation manquée (1879), he left, and instead took over the rôle of Brissac in Les Mousquetaires au couvent (1880) at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens. The part, created by the actor Frédéric Achard, was reorganized and enlarged with two strong singing solos and Morlet, who proved to be as fine an actor as he was a baritone vocalist, became the star of the show.

La Surprise de l'amour

As a result of this personal triumph, he was cast in the lead rôle of the piece that followed Les Mousquetaires at the Bouffes-Parisiens, and thus created the very contrasting light comedy baritone rôle of Pippo in Audran's La Mascotte (`Glou Glou' duet) opposite the newly in-town Mlle Montbazon. 

After this second huge success, Morlet was paired again with Mlle Montbazon in a third which almost approached them in Audran's Gillette de Narbonne (1882, Roger), and he subsequently starred as a fine run of richly baritone leading men in the Parisian musical theatre, notably as Saverdy in Serpette's Fanfreluche (1883), as Lorenzo in Varney's Babolin (1884), le Comte in Serment d'Amour (1886) and in the piratical title-rôle of Planquette's Surcouf (1887). He later created rôles in Messager's Le Bourgeois de Calais (1887, Duc de Guise) at the Folies-Dramatiques, Miette (1888, de Bellegarde) and Isoline (1888, Oberon), played the title-rôle in Lecocq's Ali Baba (1889) and appeared as Riego in Juanita (1891), Planquette's Le Talisman (1893, Chevalier de Valpinçon) as well as reappearing regularly in his first and most famous rôle of Brissac, as Pippo, and other classic parts (Marquis in Les Cloches de Corneville 1894), in between times.

\

Morlet was married to Mlle Gugot [GUILLOT, Jeanne], a sometime member of the Opéra-Comique company, who appeared as Bettina in the 1883 revival of La Mascotte. 

When Louis Morlet died, in 1913, at the age of 64, he was designated as 'sans profession'. Sic transit.

 

CATS

 

After several days poring over 1910s and 1920s Sütterlin cursive script, where things are seldom what they seem, and over the German language, my eyes and head were not even responding to the stimuli of whisky and gin, my three magnifying glasses were taking it in turn not to giving up readable images, and my seven pairs of glasses were struggling ...

I needed a break from delving into my forbears scribblings ...  something brief, fun and historico-theatrical. Here's what e-bay came up with.

Oh yes. Gillian Lynne and associates didn't get there first!

In the year of 1970 whatever it was, while we were getting Barnum ready to open at the London Palladium, a musical based on T S Eliot's cat poems went into production at the forlorn New London Theatre. We didn't pay much attention. I didn't have single agency artist in the cast ('but darling your people are singers, I want dancers'). I concentrated on finding the unusal performers for Barnum, writing the brochure, the publicity ..  

Now, the climax and first-act curtain of Barnum has the name character (genuinely) walking a tightrope across the stage, to the temptations of Jenny Lind in the stage box opposite. Very clever, very effective, and with both meaning  and significance. Michael Crawford did it superbly.

Then, one day, the beloved (and large) Maisie Fielding sailed, all-guns-readied, into my office. 'Gillian Lynne has pinched our tightrope for Cats'. And she had. But, sorry, dear Maisie, although the propinquity was a bit mean, it wasn't 'ours' to be pinched. Tightropes had been around for centuries. And so had human cats. The photos above are from the 1910s.

But the great catman of the Victorian era was Charles Lauri -- cats were always needed for Dick Whittington come Christmas! W G Hurst, Fred Farren, Eddie Foy. However, unless I'm mistaken (and I may be, with only a few hours research) Mr Johnny Fuller was special, and devanced Miss Sarah Brightman by more than half a century. He was 'the great little Cat on the Wire'. He performed on the slack wire in cat costume. I see him as early as 1901 in the Sheffield panto, and in 1902 already he is the Cat. He soon developed his tightrope-cat act, and had a long career as an Animal Impersonator. I see him as Ermyntrude the Goose in Mother Goose (1928), but mostly it was cats.

W A HARVIE was a lesser performer in the animal line. But he, too, could walk the wire. I see him doind Tommy the Cat at Hull in 1912, then Mauntz, 'a cat', in Shock Headed Peter at the Vaudeville, I see him doing a wire act in Wales, in Nottingham, in Yorkshire, and, for the last time, in 1927 (borrowing Fuller's sobriquet 'the Cat on the Wire') at Exeter. He spells his name all sorts of ways, any or none of which may be real), and was pretty surely a demi-semi-pro who brought out his turn when Dick Whittington drew nigh.

Rather more interesting is the dedicatee of the photo. Bert. Herbert Arthur Mayers (b Islington 1877; d Lambeth Hospital 21 August 1937). Bert started as a theatrical hosier at 333 Kennington Rd. But he moved into making pantomime animal costumes, with the greatest of success. I'm sure someone will have written about him ..

Roses are blooming in Gerolstein ...

 

It has, so far, been a most unsummery, switchback summer. Strong rain, unbearable heat, and, worst of all, intermittent destructive winds ...   Well, that's the world. We and the horses and the kitties and the fowl all survived and the gardens seem rather to have enjoyed the silly season ..

I don't know what half these pretty things are named, but before they wither, here are a few pictures from the last weeks ...

This one is called "Just Joey". But these ...?

I think this is "Sunset" from Gilroy Nurseries

Alas, the winds ripped this one, and several others, from their plants ..

But we are not all roses. Though Wendy has a vast display of Sally Holmes by her house. I hav'n't got that far on my photographic wanderings yet!

My Pansy patio is still in full bloom. Mr Peacock has had to, terminally, find a new place for his 'displays'. But the multicoloured pansies have had to share brickwork this year with ... well, a couple of years ago I bought some pretty looking plants at Mitre 10. $20 each! But I was on a 'shop' day. They did their thing, and fizzled out. So what was my surprise, this spring, to find that they had seeded not only in their boxes, but up to 50 meters away. Joy!  But ... name please?

Little self-seeds (my favourites!) pop up everywhere ..

It changes almost daily. Here come the Tropicannas .. to join the ?salvia ...  The garden was all-yellow a few weeks ago, lilies, gladioli etc ... now it is bright orange ...

I bought this wee begonia at Mitre 10 (find me a better nursery in the area!) for $6. OK? BEGONIA. I've written it down, so I won't forget. It's orange month. Love orange ...!

Wendy has made beautiful gardens at Gerolstein. Which is my favourite?

Well, it has no flowers. When I bought this place, 23 years ago, it was a cattle farm with the house (there was only one then) surrounded by shade cloth walls to keep out the cows. Gradually, I sort of remodelled the garden ... ripped out the elderly fruitless orchard ... then Wendy, totally and gloriously, remodelled the whole lot ...

One little area, under the window of what soon became the 'invalid room', with its wheelchair ramp et al, had simple been left to a mess of weedy things. I had an urge to change it into .. well, I like 'natural' gardens. I also really love ferns. A fern garden? I knew nothing of the hows and ifs of such a thing. Fern just, sort of ... grew.

Well, my friend Bryan came out one day with some of the beloved species, and made me a garden. It has been a long, long time becoming a success. But Bryan's original punga (after several suicidal attempts) has survived and grown. One of the five wild West Coasters that I swapped for a load of firewood, is hanging on in. And some 'indoor plants' have proven they are outdoor plants too ... and well, 20 years on, it looks rather sweet.  The 'invalid room' is now this invalid's room, and I can gaze from my bed at beautiful fernery ..

Thank you, Bryan.

Gerolstein is not a huge place -- now reduced to some 20 acres -- the large part of which is inhabited by eight elderly horses. Some race winners (Lite Gasp, Fifteen C, Konnie Kase, Our Mabel) some old pets. 

There is still room for us! And for growing things ...

The vegetable garden has reached a watershed-replanting time ... but still renders up daily bits ... visitors are inclined to leave with a cucumber or three! 

Faster than I can eat them ..!

Yesterday's crop

Courgettes, beans, bay tree ....

Wenndy has planted a heap of herbs over the years. We have a gigantic rosemary bush! Loads of comfrey. Unfortunately, just after Wendy had planted a selection of Useful and Interesting Herbs, we had one of out periodic wind storms which blew away all the labels and she couldn't remember which was what!!!!

Identified as valerian. Grew madly when released from its wee pot

Er .....  it seems to have spawned a baby sheoak?!

Well, there's a floating label saying 'Echinacia', but ...

Well, we can recognise parsley, and basil ... but we may have to start again with the more exotic species ...

A pretty area between my house and the river was once a hedged orchard. Which, at my arrival, hadn't been tended in decades. So I pulled most of it out, razed the hedge and it tuned itself into a pretty, cool, glade towered over by a big plum tree ... with a little, green stream-side walk with a chestnut tree .. we planted a tiny walnut some years ago but it hasn't yielded nuts yet.

Veronica (native Hebe)

Flax flowers and walnut tree

Hawthorn?

A rare plum the birds missed!

Down by the riverside ...

A New Zealand cabbage tree. Favourite scratchpole of the Gerolsteiner Kitties. 

It's 1.45pm. Perhaps I had better go pull a weed or two ... there's a wheelbarrow there, waiting to be filled ...

To be continued.