Brought to you by the power of the Internet! Some while ago I posted on a friend's blog that I had been looking in vain at local garden centres and nurseries for Arum Italicum. A reader of that blog had loads of it, asked for my email address and offered me some - no postage required either. This wonderful lady sent me a pot of compost containing a few unprepossessing lumps which turned into the wonderful plant above. (Tidy gardeners, please ignore the weeds surrounding it!). It's absolutely the Bees' Knees and will be used in my flower arrangements - the class started again last week in the village hall.
Family History
My maternal branch of the family tree has a story which is true in every respect except the facts. In my teens I inherited the scimitar that great-great uncle Ratio brought back from Khartoum.
The man of the house, having a subscription to Ancestry.co.uk decided to follow this up. The story goes that there were 3 brothers called Ratio (NOT we were told as children, HORATIO), Ronzalo and Royal. They were soldiers and Ratio fought at Khartoum from whence the said scimitar was liberated. It turns out that the brothers were Horatio, who was a soldier, but in the Boer War, Royal, something in the Nottingham Lace industry and sadly little Rawnslow who died in early infancy - his birth and death were recorded in the same quarter. They also had a couple more brothers (who were obviously left out of the story for alliterative purposes) and a batch of girls with a floral inclination - Rose, Pansy and Violet. (The paternal side also had apparently floral daughters some generations back - Iris and Rose - although deeper research unearths the less poetical fact that they were called after the Liverpool to Isle of Man ferries!)
The family scimitar is in fact a machete. (Not half as exotic!) There exists a picture of great-great Uncle Horatio looking soldierly in his uniform, but that is currently at Ma's house - must try and get a copy.
The moral is, never let the facts spoil a good story.
Free to a good home
If any of my readers fancies a few of any/all of the following seeds, please drop me an email at the address on the right.
Beans - Climbing French -
Kew Blue
Cherokee Trail of Tears
Yin-Yang
Ruth Bible
Serbian Pole Bean
Beans - Dwarf French -
Soldier
Pea -
Lancashire Lad
Latvian
Tomato -
Green Zebra
Brandywine
Black Krim
And of course - Achocha!
8 comments:
Now you've run too many titbits in together here, Flum!
I just love the Arum Italicum - perhaps a piccy of it in plant-arrangement-situ would be in order?
Your mighty scimitar (nee machete) is a wonder to behold - tell me that you don't go round wielding it?? Or is that why the choir is in such good order....
If you give us a measure of tip-to-toe length we can be properly scared!
I have my eyes closed to the seed list ;-)
Now that I have all but my runner bean seeds dried and packed I'll be sending you a little something which I hope you'll like (can you let me know if you'd like some seed from pigletwillie's bananana shallots, btw?)
I'll wait to for the HSL catalogue to come out and then beg a few of those that I've run out of choices for, perhaps...
Hi Hazel - you can reserve judgement on the seed list by all means - just let me know later.
The 'Scimitar' is 28 inches from tip to tail, 5" of which is a horn handle. It's obviously meant for chopping and with the weight behind it, it would be very good! It has a secondary use in stripping wallpaper on staircases, too high to reach without putting up scaffolding or completely overbalancing.
After the miserable show of all my edible alliums this year I think I'll pass on the banana shallots, ta.
What a wonderful piece of family history Flum, at least there was enough fact to glean the true tale. The machete looks a bit of a beast, do be careful when you're wielding it! (PS, my word verification looks very botanical today - flicula - is there such a plant I wonder?).
Could be Ali. Flicula fontana and Flicula oleifera occur in a couple of French monographs (according to Google!)and they do sound like plant names. Not sure my school french is up to the translations! I can't find it in a couple of very exhaustive Brisish plant atlases though. Interesting.
That machete is a wonderful beast - Husband won't let me have a billhook, he thinks it is (or I would be) too dangerous, wonder what he would make of this?
The Arum Italicum looks fab - has R. seen your post/photo?
hugs
Bilbo
I have now! thanks Bilbo ;-) I'm so glad the Arum Italicum has survived it's journey Mrs Flum. It originated from my mother's garden - a little goes a long way!
Ah, there you are Rachel. Yes, it's all thanks to you (and your mother). I'm really thrilled to bits with it.
It's my pleasure - and I'm sure Mum will be honoured to Know her garden has spread so far! Rachel
Post a Comment