... And a personal homage to Edith Holden.
There’s no denying that traditions and the seasons are
inextricably intertwined, even to the point where Australian children associate
Christmas with snow, (explained nicely away to little ones because Father
Christmas does live at the North
Pole), but it only takes a few hot and windy Australian Christmas days to
cement your early Christmas memories as summer
ones, it is after all, the Southern Hemisphere.
As a very young girl, the opposite seasons between the two
hemispheres remained deeply confusing; I could understand that when we had
night, people on the other side of the world had day, but that others were
freezing in the winter whilst we were larking about on the lawn with a
sprinkler just didn’t make sense.
Children’s literature; all my precious books that I so loved
provided proof that in June, it indeed was summer in America, but from where I
used to sit, with my legs on the kitchen table near the fire, (I agree, poor
form and extremely bad manners, but it was the family weekender at the time and
a chance for all of us to relax) for me, June was cold and wintry.
 |
| Me as a child in the cottage. Note the odd green tones the previous owner (a very old lady) had chosen to use. My parents purchased the property in the mid 70's. This was the original kitchen in the old cottage that was at the time, the only residence on the farm. The Kookaburra stove/oven (white with black knobs) is a classic now, but don't get all romantic and silly, it was AWFUL to cook with! We used to leave the wood fire oven door open to release more heat. Cosy! Reading was my thing as a young one, I look at this and re-live all those happy times turning pages. |
When I was a teen a book arrived in the house that I
developed a deep fascination with. It
was the ‘The Country Diary book of
Crafts’, containing a series of craft projects and instructions using Edith
Holden’s illustrations from her ‘The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady’ as the mantle or structure on which the book is laid out. The projects are divided into sections based
on the seasons and each project makes reference to one of Edith Holden’s lovely
artworks depicting the natural world around her, as she experienced it, season
by season, in 1906.
‘The Country Diary book of Crafts’ by Annette Mitchell,
Published by JM Dent Pty Limited,
‘The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady’ was created by Holden as a
personal record of the flora and fauna she encountered in the area of England where
she lived. She had named it ‘Nature
notes for 1906’. One has to assume
she never intended it to be published, but published it was in 1977,
(posthumously, she died in 1920) and it was a worldwide publishing hit. I still lust after a copy, but I thumbed
through my friend’s mother’s copy so many times I can remember every page and
so I don’t think I need the real thing (although if I were to come upon a copy
in a second hand bookstore I think I would purchase it now, out of respect for
the impact her work had on me as a young person).
So when ‘The
Country Diary book of Crafts’ made it’s appearance in our house I grabbed
it with both hands and lovingly turned each page imagining what it would be
like to make each project. I did, even
in my teenage years stitch up a few of the cross-stitches, one of them being the
“Midsummer day”, the swallows cross-stitch, my mum still has it in her sewing
room. And here it is, as proof!
Edith Holden illustrated the flowers, birds and insects that
were, for her, in the Northern Hemisphere, the visual indicators of the seasons
changing. And so Edith’s Easter time
would naturally be represented by daffodils, nests with eggs and spring-time
flora. Here in Australia, Easter is an
Autumn event and I associate this special period with pink lillies bursting
leafless from the parched earth, the smell of dry grass in the paddocks and
with Hawthorn berries, red and gaudy against the bright green of their foliage.
I also like to retrieve my Easter decorations box from the
cellar and bring out some of my favourite old friends to decorate the
house. When I was a child, my mother
went on a decoupage-papier-mache-blown-egg jag that lasted for over a
decade. This obsession with blowing the
eggs, cleaning the shells and making decorations with them coincided with the
period when we had geese, ducks, bantams and chooks (that’s Australian for
chickens). They were the Poultry Years I
like to think. We used to sit and stick
layers of plain paper (cut into tiny pieces) over the eggs, leave them dry and
then add the final decorative layer. In
this case, bantam eggs decorated with ‘Bunnykins’
paper. The hanging was clever, made of
looped fishing line tied to a small piece of toothpick or bamboo skewer, the
skewer inserted vertically into the egg and then jiggled so that it sat
horizontally in the top of the egg. The
final step was covering them in a lacquer to protect them. I have fond memories of busily sticking
whilst watching the midday movie with my Mum, all those fabulous Audrey Hepburn
and Grace Kelly classics, sublime! Now,
for how to display my pretty collection of hanging papier-mache Easter egg
decorations?
My yearly Easter tradition is bound by season and family
history. I like to gather a huge bundle
of Hawthorn branches and a large swathe of the beautiful dried grasses found in
my area (in this case picked from the side of the road because it was too hot
to walk down to our dam) and make a large Autumn arrangement that also serves
the function of displaying my old papier-mache Easter egg decorations.
I’m keen on the fabulous Cadmium red in the Hawthorn
berries, which I have discovered are used in treatment for the early stages of
heart disease, and is meant to be good for those who suffer from high blood
pressure and circulatory problems. We
don’t ingest the berries, just enjoy their visual appeal, the red of the
berries on the Hawthorn bush seems to arrive overnight, suddenly every country
roadside sports flashes of red for a few weeks, and then the berries lose their
rich red hue and the air chills and the dews arrive in the morning and that hot
start to Autumn is over, and we in the Adelaide Hills wait for the rains to
come.
It’s good to think that a humble personal diary of
observations created in another hemisphere over 100 years ago remains relevant
for the simple reason that, despite technology changing our lives so radically,
the seasons still come and go, and we have to remind ourselves to look away
from our screens and out of the window and observe, touch and experience the
wonderful and miraculous changes that occur as the year passes. And give thanks because, if you take the time
to look, the world is still a
beautiful place.
I hope you enjoyed reading this blog today.
Please visit this blog again as I'm publishing new ideas at least once a week.
I'd love to hear what you think!
Best wishes and happy days, Lara Jane.
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