The Rose of Mercia 🌹

Some highlights from the allotment 🌱

Today we celebrate Hlafmas, more commonly known as Lammas or Lughnasadh. It is the midway point between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox. 🌕 This is also the celebration of the first harvest of the wheat. Farmers would have to present the freshly harvested wheat to their landlords by the first of August. 🌾 The harvest was celebrated by baking bread. The bread was blessed and a piece was placed in each corner of the barn to protect the harvest. 🍞

A walk along Hadrian's Wall this morning and a return to Sycamore Gap.

I took these photos whilst at our recent folk moot. A canal bank covered in meadowsweet, a herb that the Anglo Saxons called meadwort. The aroma of this herb is very sweet and honey-like, and was used to flavour mead – hence the name. It may have been used to sweeten ales too. The herb was also called bridewort and weaved into bridal garlands. The connection with sweetening ale comes from the term ‘bridal’ (as in bridal feast) which came from the Old English brydealo or bryd-ealu, literally 'bride ale'.

The berries are coming in thick and fast! Tayberries, raspberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries. Along with some King Tut peas and the first gherkin of the year.

🌞 Summer solstice blessings all 🌞

Yesterday's harvest. Garlic, rhubarb, bay leaves, Elderflower heads and a mixture of flowers.

Elderflowers are starting to emerge from their slumber and are blooming throughout the UKs hedgerows. Elders are easily identifiable with their feather shaped leaves, light brown roughly textured bark and their large cream coloured flowers. The video on how to make it can be found here: https://youtu.be/WwG9o_nrxGY

Three acres and a cow.

The Maypole is called the Maibaum or May Tree in Germany. In England the Hawthorn is also called the May Tree as the tree blooms around now and it’s the flowers of the hawthorn which were traditionally used to decorate the crown of the May Queen.

Today is Saint George's day. He was popular in England before the Norman conquest but was not the patron Saint of England in the Anglo-Saxon era. King Edward III made St George the patron saint of England in 1350, after forming the Order of the Garter in St George’s name. Although St. George is a popular Saint in many nations, his tradition in England can be seen as a continuation of a much older one, that of the dragon slayer. The Germanic hero Sigurd, known as Sigeweard to the English and Siegfried to the Germans, is the archetypal dragon slayer in northern heroic myth. Happy Sigeweard's day ;)