Cosmos flowers

Some years ago I saw them on a gardening programme and bought myself a packet of seeds. I followed the instructions (I’m not good at following instructions and I am an extremely impatient person) and sowed them indoors on an upstairs window sill in shallow trays of soil. Seedlings soon appeared and when they had four leaves I pricked them out and potted them on. Not heeding Jeremy’s warnings that it was too early I put the growing plants out into a series of tyres that had been dumped along our quiet country road and retrieved and repurposed at The Gables. Against the odds they thrived and grew and eventually flowered and gave me such great pleasure all summer long until the first frosts killed them. I was smitten and every year I sow the seeds, pot them on snd plant them out ahead of the advice in the seed packet. This year the early spring sunshine tempted me to put them out earlier still. Most survived.

I choose a dwarf variety which can withstand buffeting by Bedfordshire winds. I might plant a mixture of heights next year (if I live that long!).

Here’s some Google history from a variety of sources plus my own postscript.

Cosmos flowers, native to Mexico and Central America, trace their history back to 16th-century Spanish explorers who brought them to Europe. Spanish priests cultivating the blooms in mission gardens named them after the Greek word for “ordered universe”, inspired by their perfectly arranged, symmetrical petals.

The UK: The wife of the English ambassador to Spain brought hundreds of cosmos seeds back to Britain in 1787. Because they struggled to adapt to the colder UK climate, the flowers didn’t become a staple in British cottage gardens until much later

Most of the seed packets I buy state (as does Wikipedia) that cosmos flower from late June or early July until the first autumn frosts. Mine began flowering two weeks ago. Impatience isn’t always a bad trait – or I might just have been lucky this year!

Then back to the village of Spaldwick with the church bells ringing out for midday

Back to The George for a welcome drink in a beautiful pub.

Don’t count your kids before they arrive, Juno

Last night I watched the programme that reminded me why I pay a licence fee (for some time now I have been unhappy with too much of the news coverage – but that’s a discussion to be had over a cup of tea or a single malt).

Children of the Blitz on BBC 2 was one of the most sensitively made and moving documentaries I have ever seen. As I watched it (tissues in hand) I recalled the stories that my darling parents told of war time and, more importantly, the ones Dad wrote down and had never told us.

The East End, being near the docks, was mercilessly pounded night after night.

And on the next page

Where had he hidden these memories and where had his father hidden the horrors of The Battle of the Somme and all the devastation he witnessed when serving in the First World War?

The destruction of buildings and whole areas the length and breadth of this land were described by those who were children at the time of the Blitz. The film footage was extraordinary and horrifying – yet the people of this country rebuilt and recovered and we asked all involved to put away their memories and carry on. They did but one little boy (now in his nineties) wept as he recalled the loss of his father fighting to liberate Europe from the Nazis. I wept with him when he asked us not to forget the father he barely knew who gave his life so that we could be free.