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A wet and windy Wednesday walk and I learnt about Mothering Sunday from Heather (and Dr Google and Wikipedia!)

Mothering Sunday is not the same as Mother’s Day. During the 16th Century people would return to their mother church ie the church in which they we’re baptised for a Midlent Sunday service. Those who did this were said to have gone “mothering”. In more recent times Mothering Sunday became a day when domestic servants were given a precious day off to visit their mother church often with their own mother and other family members. The modern Mother’s Day was established in America by Anna Jarvis in 1908 to honour the memory of her own mother and all mothers. In England there was an attempt to revive the Mothering Sunday tradition by a woman called Constance Adelaide Smith inspired by Anna Jarvis. Constance Smith published a play, book and booklet (The Revival of Mothering Sunday, 1921) and it was linked to the much older Christian tradition which is why the dates in Britain and America differ. Mother’s Day in America takes place on the second Sunday in May and in Britain on the MidLent Sunday. Interestingly neither woman married nor had children and Anna Jarvis was appalled at the commercialisation of her idea to honour mothers.

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Mum and I had such a lot of laughs this morning.

We talked about the Royal Family and mum said dad never knew one from another and took no interest in the long running British Soap Opera
Then mum spotted a young man going by wearing a mask and said, “He’s a nice looking fellow!” I told her, “He probably looks better without a mask!” And that set us off giggling. My mum still has an eye open for a fella even if she is 93!
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Daffodils everywhere

These are just some of them. Plenty more to come and plenty more to be found even in the field and down by the goose pond

In the front garden
Outside the gate
Around the pergola
In a tub
Some open and more about to open beside the paddock gate
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The first of the spring

The geese have started laying and J collected the first egg this morning

Too big for an ordinary egg box!
Compare with our largest hen egg and a bantam egg

We usually place a few goose eggs under a broody hen later in the season but…… we already have a flock of nine geese and this year we will leave the geese to sit (or not) themselves. Our geese usually lose interest after sitting for a couple of weeks. It takes 35 days before a goose egg hatches and that is a long time to sit on an egg.