Family Of Four: 15 - Pets In The Garden
...Every fine Sunday evening in the summer Daddy would call us out to play cricket. I would swing round the pear tree, watching the flaming wonder of the sunset of red, yellow, and palest green, and listening to the mellow chimes of the Lindley clock, my thoughts far away, for cricket is a game I could never enjoy.
I seldom seemed to bat or bowl, and fielding I thought very dull. I was also secretly ashamed to throw for the ball never went in the intended direction...
Mrs Vivien Hirst recalls idyllic times in the garden of her family's home in a Yorkshire mill town.
Mrs Hirst's nephew, Raymond Prior, arranged for her memories to be published as a book. To read more of her enchanting reminiscences please click on Family Of Four in the menu on his page.
Our garden was quite large. Bounded at the far end by an ivy-covered wall, on the left by another high wall with a vegetable border running along its length, it was separated by only a wire fence from the garden on the right hand, which gave an illusion of space.
It was a pretty picture in the spring for then the two pear trees unfolded early into blossom, to be followed by the exquisite pink of the apple blossom, and of the crabapple tree. This tree never failed, with the exception of its resting periods, to delight us by being so weighed down by its small, red apples, as to touch the earth in arching sprays, a lovely sight, and it seemed impossible that the branches would not break.
When the fruit was collected in clothes baskets for the annual jelly making, the tree, relieved of its weight, sprang back to its former spreading shape. It was under this tree that the tea table was set on still summer days, or in the tent, erected with a good deal of trouble if protection from the wind were required.
Daddy gave us a wide swing and had three notches made in each support, at different levels, so that with a round pole fixed across we were able to turn backward and forward somersaults, to do a monkey-climb, and to strengthen our muscles.
Every fine Sunday evening in the summer Daddy would call us out to play cricket. I would swing round the pear tree, watching the flaming wonder of the sunset of red, yellow, and palest green, and listening to the mellow chimes of the Lindley clock, my thoughts far away, for cricket is a game I could never enjoy.
I seldom seemed to bat or bowl, and fielding I thought very dull. I was also secretly ashamed to throw for the ball never went in the intended direction; more often than not it soared backwards over my head, or straight into the air, when it should have been spinning into the outstretched hands waiting hopefully to receive it!
Mummy always enjoyed telling how the four of us, when very tiny, found a mound of soot in a corner of the garden, deposited by the sweep. Happily we all waded in and tossed it about, and what a sight we were. We were seized and one at a time stripped, and plunged into the zinc bath in the scullery, and turned out naked into the garden to dry. Year after year the sweep had to be warned to take the soot away so that we could not experience that misadventure again.
We had an outhouse attached to the main building, with a stable door, and Daddy had six holes bored in the upper one so that enough air would flow for the rabbits and one guinea pig which were our pets. We attended to them and fed them entirely on our own, and were most interested and excited when we were told that Ginger, Doreen's handsome doe, was going to have babies.
When they arrived we thought them funny little things, but had no chance to watch them develop, as one morning they had all disappeared. This caused much speculation as there was no possible way of egress. It was thought that a weasel, seen recently running across the road, might have crept in through one of the holes in the upper door which was about one and a half inches in diameter, but there was no sign of the wire netting having been torn.
No, it was decided that Ginger had been frightened, perhaps by the weasel, and had eaten her babies herself. This was a horrifying thought, and a good deal of explanation was called for, but after that it was still horrifying. Thus we learned early of the cruelty of the animal kingdom, and I found it so disgusting that I was never very interested in keeping rabbits after that.
Years later, the old revulsion returned. I was staying with Auntie Ethel, Uncle Raymond's widow, at Malton, and she and I looked occasionally at the new piglets, talking very softly, as Auntie said if the sow were alarmed she would promptly eat them all. It seemed strange to me that an animal should take the lives of her young thinking that made them safe, I supposed she had the satisfaction of knowing that no further harm could come to them
