COUNTYKATE'S THOUGHTS ON NOVEMBER.

So the summer is well and truly over, dinghies become large bird baths, and the cottages are closed up and become a little overgrown, with no-one to tend the gardens!

The County is a Cornucopia of Curious Sights and legends; there is probably a Cheshire Cat in the County Humane Society, awaiting adoption to his 'forever home'.

An apology to grammar purists, with my attempt at alliteration, as above. 

I'll try in this blog to acquaint you with curious facts about Prince Edward County in Ontario, and accompany them with photographs by way of explanation.

When school starts in early September, life assumes a different pace. For the bus drivers, it means going back to  rising from bed at ungodly hours of the morning, checking the bus for faults, and scaring the dawn chorus into silence.

For the general public driving around, it means watching for those flashing red lights atop the school bus, meaning you must stop for students getting on or off, or be fined.

My first pickup would be at 7a.m., a half hour drive from home.  Having waved my way there, exchanging morning greetings with farmers, crossing guards, police and others, I often arrived just before the girls were ready to be picked up. I’d make my arrival known, while they collected backpacks, breakfast and kissed the dogs goodbye.

 Most students can wait in their homes, watching for the bus to appear. Other kids, who live on farms perhaps, can’t wait inside their homes, they would have too far to run down the driveway. So these guys have shelters erected near the roadway by their dads. Design is personal, I show two examples below.  We call them Sentry Boxes! And -yes- the little house with the porch is a luxury version of the school bus shelter!

There is a mixed bag of house design here too.  We have three Octagonal houses on the County.  This was a design from 1850, popular here and in the States.  Apparently the  oddly shaped rooms gave more accommodation, and the porch ran all the way around the lower level.

Picton has a magnificent choice of houses, some mansions, built by businessmen such as canning factory owners, shipping magnates and ship builders, and the wealthy from Toronto and the States. Some really huge houses were still referred to as summer cottages!

The mansions were decorated in wonderful styles, towers, wraparound porches, curlicues and elaborate fretwork called ‘gingerbread’.  Porches were generously sized, decorated in summer with wicker furniture and flower planters, an extension of the living rooms. Many of these imposing houses still exist, some of them now hotels,

Smaller homes boast their porches too, the roof an extension of the roof line over a wooden deck; this design is supposed to come from the slaves’ cabins in the Southern States, developed for shade and for sleeping. Smaller houses, of course, are candidates for removal to a different site! People often buy an older house and get it transported to a site of their choice.

There was even a castle in Picton, built at the head of Picton Harbour in 1896. Castle Villeneuve was described as one of Ontario’s finest residences and was built in Victorian Gothic style; it had towers, turrets. a round ballroom, and a dozen bedrooms. Sadly it was destroyed by a propane explosion in 1986.

I have mentioned The Palace of the Moon in earlier blogs; this was a very popular dancehall in the 1930's and onward; it literally was swallowed up by the drifting sands of the Sandbanks.

Summer Dance Pavilions were very popular from the 1900's, between the two World Wars, and on into the 1960's!  Hundreds of young people descended on the County, in the new fangled motor cars, and danced to resident big bands. All gone now – so many of them were swallowed up by the ever-shifting sand dunes that border the lake.

Other enormous structures have been erected here, for example the Orphans’ Home on Foresters Island, in the northeast corner of the County, which was built in 1900 . It was a huge, Victorian-style, four-storey building with five towers.  Orphan children were chosen to live here, to be educated.

Sadly, by 1905, the society responsible had gone bankrupt. The premises were sold to local residents, who took many of the furnishings for their own homes!

We have our own Crystal Palace too, in the Picton Fairgrounds. Built in 1887, it is still used for weddings and other celebrations.

On the County, visible signs of our heritage and history are far ‘younger’ that they would be in Europe for example, but there is no lack of curious sights, each with its own story. Odd sights include the rather small dark blue aircraft,

poised to take flight, on the roof of a local factory.

Or the local drive-in cinema. 

 Not to mention a ‘house martin cote’ – doves not welcome! (These were built in gardens as mosquito deterrents, the little house martins having a large appetite for mozzies, caught on the wing at dusk.)

We have been visited by all religions, we have about six branches of the W.I., we did have a branch of the Ku Klux Klan, gone now, composed mostly of ladies!

This ‘church’ was built by Norwegians and is now a residence.

There is still the site of Camp Picton, the airfield atop McCauley Mountain. Partly derelict, partly still used for boat storage, films have been made here, including a version of Colditz.

Mysterious caves and caverns are common enough everywhere, and I was intrigued when a couple of local fishermen hinted that there was such a cave, visible only from the sea, at Long Point. They implied that it was a creepy place inhabited by bats. I tried to follow up te clues, but never found it myself. Other informants said it was a submarine base, which sounded a bit of a tall story and reminded me of the caves in the Greek islands that have the same reputation. In the end it turned out to be the work of the wealthy American who owned the property abovethe shore line and had blasted out the shale to make a boat house for his many different boats, from motor cruiser and yacht to canoes.

The tower of the church at Picton leans enough for us to be able to claim that we have our own Leaning Tower of Pi..cton, but it has been examined and declared safe so we are unlikely to be seeing it as a tourist attraction.

Many pioneer relics are to be found here, in the form of the wooden rail fences, still bordering fields today, others buried in the treelines or hedgerows. Just to remind you, all this land was farmed once, a hundred or more years ago. Trees were cut down in their hundreds, to make the fences as well as homesteads.  But what to do with the massive roots, left after cutting away firewood and fence rails?

 Why, make an animal-proof fence with them!

 There is a new type of 'edifice' these days; wind turbines and banks of solar panels in the fields. In bright summer sun, their reflecting metal panels blind the motorist.  There is talk of wind farms, a phrase which conjures up quite the wrong image!

We have several methods of heating our homes. We have geothermal heating, an underground piping system.

For those with woodstoves, the woodpiles assume grand shapes, tucked against barn walls, covered if in the open. Spiders are grateful for these snuggly winter homes, chipmunks and squirrels too.

Another form of heating is by using an outdoor stove, connected to the house with piping, and providing heat and hot water. We call them Puffing Billy.  We saw them first on a road trip through Virginia, taking the rural route through the beautiful Adirondacks Mountains.  Almost every home, hidden away in the trees, boasted this Puffing Billy contraption, and we convinced ourselves that they were whisky stills, illegal of course, but blatantly smoking away.

 We were impressed by the number of stills and the quantity of moonshine being made. Maybe the police turned a blind eye to the situation, in return for their share, we assumed.

We realised later , of course, that these were outdoor stoves!

So there are the curious facts and features of the County.  The next 'sight' to see, will be the putting up of Christmas Lights, decoration of shop fronts, and the stacking of hundreds of Christmas trees outside the supermarkets!

So the Xmas preparations begin, like making the cake, to be 'fed' every few days with brandy. 

 We have a friend who is a member of the local Volunteer Fire Brigade, who will stand guard over the turkey on the day – ‘just in case’. 

Afterwards, it will be back to life as usual for me, sitting quietly in front of the log fire, to quilt, read and snooze.

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SEASON OF MISTS AND MELLOW FRUITFULNESS~

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John Keats wrote those words that  so perfectly define Autumn.

Two weeks ago the clocks went back one hour  - at least they did here in Greece. It always feels like something of a landmark to me when this date comes around – definitely the end of summer at last. Man can impose his will on Time to some extent but there is still little he can do about the weather, as we are once again being reminded.

We were promised storms a few days ago, after a long spell of mild and sunny weather, and sure enough a storm arrived, right on time. Friends wrote on Facebook that snow fell in Devon and Scotland and my sister in Canada said that three weather fronts were set to collide over her house in the next few days – a multiple storm system labeled at once by the Americans, who have a way with snappy sound bites – ‘Frankenstorm’!

Today, suddenly, here in Corfu, it feels colder and a long-drawn out autumn seems to be giving way to winter. Thoughts turn to log fires and knitting and comfort food.

So I am going to write about apples.

Robert Frost wrote a poem called ‘After Apple Picking’ which implies that this apparently simple rural routine is more of a mystery and a ritual than we realize.

Perhaps it is – and autumn is after all the season that bridges life and death, that triggers in creatures the instinct and the ability to do something that Man has not yet mastered – to hibernate.

Autumn has inspired many poets and songwriters – remember this?

The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold

Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I'll hear old winter's song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall

Above all, for me at least, autumn is a time of nostalgia tinged with a little mild melancholy.

It is a time to meditate and contemplate and think about – apples.

Cezanne painted apples - 

-over and over again

and so did Grandma Moses

Why apples? It’s just that some of my happiest childhood memories are about apples and picking plums and blackberries, and helping my mum make jam. We had apple and plum trees in our  garden then, and I remember my favourite uncle used to make a weekly visit to check the fruit for ripeness. The first blush of ripe redness on the Worcester Pearmains, the first soft yielding of the huge Victoria plums to a surreptitious squeeze, were greeted with cries of delight by Uncle Frank. He would be the first to sample the autumn fruit again!

It’s a pity that these days if you mention ‘apple’ to someone, the first thought that flashes into their mind is likely to be about computers. Google ‘apple’ without any further qualifying words, and Steve Jobs pops up.

Say ‘apple’ to a person of my age, however, and a host of wonderful memories and associations  is likely to burst out of the memory banks.

No-one knows for sure what the fruit was that Adam and Eve ate with such disastrous consequences. Historically, all fruit that was not a berry was called an apple and the Biblical apple may well have been a pomegranate but apples featured strongly in Greek mythology and this could have influenced the interpretation of the story of the Original Sin. The Forbidden Fruit has been identified variously as the fig, the grape, a type of mushroom and even the Datura, a variety of which is known as – Thorn-Apple!

Apples have been around for thousands of years, originating in the mountains of Western Asia, and subsequently carried, with the westward migration of humanity, to Europe and the Mediterranean basin and on to North America and ultimately the rest of the world.

Truly a universal fruit.

Today there are more than 7500 varieties of apple, yet ‘thanks’ to the influence of supermarkets it sometimes seems that there are only three types of apple available - red, green and yellow. In fact the most widely grown and sold modern apple varieties are ten in number and include Macintosh (red), Granny Smith (green) and Golden Delicious (yellow).

Greek supermarkets are no different from their counterparts in other countries in the range of apples on sale, but some of them, and certainly the markets, also sell the sweet, tiny Firikia apples that used to grow only in the Mount Pelion region. Another well-known Greek apple is called ‘Xinomilo’, literally ‘sour apple’, which it certainly is.

Greek Firikia apples

Here in Corfu, we tend to eat our fruit and vegetables according to their own natural season. All summer we revel in sweet juicy ‘soft’ fruits such as strawberries, apricots, cherries, peaches and nectarines, melons, figs, plums  and grapes. Come the first rains, the cooler days and chilly evenings, and the first seasonal apples and pears begin to appear.

Modern storage methods mean that we can if we wish buy apples and pears all year round at the supermarket, but there is nothing quite like the taste and texture of a fruit that has ripened naturally. To me, there is, moreover, nothing like an English apple, one of the old-fashioned varieties that are at last enjoying a revival of interest.

Perhaps the most famous and best-loved English apple is the Cox’s Orange Pippin. The names of the great apples read like poetry – Worcester Pearmain, Laxton Superb,  Bramley, Blenheim Orange, Five Crown  Pippin and the Beauty of Bath, that always sounds to me like a character from Chaucer.

When I was a child, born and brought up in Essex, still a very rural county in those days, I had an Uncle who was Head Gardener at an old estate. 

The house was called Gosfield Hall   and was built in 1545 by a member of Cardinal Wolsey’s household. Like so many of the great houses of that period, it was visited more than once by Queen Elizabeth I and her entourage.

Gosfield Hall  underwent various additions and renovations over the centuries but by the middle of the 20^th century, after a few years of war service as a billet for members of the American Air Force, it was virtually abandoned and my uncle was more the Last Gardener than the Head Gardener. Alone, he struggled against the advances of Nature and concentrated on keeping the old walled garden and the fruit trees in good repair.

I loved that garden. It dated back to Elizabethan times and had beds planted with herbs and vegetables, neatly raked paths bordered by giant lavender bushes and a row of espaliered peach and apple trees that clung to the rose-red bricks of the old, often sun-drenched, walls.

My favourite place, however, was the apple loft.

If you Google ‘apple loft’ you will be offered an endless selection of accommodation, in Britain and North America for the most part, most of it described as ‘former’ or ‘converted from’ old apple lofts.

There is no mention of the apple lofts I remember, and there are no photos.

Gone forever, perhaps, like so much of our English rural history.

I used to climb the outside wooden stairs up to the lofts, which were dim, the only light coming from small cobweb -festooned  windows.  The lofts were dry and airy, lined with simple shelving and the central areas were occupied by big tables on which were trays and trays of apples.

My uncle used to set me to work – I had to earn the generous tea that would be provided later, with scones and fruit cake baked by my Auntie May.

I had to sort through the trays, checking for any sign of rot or mould, making sure that the apples were not touching each other. Spoiled apples went into a special bin, the ‘cider-bin’, to be used later for making cider.

Uncle Will grew English apples, mostly Cox’s for eating and big green Bramleys for cooking. Superb baked in the oven with brown sugar, lemon juice and cloves, Bramleys made a fluffy crumble and a fine apple pie.

Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness." -- Jane Austen

Auntie May used to core and peel apples and slice them into rings which she then hung on strings in a dry, preferably sunny, place, to make chewy dried apple for winter use. She also pickled eggs, walnuts and onions, as did my grandmother. Ladgie (my grandma) also tried her hand at making ginger beer, with disastrous results – the explosion almost wrecked our stairs, under which the big stone flagons were stored in the dark to ferment and mature.

In those days too, we used to tour the countryside in late summer and early autumn, seeking out the plums and damsons and wild sloe berries that would be turned into jams and hugely alcoholic beverages.

Bitter Seville oranges would be snapped up as soon as they appeared at the greengrocer’s shop, to be turned into tangy marmalades, sometimes spiked with ginger and/or whisky.

Visits to Uncle Will and Auntie May were memorable in many ways, none more so though than the sight of a brood of chickens using an ancient Rolls-Royce as a chicken coop. Along with the old Hall, the car had fallen into decay and disuse, until the hens discovered it. Once, it must have looked like this.

I leave the rest to your imagination.

A is for Apples – and Apple Pie and Apple Cake. Recipes abound for these dishes but few call for as much patience and devotion as this one

Finished off with innumerable pastry leaves, each one fashioned individually.

When I worked in an office at Nissaki, Corfu, set beside the local church, the local cafeneion and the mini-market, the local ladies vied with each other to bring me the tastiest morsels. Our office cleaner made a mean apple cake, with roughly cut apples and a hefty pinch of cinnamon. The woman who ran the mini-market sent upside-down apple cake drenched in icing sugar  and dripping with syrup. Asked to say which was the most delicious, I felt as if I were being asked to make some mythological judgment, possibly with frightful consequences. I played it safe and declared a tie.

I was chilly with the November breeze,
and it was a courtly thing you did
draping the sweater over my shoulders,
taking care to smooth the wool
with a touch that whispered
that later you would claim the garment,
and the shiver taking it would bring
was something you coveted
with breathless avarice.

“Sweater weather,” you said.
And I am swept like a crisp oak leaf
into a duvet and down dream,
where the pillows do not speak
of the warm, the moments large and small
when I nestle near you,
demanding that arms dress me
to close kept comfort.



Arms around my waist,
legs entwined to akimbo,
and my last thought before sweet drowse
is that fall will never come
without you to chase the cold
in the season of sweater weather.

Sweater Weather by Lisa Shields

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