Monthly Archives: September 2018

September 24, 2018 · 3:04 am

Emily Bronte~Wuthering Heights

I was recently at the Bronte Parsonage and the lingering sense of the past was everywhere: in the parsonage, the graveyard, the village. I absorbed the atmosphere that was around every corner and it was certainly not all bleak and forbidding.

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Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte wrote about the wild moors in the north of England. It is place that is grey and dark in winter and even in warmer seasons is a sombre place where  tough bracken and heather cover the hills and fragments of the past linger.

Emily Bronte

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The isolation of Haworth Parsonage on the wild and bleak local moors separated the Bronte children from other families and they relied on each other for companionship. This lead them to create fantasy worlds: Gondal, shared by Emily and Anne, is an island in the North Pacific; Angria, shared by Charlotte and her brother Bramwell, is nominally in Africa.

Bronte Parsonage in Haworth

depositphotos_21032619-stock-photo-bronte-parsonage-museum-in-haworthWuthering Heights was written by Emily Bronte and is her only novel. It was published in 1847 under the pseudonym ‘Ellis Bell’.  Emily Bronte died the following year, aged 30.

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‘I lingered round them, under that benign  sky…

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September 2, 2018 · 8:42 am

Mystery and Magic of Plants

I’m going to London this week and I’ll be visiting the Chelsea Physic Garden that was established as the Apothecaries’ Garden in London, England, in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries to grow plants to be used as medicines. Most often, an herb is medicinal, culinary, or has some magic connected to it. Botanists differentiate herbs from other plants by the stem. A woody stem above the ground, is not an herb but a tree or a shrub so it follows that parsely is an herb but rosemary is not. I wrote about the Chelsea Physic Garden in my new novel. The garden didn’t play a leading role (it might in my new novel) but I weave all things botanical through my stories: gardens, plants, flowers, botanical art. There is nothing like a garden to grab hold of your heart and not let go.
So while I am visiting a famous garden I also like to walk through the imaginary gardens of my mind. Now can you imagine being in England in January or February; snow on the garden of a mysterious house and heavy on the roof of a Camellia House? A stone house perhaps, or one made of splendid mellowed brickwork, with large casement windows that could be opened to let in the sunshine and fresh air of the warmer months. Magnificent red, white or pink blooms with luminous dark green leaves. I have started writing my next novel, as yet unnamed, but one of my characters will visit a house with a Camellia House when she should be somewhere else.
Culzean-Castle
Culzean Castle, Camellia House 
So, you can see my mind is full of all sorts of possibilities: a physic garden, a Camellia House, winter snow and summer days. I can see I’ll never run out of gardens to write about, medieval gardens, (there is one in my second novel) flower gardens, knot gardens even the urban garden, or plants with beautiful or unusual names: blue lacecap hydrangeas, a rose called, Peace, acanthus, and bachelors buttons.
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An abandoned Camellia House
The mystery and magic of plants never fade.
Enjoy this Sunday, reading perhaps, dreaming, hopefully,
and walking in a garden.
Elise 

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