This week has included St George’s day, a day for which I have no particular affiliation, but I do have fond memories. Anyone who has read past blogs will know that I grew up in the folk world with all its wonderful, and yes, quite frankly odd, traditions and practices. One of which is the performing of mummurs plays: folk plays by amateur ‘actors’ (see, more often beer happy folkies) that usually contain within them, a sword dual, a dragon slaying and a quack doctor who would bring the slain hero back to life. (Although there are many, many regional variations.) As ever, they were often an allegory for the fight between good and evil as well as for the seasons and crops returning to life after winter.
When a character enters the scene in a mummers play, he (and traditionally it was always men) would announce themselves beginning with, “In comes I,…” and the discourse would often be held, in a strutting and goading manner and usually in rhyming couplets:
“In comes I, Saint George! An heroic man,
With steely sword, my shield in hand.
I fought the fiery dragon
And sent him to the slaughter,
And for this deed I won the hand
Of the King’s beautiful daughter.”
The reason I have fond memories, is not just of watching many of these plays at street fayres between bouts of morris and clog dancing, but of being in one during a solar eclipse – many years ago. We were in Devon, or Cornwall, or thereabouts (I think) so many folk camps blur into one homogenous folk life. On this day most of the campers made their way to the top of a hill to witness the mystical event and as the time drew nearer, a group of us set about a mummers play.
As strong as my memory of the beauty and awe of the eclipse and how everything fell silent as the shadow descended, and as much as I remember the strangeness of the feeling of such a magical moment; I just as much remember that the huge men’s trousers I had borrowed for the play, that were held up only with string, kept threatening to fall down as I proudly introduced myself: “In comes I…” and then very nearly, out went dignity.
In the current situation, I have structured my time so that I work at my desk every morning, garden usually in the afternoon and if I have any energy left after cooking tea, set about my personal work later. As such, the garden is getting more attention than usual. This week, I have been on the hunt for a surprise angry panther. Let me explain. Last year, a flower emerged from amongst an area of, well, chaos, in one of my borders, that I couldn’t quite place. Popping it on twitter and asking for identification help, a gardener friend of mine replied that it was an agapanthus, but an unusual looking one. 
The best thing though, was that they told me that they called them angry panthers, and to this day, that is what I call them too. I know roughly where it is located but the ground covering mat of ajuga, pulmonaria and creeping cinquefoil, has hindered any precise pinpointing – hence the search. So far, the angry panther remains elusive, but I live in hope.
Talking of elusive nature, the orange tip butterflies are a cheeky bunch fluttering about but never landing long enough to take a picture. And, I am pretty convinced I found badger poo in the garden. When I told MOTH to come and see something interesting, he was not at all convinced when I said it was poo, until he saw it and reluctantly had to agree that it was, actually, interesting. I have seen a badger in the garden before, so it is quite possible.
Other garden activities have been checking each morning whether any new veg have begun to poke above ground – potatoes, onions, climbing beans, courgettes and garlic are romping ahead leaving the peas and spinach wheezing and panting at the back of the pack. The weather is proving glorious for us humans, but as a gardener I am feeling the pain of nature trying to compete with increasingly parched earth. We have four water sources available in a variety of locations for wildlife, but it is the plants I feel for, trying to push through baked clay – and we are only in April! Perhaps I should write and perform a one-woman mummers play to the rain gods to see if we can entice them to show our land some mercy. Six weeks into isolation – this doesn’t sound quite so mad an idea.