Highland Homespun by Margaret Leigh

Author:Margaret Leigh [Leigh, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Cultural; Ethnic & Regional, General, Environmentalists & Naturalists
ISBN: 9780857902986
Google: VNAcEAAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 14610597
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2012-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

The weather remained hot and very fine. All the crofters were busy cutting peats, and I felt rather sad that we could not do the same. But there was no good peat on the farm, and such beds as there were had not been worked for years, so that it would have needed much labour to clear them for cutting. In any case, with unlimited supplies of wood at our doors, which could be cut at any season and in any weather, it would obviously not pay to hire Murdo for a job that had little but sentiment to recommend it.

Incredible as it may sound in a country with an annual rainfall of nearly seventy inches, we were beginning to run short of water, and for a few days the gravitation supply, which was gathered in a cistern from various small springs and field drains in the long cornfield and Ladystone, ceased altogether, and we had to carry water for the house from an old well at the bottom of the steading. Except in the peat mosses, the soil is light and pervious, and where it lies on a steep slope, dries out very rapidly, so that two or three weeks without rain will cause a temporary water famine. Luckily the burns and freshwater lochs always provide an abundance for stock, but in June the field and garden crops, and sometimes even the grass, will suffer much from excessive dryness. What would happen if we were to experience the long spells of drought so common in the south, I cannot imagine. But as things are, when twelve or fifteen inches of rain may easily fall in a single month, quick drainage is our one salvation; without it, the land could not be cultivated at all.

We took advantage of the dry weather to attack the weeds in both gardens. The West Highland weed is immortal; so great is its vitality and tenacity that nothing, neither the hardest frost nor the hottest sun, will destroy it. The prevailing dampness of the climate not only stimulates the growth of weeds, but makes it impossible to burn them. In the field garden, the chief pests were sorrel, spurry, chickweed, groundsel, and a vigorous little plant with a small white flower, which seems to have many generations in one summer, but I do not know its name. In the walled garden, we had chiefly docks, hemlock, nettles, and thistles to deal with. At this point there should follow a general commination on weeds. I know a retired fisherman whose life is now one long warfare against them. In our wet and weedy climate, his chief delight is in flawless gravel paths. He will not grow peas, because it is impossible to keep them absolutely clean without uprooting the plants themselves. To him, the loveliest sight in a garden is a bed of well-worked soil with nothing at all in it. Like the ancient Romans, he makes a solitude and calls it peace. As for me, I cannot take the weed crusade very seriously.

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