quaking grass and dog daisies

I have a lot of quaking grass growing in parts of the back garden - the original plant was given me by a friend after I'd tried and failed to grow it from seed. Why this was so, I can't understand, since it has subsequently self-set itself all over the place, and - since I brought a couple of clumps to the front early this spring - it will probably now spread all over the front. I don't mind, I love to see its seedheads quivering in the slightest breath of wind. It was my turn to do the flowers at Quaker Meeting on Sunday, so I brought a bunch of quaking grass, sweet peas, love-in-a-mist heads, and what I call dog daisy, being a northern lass originally, but down here they seem to call it oxe-eye daisy. I think the dog-daisy name is apt, and you can see from the picture that the dog likes sitting among the flowers. They grow in my pocket-handkerchief of meadow, underneath the biggest apple tree, and make a nice contrast to the little apples at present.



The apples got really red early on this spring because of all the warm sunshine in April, and I hope this will mean they have a spectacular colour. I do prefer to grow fruit trees, rather than sterile flowering cherries; you get the wonderful blossom but then afterwards you get the fruit which is beautiful for a long time before you get to eat it.



Back to quaking grass - of course, taking it to Meeting for Worship was a pun, and an apt one, because we got our name - applied as a term of derision - when George Fox told a judge to 'Tremble at the name of the Lord.' The quaking grass does that rather a lot. One new attender got up and ministered about the grass, which she thought was catkins, and she talked about how nervous she felt giving ministry, because she thought she hadn't been coming long enough, and how she felt shaky - just like the grasses. But she spoke about the beauty of the seedheads, very eloquently, and I found myself seeing them in a different way. Afterwards I told her it was quaking grass - which caused amusement among several Quakers, and I am on to supply seedlings in the autumn, when we have our next plant-swap. I only hope none of them will turn out to be couch.. shouldn't do, though, because the leaves - or blades, should it be? are quite broad.

I have been picking red-currants inside the fruit cage, while the dog roams and lurks around outside like the biblical Satan, wishing she could be in there devouring them. Or maybe like the 'hosts of Midian' in the hymn. Gardening is fruitful of many reflections like that. But the red-currants are maybe the most beautiful fruit, like little globes of scarlet glass.