The Seasons Of Childhood

A Memory of Evershot.

This story written by Bee Snow 1928-2007 (nee Barbara Whitaker) about her childhood in Evershot,
Dorset.

Reared with three sisters, four brothers, four terriers and a jackdaw, I insisted by the age of five in accompanying this mixed mob on twice daily walks my mother decreed. We ran wild and free over the Dorset countryside. I supose largely tolerated because my father was the local GP.
We were really an immature group of hunter-gatheres. Hunting was meant to be confined to rabbits, and we aquired some skill in helping our four terriers catch them. The death of the rabbit was often very painful to see and hear. I know I avoided witnessing it by tightly shutting my eyes, sticking my fingers in my ears and screaming "Kill it! kill it!" My eldest brother usually ran and dispatched the poor rabbit more quickly than could the terriers.

My mother was always full of praise for the rabbits we carried home for the pot, but she always knew before we opened our mouths if the dogs had been after any other creatures as it greatly upset her.

Our gathering activities were more varied than the hunting ones and orientated as much towards decorating the home as filling our stomachs. It started in January with a visit to nearby woods to gather snowdrops. By February the violets were coming out, growing mostly in the ditches of the hedgrows amongst the newly emerging stinging nettles, such a challenge for young fingers. The hazel nut catkins out by February were a less painful bouquet to gather and take home. March saw the first bunches of primroses carried home in icy fingers and by April they were bountiful. My mother could fill a shallow fourteen inch bowl, her floating bowl, with our primroses. By May the meadows were full cowslips, satisfyingly quick to pick and easy to carry back with their strong stalks.

From the end of July to September mushrooms were plentiful, we usually left home with baskets for them, but most of the small button mushrooms never saw the kitchen as we ate them in the fields. In August and September we often set off with lunch and a large zinc preserving pan aiming to fill it with blackberries and sometimes came back with nearly eight pounds.

By the time the mushroom and blackberry picking had finished, we were out after the hazel nuts and horse chestnuts, which kept us busy through October. November might look like a meagre gathering season, but my ever resourceful mother developed a longing to decorate her floating bowl with fresh moss and scarlet moss-cups. I think she also took to making Sloe Gin, to ensure our willing
departure into November's cold countryside to collect Sloes.

In December we were visiting all the berry-bearing Holly trees we knew, deciding which one we would desend on for our Christmas decorations. While some trees had been stripped by the third week of December, two or three isolated trees in the hedges of open farmland were always still laden. To my childish imagination they were rather magic Holly trees with a special benign interest in fulfilling our desire for a Holly laden Christmas.

Over fifty years later I dicovered why Holly trees in such sites keep their berries. A pair of Mistle Thrushes take over the more easily defended isolated Holly trees as a winter food supply and keep other berry eating birds away. The berries last them through the winter and even into the spring and summer.

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