New Year Flowers in Cornwall

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23850, 28 December 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

New Year Flowers in Cornwall

In Pre-war Times

roses are blooming and the primroses are out before the last sutnmer flower lias faded in the gardens in the sheltered coombes of Cornwall and Devon. In normal pre-war times the end of the year marks the beginning of the great flower season, when the flat boxes from Scilly are 011 thenway across tho rough water from the little collection of rocky islets beyond Land's End, to be piled with others from Cornish fields on the platform of Penzance. All the land is full of the odour of violets; all the flower-lofts are alive with sirs busy packing among the array of blooms on the shelves. It is a time of reunion. The farmer's wife goes down to the fishing village to visit her girls and their parents; a young niece, just finished at school, is taken to the lott and starts on tho most amateur tasks before learning the whole skilful trade.

i Give mc the money that has been j j spent in War, and I will clothe every j : man, Woman and child in an attire ■ I of which kings and queens would be j j proud. I will build a school-house j i in every valley over the whole earth, i j I will crown every hillside With a j : place of worship consecrated to the : ■ gospel of peace. ; • —Charles Sumner, j i i

The new year is a new year of flowers that will swing through the great daffodil season —the whites, yellows, and glorious new varieties—to the iris and tulips and round to the anemones and violets again. In the little cottages are great jars of Scilly whites ("paper whites," as some call them), and anemones can be bought in the streets of Devonian and Cornish towns at a penny or less the big bunch. Wages become lively again. The girls work later and later as the season rises to its height, until they come home at midnight between the high hedges of the deep lanes and tumble into bed in their rooms above the harbour, tired but dreaming ot a little to spend at the week-end of a Saturday afternoon spent looking at the tempting shops of the market-town, and perhaps the pictures or a dance afterwards. Down from the big towns then come the representatives of the great flowerbuying firms. Often they bring little presents for the girls in the lofts they have come to know well, and their visits are looked forward to by both farmer and girls. A happy, busy time —New Year in pre-war Cornwall.