THIS WEEK'S FEATURE ARTICLES

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The Kitchen Garden Guide
October: part 2
October is a good time to replenish mulch on our beds and paths. I mostly use organic silage as mulch in my food garden. But I edge sloping areas with peastraw bales then, when they collapse, I put all that beautiful, rotted humus onto the beds and replace the edges with fresh bales. My paths are laid with mulch by putting my prunings through my chipper then I also throw some of the weeds from the vegetable beds onto the paths and once or twice a year, when well composted, this is scooped up and put onto the beds. Some of the weeds and bits from the beds are fed to the chooks and worm farms and some even makes it to real compost heaps!
Citrus care
October is a good time to feed your citrus.
Sprinkle one teaspoon of Epsom salts around each pot, or more if in the ground. Water in well.
Don’t use too strong if your plants are in tubs or you may burn their shallow roots. If your trees are in the ground feed at the drip line.
Give a liquid feed such as seaweed and fish, all over all the foliage and soil, every two weeks.
In tubs I have two Tahitian limes, one cumquat and one Meyer lemon on my sunny verandah. I move them forward as the angle of the sun rises this time of the year, to get as much sun as possible. I have one pink grapefruit in a large pot in the greenhouse which I will plant out early December.
In the ground I have one Lisbon lemon which I have tended carefully for about nine years and which currently produces literally hundreds of lemons, continuously. Fingers crossed it keeps that up.
Cygnet Spring Garden Market
The Cygnet Spring Garden Market is on Sunday October 27, from 10am to 3pm, in the Cygnet Town Hall plus down the laneway, along the edge of the back carpark and behind the Porthole Café. We have more than 40 stalls. Look out for posters and flyers far and wide and read all the details on our Cygnet Garden Market Facebook and Instagram pages.
There will be five talks, upstairs in the Town Hall: Beekeeping; Making herbal oils and salves; Herbal teas for garden health; Using a Brix meter to measure soil and plant nutrient density; and our first Gardening Q&A, so bring your questions! Ed will be outside showing you how to sharpen your garden tools so bring them too.
This time our cooking competition is: Berry Bake (use up last season’s frozen berries and make a cake, muffins, slice or anything baked in the oven that can be cut and doesn’t need a bowl (for ease of judging).
The second competition is: Herbal Art and Craft, following our herbs theme for this market. Use your creativity to paint, draw, assemble, knit, sew etc anything to do with herbs.
Kate Flint

What’s in a name?
Did you have difficulty deciding on a name for your baby? We did as, both being teachers, we could always think of ‘that child’ with ‘that name’!
Following my family line back into the 1600s, a very different first name cropped up – father and son – Hierom son of Hierom b 1625. So pleased that name then disappeared from the family! Looking at its meaning it appears that the name was that of an Old Testament king of Tyre who helped David and Solomon plan and build the temple in Jerusalem. Obviously, finding biblical names can be a huge clue that the family might be ‘dissenters’ – nonconformists.
When you see the same first name reocurring, it could be due to the old naming patterns popular in UK and Ireland, which go like this: first son named after paternal grandfather; second son named after maternal grandfather; third son named after father; fourth son named after father’s eldest brother; fifth son named after mother’s eldest
brother. For girls the pattern is similar but following the maternal line first: first daughter named after maternal grandmother; second daughter named after paternal grandmother etc.
In those days of high infant mortality, babies were often named after earlier siblings who had died. All this can cause much confusion for the modern-day researcher. Finding a death record, unless it states the birth as well, or the age, can be so confusing, frustrating, and challenging if the family followed these naming patterns.
Looking again at Hierom on the 1625 original record, written in the church documents – and don’t believe that everyone back then had good writing – it was intriguing to see what other first names were in use: Susanna, Susan, Robert, Jane, Thomas, Elizabeth, Anthony, Ann, Samuel, Joyce, Simon, Edith, and two appearances each of Alice, John, Margaret and Richard. Not exactly the ‘old fashioned’ names expected, many still used today.
Have you ever asked how you got your own name? Hopefully there is still someone around to tell you. My mother passed on to us the history of our names. Mine came from the joining of Mary and Ann – both part of my two grandmother’s names. It should have been Marianne but, the story goes, that my father took one look at me and said the name was longer than I was, so he lopped the last two letters off! This has caused much confusion over the years, with the traditional English spelling being Marion.
Marian is a Polish man’s name! One famous (in the day) Marian was Marian Włodzimierz (1885-1973). He was a Polish major general, historian, social and political activist. From 1930 until 1939 he was director of the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków. In 1939 he took part in the defence of Lwów, Poland but escaped to London, and from 1939 he was Vice-Minister of War of the Polish Government in Exile, and then Minister of War of the Government in Exile. From 1945 until 1973 he was Professor at the Polish University in Exile.
Along with him when fleeing Poland came many servicemen including many pilots. The British, like the French before them, accepted as truth the German propaganda about Polish ineptitude in resisting the German-Soviet invasion and were doubtful about the flying skills of the Polish pilots. Flight Lieutenant John A Kent, who was posted to No. 303 (Polish) Fighter Squadron during the Battle of Britain, summed it up in his memoirs: “All I knew about the Polish Air Force was that it had only lasted about three days against the Luftwaffe, and I had no reason to suppose that they would shine any more brightly operating from England”. How wrong he was. Their skills were immortalised in the famous “Repeat, please” scene in the classic 1969 film, Battle of Britain.
A recent TV series We Were the Lucky Ones depicts that time and is well worth watching. It tells the true story of one Polish family. In 1939 the family is split apart, scattered from Poland to the Soviet Union, Italy and Brazil. Amazingly when it ends, many are still alive and search to find each other again. A mostly happy ending. The film is an adaptation of a book by Georgia Hunter, inspired by the story of her own family’s struggle to survive impossible odds.
Marian Hearn

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