By Miriam Erasmus 
Growing up in Sussex in the 1950s was indeed a Pastoral experience.
There were open spaces, meadows, woodlands to explore all year round – fearlessly.
The Observers Book of Wild Flowers was our go to, and as we roamed the garden, road verges and other open spaces, we could find most of the flowers in there.
Children’s rhymes and songs were full of the joys of Spring.
“Lavenders Blue’
“Roses are red, violets are blue …”
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary” etc.
Poets immortalised them –
Wordsworth “Daffodils.”
Browning “Home thoughts from abroad.”
I remember my mother singing round the house ….
Click on the song name to hear it ….
Buttercups and daisies and bluebells
“Buttercups’n Daisies, Daisies and Bluebells,
Some for my darling’n some for me.
Sweet happy hours’n beautiful flowers,
Buttercups’n Daisies’n Bluebells.
Buttercups’n Daisies’n Bluebells.”
Folk songs are full of Buttercups and Daisies and Bluebells
‘Early one morning.’
Gay is the garden and fresh are the daisies
I’ve culled from the garden to bind on thy brow.
‘Buttercup Joe.’ – a good ole Sussex song.
I can guide a plough and milk a cow
Or I can reap or sow.
I’m fresh as the daisy in the field
And they call I Buttercup Joe.
‘Strawberry Fair’
As I was going to Strawberry Fair
Singing, singing, Buttercups and Daisies
‘Mary, my Scots Bluebell.’
I love a lassie, a bonnie bonnie lassie.
She’s as sweet as the heather in the dell.
She’s as sweet as the heather, the bonny hieland heather.
Mary, my Scots Bluebell.
Imagine my delight when I arrive in England and the garden is redolent with these beauties, and all these lovely songs and poems come into my head. Long may they bloom.
