St John's Apple Festival

This year St John's members with apple trees enjoyed a bumper harvest, so for the last two Sundays the Green Ginger Group (which runs Earth be Glad) have organised a stall to sell them to the rest of the congregation, raising over £50 for the Environment Agenda postcard campaign.

If you have bought more than you can eat, or picked out some sharp ones, here is an idea for using them from St John's history.

One of the very first mothers to have their child baptised into our congregation, in 1797 when we met in Charlotte Chapel in Rose Street, was Elizabeth Nourse, daughter of a gardener from Hawick. When her husband died in 1805 she not only continued their New Town catering business but expanded it, establishing a school of cookery. In 1809 she published a recipe book, assuring her customers,

there is not one Receipt in the whole book, but such as she is daily practicing; therefore any person the least conversant in Cookery cannot fail to succeed by following her directions.

Her practical experience gave her collection the edge over the many recipe collections being published by "ladies", and Mrs Nourse's Modern Practical Cookery ran to numerous Edinburgh editions, achieved UK distribution, was still in print in 1831, and in 1845 became one of the first recipe books to be published in Canada. It is thanks to Canadian scholars that her collection is now easily accessible digitally.

There are modern Scottish classics ("Macaroni Pie": hers has chicken rather than cheese), New Town canapé staples ("Vol au Vent"), Empire influences ("Curry Soup") and Bakeoff-style showstoppers ("A Custard in Imitation of a Hedgehog", with red and green spikes). This is all the more remarkable when you remember that only twenty years earlier, the height of culinary excellence for the kind of fashionable classes who attended St John's was cock-a-leekie soup and sheep's heid washed down with too much smuggled French claret.

Modern Practical Cookery deserves the attention of a better cook than me, but one recipe I did try out, and liked so much I've made it again and again, was "Apple Pudding". It's a kind of spicy stewed apple custard. It's rich and warming, delicious hot or cold, hugely indulgent but counts as one of your five a day, and very easy to make.

Mrs Nourse's original is not easy to follow: modern eggs, lemons and apples are different sizes, and we don't measure in gills. So after several experiments, here is my modern version:

• 12 St John's apples (or 4 full size Bramleys)
• 40g butter
• 75g sugar
• Lemon
• Cinnamon
• 3 eggs, separated (I've never been enough of a pig to try it with anywhere near eight!)
• 50ml cream

Peel, pare and stew apples in a pan. Beat them well, then stir in butter, sugar, zest and half the juice of the lemon, cinnamon to taste, and beaten egg yolks. Stir in cream. Scatter some sugar on top and bake in a moderate oven for about 1/2 an hour (oven temp and time not at all crucial).

I usually left quite a lot of white in with the yolk to get the eggy thickness without using too many. But you could also make the whites into meringue and spread it on top, cf. Apple Snow...

Do let me know in the comments if you make it, or if you revive any others of Mrs Nourse Regency Edinburgh recipes. Despite their global influences they are great for using local, seasonal produce: Mrs Nourse lived in a world with no rail freight or refrigerators.

You can read more about Mrs Nourse on the St John's Archive website.

 

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Wild-life Garden Blog

The notes from an Edinburgh wild-life garden featured on this site now have their own blog, mywildgardenyear.blogspot.co.uk.

They are written by George Harris, chair of the St John's Green Ginger Group which runs Earth be Glad as well as working to reduce St John's environmental footprint in practical ways.

George updates the blog most weeks, so follow him on twitter @historylecturer to be sure not to miss any posts.

Environment Agenda: Edinburgh Candidates

Our Environment Agenda campaign asks candidates for the Scottish Parliament elections in 2016 to make an environmental issue one of their headline manifesto pledges. You can read more about it here. 

You can come into St John's Church, Princes Street, Edinburgh and write postcards to party leaders and your local candidates for us to deliver. You can also tweet the image below to them, or post it on their facebook page.

These are the party leaders:

Ruth Davidson (Con) @ruthdavidsonmsp;  facebook page.
Patrick Harvie (Grn) @patrickharvie;  facebook page.
Kezia Dugdale (Lab) @kdugdalemsp;  facebook page.
Willie Rennie (Lib) @willie_rennie;  facebook page.
Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) @NicolaSturgeon;  facebook page.

Here is a list of Holyrood candidates announced so far in Edinburgh constituencies. If you have lists of candidates in the rest of Scotland, please let us know and we will add them.

Edinburgh Western
Sandy Batho (Con) @sandybatho.
Cat Headley (Lab) @cat_headley;  facebook page.
Toni Guigliano (SNP) @ToniGiugliano;  facebook page.

Edinburgh Eastern
Nick Cook (Con) @CllrNickCook; .
Kezia Dugdale (Lab) @kdugdalemsp;  facebook page.
Ash Denham (SNP) @ashtenRD;  facebook page.

Edinburgh Northern & Leith
Iain McGill (Con) @IainMcGill;  facebook page.
Lesley Hinds (Lab) @LAHinds;  facebook page.
Ben MacPherson (SNP) @BenMacpherson;  facebook page.

Edinburgh Pentlands 
Gordon Lindhurst (Con) facebook page.
Blair Heary (Lab) @BlairHeary.
Gordon Macdonald (SNP) @re_electgordon;  facebook page.

Edinburgh Central
Ruth Davidson (Con) @ruthdavidsonmsp;  facebook page.
Sarah Boyack (Lab) @SarahBoyackMSP;  facebook page.
Alison Dickie (SNP) @AlisonDickie19;  facebook page.

Edinburgh Southern
Miles Briggs (Con) facebook page.
Daniel Johnson (Lab) @D_G_Johnson.
Jim Eadie (SNP) @JimEadie_msp;  facebook page.


The Liberal Democrat and Green Parties have not yet announced complete candidate lists, so we suggest you contact their top Lothians list candidates:

Alison Johnson (Grn) @AlisonJohnstone;  facebook page.
Alex Cole-Hamilton (Lib) @Alex4Central.

A Forest of Hope for Paris 2015

In Paris in December 2015, world leaders will gather to seek a global agreement on how to reduce carbon emissions and reduce the risk of climate change to safe levels.

During September, members and visitors to St John's Church, Princes Street, Edinburgh, are writing prayers and messages of encouragement and hope on paper leaves, to bring a forest of hope into leaf inside our beautiful and historic church.

By 21 September we had over 100 leaves, and you are still welcome to go in and write one to add to the artwork.

This is one of many actions around the world raising awareness and putting pressure on governments to reach a strong climate deal. We would encourage you to find out about other events over the next three months and participate.

In particular, we would encourage you to participate in Scotland's Climate March, which begins at 12 noon on 28 November in the Meadows, and is organised by Stop Climate Chaos Scotland.

Environment Agenda: Holyrood 2016

Today at its annual green fair, St John's Church, Edinburgh, launched Environment Agenda. This campaign asks candidates in the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections to make an environmental issue one of their headline manifesto pledges.

The aim is to get debates about how to tackle climate change and biodiversity decline onto the political agenda.

Sarah Boyack MSP, Shadow Spokesperson for Environmental Justice, wrote in support of the campaign,

"I think people underestimate the impact of writing to their political representatives. If I get around 10 emails I know there's interest in an issue and I'll check it out. If there are hundreds I'll know it's a big campaign and I'll make sure my party takes note. With the upcoming Paris Talks in December Eco-Congregations can really have an impact when they mobilise their members."

At the launch event, congregation members and visitors wrote over 60 postcards to party leaders and their local candidates.
We hope this campaign will be taken up more widely by Eco-Congregations, Scottish environmental groups, and individuals.

To get involved you can:

1. Come in to St John's Church, Princes Street, Edinburgh (open all day) and write postcards.
2. Post the image below to candidates' facebook pages and twitter feeds (#EnvironmentAgenda). Links to party leaders and Edinburgh constituency candidates are given here.
3. If you would like to distribute postcards at an event or to your members, contact eleanormharris@gmail.com.

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The Wild-life Garden Chapter 7: July 9th

My original intention was to post something about the wild garden once a week. But life is not regular like that. July, in the country, is hay-making time, and if my patches of long grass are ever to behave like traditional meadows they need to be cut. Since my meadow is in two halves, divided by a mown path, I tend to cut the east-facing patch early in July and the west-facing patch late. One reason for this is because the orchid grows in the west-facing long grass, and I would not want to cut it till it has flowered and set seed. The grass is certainly ready to cut.

One reason for the annual mow is to encourage those plants that like that sort of treatment. It prevents them being overwhelmed by nettles and docks and alkanet, plants of the uncut verges. Also, by cutting the grass and removing it to the compost heap the fertility of the area is reduced. The idea is that the grass does not grow so vigorously as to swamp everything else. In a farmer’s hay-meadow the cut sward is left for a few days in the sun to dry out. In the wild garden it is left so that seeds of buttercups and so on can fall off and down to earth, and mini-beasts can crawl away to some other shelter.

I also do start other cutting back now that the nesting should be over. Possibly some wild life would like it if I left the hedges and verges uncut; think what a rich habitat old neglected gardens can be. But this is a medium-sized town garden, meant to be nice to look at and to sit in. Also I try to have a variety of habitats, some cut down in one season, some in another; some left for winter clearance, some left till growth restarts in spring, and some mown or clipped in high summer. I take heart from the fact that edge-of-woodland, with a mixture of light and shade, of short and of long vegetation, is a particularly rich habitat.  

If you are a serious student of the wild life in your garden the unmissable book is “Wildlife of a Garden: A Thirty-year Study” by Jennifer Owen. The author is an academic ecologist who has been able to bring great expertise to the study of her Leicestershire garden. When I say that she has identified in her garden 94 species of hoverflies, 62 species of wasps and 533 species of ichneumons, you will see that she has shown the rest of us, who think we are doing well if we identify two or three species, how rich a garden can be. One of Owen’s conclusions is that “insect numbers declined during the 30-year period 1972-2001; and the likely explanation is the change in agricultural habitats. So the more we town gardeners try to foster invertebrates the better.

At my “two or three” amateur level I find that cutting-time is often when I start noticing things. When weeding my tiny veg patch I came across some snails mating, quite oblivious of me and my fork. Since the garden is full of vegetation I do wish the snails would not pick out my runner beans and my one special dahlia as favourite food. But they seem to have few predators. Slugs are relatively harmless, kept in check I am sure by birds and frogs and newts. I was pleased to see a newt in the pond yesterday. The neighbouring grey squirrel has just learned to dismantle and empty the fat-ball feeder, but I am devising a scheme to get the better of it.

I was even more pleased when a ringlet butterfly spent a long time drifting around the long grass. I was less pleased to get itchy bites from minute creatures, but who am I to pick and choose. The swifts are busy feeding their young, and I guess they each need hundreds of flying insects a day.

Two species of fern have turned up in the garden, neither of them rare, but both of them welcome. One is Polystichum aculeatum, Hard shield fern. The other is Phyllitis scolopendrium, Hartstongue fern. The shield fern makes a formidable growth once established, and I don’t think I shall let any more plants get set.

My father-in-law gave me an Arum maculatum, Lords-and-Ladies from the old ditch behind his house. It has done really well in the dark shade behind the hedge, with more spikes every year.

The flowers of late summer are starting to come on fast, so I doubt if you will have to wait a week for the next chapter.

The Wild-life Garden Chapter 6: July 5th

We returned home after a few days away. Naturally one of my first actions was to look around the garden, and I was rewarded. In the little baby-bath pond three nearly-frogs were crowded at the point where there is a little ramp out onto the lawn. They had long tails, but four good legs. They are yellow and brown, not black. Presumably they are waiting till that moment when their lungs take in air, not water, and they will crawl out. There is no shortage of places for them to find concealment. In the main pond there is no sign of tadpoles, and there is no point hunting for frogs in all the long vegetation around. Occasionally in previous years I have stumbled across a group huddled together under some log, or seen a bold youngster heading across the moss. We shall see. 

While we were away I read a book I was given for my last birthday. It is the perfect book to refer to in this blog: “The Private Life of an English Field: Meadowland” by John Lewis-Stempel. He owns a small farm in Herefordshire and not only manages his meadows in a traditional way, he also is a dedicated and knowledgeable observer of the wild life.

Recommended book

In the year that is chronicled in the book his cutter breaks on a stone, so he is forced to cut the hay with a scythe. This was in July, and reminds me that I must get on with cutting my long grass soon. However, there is no rush, especially as the orchid has reappeared. I think it is a poorish (but much loved) specimen of Dactylorhiza, either maculata (Heath Spotted) or fuchsii (Common Spotted) – or maybe a hybrid. It is another welcome plant that just turned up. I wonder how many are lurking in mown lawns out there.

The orchid in our long grass

The Rosa rubiginosa, Sweetbriar, has blossomed more in the last week. So has the Lonicera periclymenum, Honeysuckle. The blossoms on the Crataegus monogyna, Hawthorn and the Sorbus aucuparia, Rowan are well over, but there is a promise of berries to come. There is also all sorts of promise of interesting flowers still to come.

The Sweetbriar today

I am seeing more and more bees and hoverflies. I must try and do a more detailed study. One flower has come out in time to give them a feast. That is Heracleum sphondylium, Hogweed. It has an aggressive alien relative, Giant Hogweed, which can irritate the skin quite severely. But this is a harmless umbellifer, much loved by insects. It is generally regarded as a weed by gardeners, and I do remove many plants. But a few of these fine plants where I want them add stature to any patch of wild vegetation.

Hogweed

Another so-called weed of which I only leave a few to flourish is Rumex obtusifolius. Broad-leaved Dock.

Dock

With so many nettles around it is useful to have a few dock-leaves to rub on any stings. The leaves really do work. More to the point the flowers and seeds, and overall structure, are very fine. If they were less common they would, I am sure, be treasured.