A Useful Refreshening
Aug. 4th, 2011 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_poppyI'm having a lovely time this week in the beautiful Cotswold village of Burford. This morning I followed the gentle curves of the riverbank right out of town and through the fields up to what passes for a high pasture in this district. The cows and sheep were quite gracious about my intruding on their breakfast, and they seemed entirely unfussed, though also entirely unimpressed, when I recited to them the Great List of Prime Preservatives.
I'm here, naturally, on a course of study at the Institute of the Golden Dragon. This week's topic is the wholly practical matter of extending the shelf life of medicinal preparations; as our leader, the venerable Master Pinchworthy, says at the start of each session, it's always useful to refresh one's knowledge of such things.
My enjoyment this week of Burford's quiet charms makes a notable contrast with the invigorating experience Professor Sprout and I shared last week in the experimental gardeners' haven at Alnwick where I was studying the healthful uses of poisonous plant materials and Pomona was learning apparently fascinating things about advances in fertilisers and magical mulching techniques. To each her own, obviously!
The gardens at Alnwick are some of my very favourite, laid out as they were, originally, by Capability Brown for the first Duke in the middle of the 18th century. The roster of illustrious master gardeners who have served there includes the very top names in the history of Magical Horticulture, and they each in turn made improvements and introduced new specialty sections to the cultivation scheme. Bertram Stafford dedicated his practice to recovering and preserving ancient domestic strains; Anselmo d'Este it was who began the introduction of exotics to the gardens; and Angelica Baptista created what remains the realm's most vigorous magical hybridisation programme.
Through all the passing years, Alnwick's gardens have never lost their importance to healers and herbologists, despite there having been a dark period of nearly a hundred years in which their wizarding heritage became secondary to the family and in which they were constrained to open the castle to Muggle visitors merely to afford its upkeep.
To their credit, the current generation are doing their utmost to erase the damage caused by those years of neglect. The statute of secrecy cost us much more than was admitted at the time--especially in the last years of its sway, but it is one of the joys of the present age that we may reclaim the great resources of our realm. And it was shortly after the start of our great new era that the Poison Garden was created at Alnwick by Hepzibah Culpeper, one of Professor Sprout's brightest and most fondly remembered students. I must say that I learned as much last week as in any course I've attended in the past decade. Next summer I shall do my utmost to induce Professor Slughorn to join me there for one or two of her sessions; I know he would find it every bit as stimulating as I did.
I'm here, naturally, on a course of study at the Institute of the Golden Dragon. This week's topic is the wholly practical matter of extending the shelf life of medicinal preparations; as our leader, the venerable Master Pinchworthy, says at the start of each session, it's always useful to refresh one's knowledge of such things.
My enjoyment this week of Burford's quiet charms makes a notable contrast with the invigorating experience Professor Sprout and I shared last week in the experimental gardeners' haven at Alnwick where I was studying the healthful uses of poisonous plant materials and Pomona was learning apparently fascinating things about advances in fertilisers and magical mulching techniques. To each her own, obviously!
The gardens at Alnwick are some of my very favourite, laid out as they were, originally, by Capability Brown for the first Duke in the middle of the 18th century. The roster of illustrious master gardeners who have served there includes the very top names in the history of Magical Horticulture, and they each in turn made improvements and introduced new specialty sections to the cultivation scheme. Bertram Stafford dedicated his practice to recovering and preserving ancient domestic strains; Anselmo d'Este it was who began the introduction of exotics to the gardens; and Angelica Baptista created what remains the realm's most vigorous magical hybridisation programme.
Through all the passing years, Alnwick's gardens have never lost their importance to healers and herbologists, despite there having been a dark period of nearly a hundred years in which their wizarding heritage became secondary to the family and in which they were constrained to open the castle to Muggle visitors merely to afford its upkeep.
To their credit, the current generation are doing their utmost to erase the damage caused by those years of neglect. The statute of secrecy cost us much more than was admitted at the time--especially in the last years of its sway, but it is one of the joys of the present age that we may reclaim the great resources of our realm. And it was shortly after the start of our great new era that the Poison Garden was created at Alnwick by Hepzibah Culpeper, one of Professor Sprout's brightest and most fondly remembered students. I must say that I learned as much last week as in any course I've attended in the past decade. Next summer I shall do my utmost to induce Professor Slughorn to join me there for one or two of her sessions; I know he would find it every bit as stimulating as I did.
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Date: 2011-08-04 08:57 pm (UTC)The best I can say of this week is that the Cotswolds are beautiful and that the stout served at the Asp in Aspic is full-bodied.
I do miss the lively conversation and imaginative menus we enjoyed last week as guests at Alnwick castle. While not, perhaps, the world's most notable wizard, Percy has a keen mind and an interesting perspective on the events of our time. We did not indulge in any controversial talk, mind you--it was all more avant garde and idiosyncratic than political, in any case.
But now I'm here and having to take stiff invigorating potions each morning to keep me awake and looking duly stimulated through the lectures. Pomona, of course, has escaped back to her greenhouses and abandoned me to my dreary fate. Thank all the stars that tomorrow afternoon and freedom are now in sight.