Helping my dad in the Bothy gardens went through a number of phases.
At first we wanted to clear a path from the house to the gate in the wall at what looked like the bottom of the garden. Clearing and having bonfires is my idea of having had fun.
The next task was to restore the health of the very many fruit trees in the garden. Dad had a book all about pruning fruit trees, so it was a job to be taken seriously. And slowly over a couple of years fruit began to appear. Apples, pears, plums, peaches of all varieties one could imagine. Coxes orange pipin apples are the best I can remember.
In the old house there were fruit storage shelves so we could keep some varieties of apples and pears for many months.
But the the best crop from the garden, down by the stream were the Snowdrops. Each Year we were living in the Bothy we (my sisters and me) picked snowdrops, put them into neat bunches of about 50 flowers each and backed with two Ivy leaves and tied neatly with rafia. Dad (or Mum) packed them into boxes ready for transport to London market by train from Dorchester. When I closed my eyes at night after a day of Snowdropping, there they were...
Dad got a good price for the snowdrops too and paid me 1p per finished bunch.
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