Wassail!

To vine and bush WASSAIL!

To leaf and see ALL HAIL!

With glass held high in solemn oath

We pray for health and all new growth

Wassail, Wassail, Wassail, Wassail

We drink to you WASSAIL!

Late this afternoon I gathered together half a dozen wooden spoons, a couple of bottles of cider, made some toast and printed out the words of this simple Wassail song.  The next part of my mission was to get everyone together to wassail the apple trees in the garden.

Surprisingly, everyone was happy to join in, especially this young lady.  Despite not feeling great for she has some winter bug, we'll call it a cold and be done, she was game enough to don the floral hat and lead us all in our walk around the apple trees.

Harry poured good quantities of cider around each tree and their mama carefully lodged a cider-soaked slice of toast in the branches as the rest of us walked around hitting the trees with the wooden spoons and chanting the words above.  The idea is to beat out the bad spirits and awaken the apple tree to promote an abundant crop later this year.

Were I an apple tree I fear that such treatment would make me rather grumpy and much less likely to produce anything, but we went with the tradition.

I am still having trouble commenting.  I will get there in the end.  Meanwhile:

Sue - I was very thankful that we didn't have problems with the septic tank.  I don't blame you for wanting to leave that behind.

Joanne - That conjures a lovely picture of little five year old you in your very first library.

Billy - Thanks for that title, I will watch out for it next time I log on to order some books.

Linda - The mobile library got smaller and smaller and eventually they offered us the service we currently use whereby we order our selection of books online and they are dropped off at our home once a month.  Not quite the same as the pleasure of browsing among the books but it works wonderfully well and it helps to keep the service going.