Writ in stone

All around me just now there’s a frenzy of clanging and growling machinery cutting meadows, turning hay, baling and bringing in.  While the sun shines.  It is a good feeling to reap and stock the rewards of sowing and nurturing crops – I know from my own vegetable plot.

Recently I came across this charming stone carving of a gardener doing just that, picking his carrots, and – is it a turnip, or beetroot?  And is it a marrow on his head that he’s pointing to – or is he just raising his cap to a bumper harvest?

The little oval relief stone carving is actually from a gravestone in a village in Holland, dated 1609, and is shared from The Carrot Museum.  I was reading about early illuminated manuscripts and ways of hand recording such as inscriptions that are chiselled on a hard material, or scratched, as with a knife point in plaster, or with a stylus on a wax tablet, which is the way the Romans made notes – and found fascinating records of early gardeners growing vegetables, herbs and cultivating wild plants.

What a wonderful way to be remembered –  with spade,  happily gardening and harvesting own grown vegetables.