Monday, March 26

In the beginning.....

This is a black & white flash-back.
When we bought our first little cottage, our SB was 6 months old.
We bought the house from an old French couple, who were getting frail, & wanted to join their only son, who lived in South Africa with his family.

They had made the little cottage quite cosy, & had done a lot of work on the backyard, planting several varieties of grapes, & the husband made their own wine from the grapes.

Ha had planted apple trees along the back boundary fence, & had espaliered them so neatly. There were gooseberry bushes, which bore huge crops in the summer. There was also a big patch of Rhubarb, which I detest!

The lawn was lovely & green & a generous size. It was an ideal house & garden for young children, as there was a gate & good fences to the back yard.

This is a pic of Meggie with SB when he was about 7 months old. Meggie was very thin, & looking at her knees, it is a wonder that they didnt cut her pants!!

And here is GOM about to set off for work, with SB on his knee, laughing.

Here is GOM harvesting the potato crop his mother & father had come & plantd for us- against our wishes. SB is helping his father, as small boys do Of course he was considerably older than the 7 months of the first pics. And he had a little sister too.

And here is Meggie picking some grapes with kinder. DJ was a real little blondie then!
Alterations to this pic were done by SB recently. It is his skill, & he made a cover for an album using this pic.

And here is GOM with SB lying on the lawn with the dratted rhubarb in the background. I used to give it away by the car load.

And here is GOM, who was really Happy Young Husband, & Father, in those days.

We lived in our first little cottage until SB was almost 5. We had many happy times there, & I think the blessings the lovely French couple said they gave us, had an effect. We loved the grapes, & the different varieties all had their own flavour. We never made wine!
The last time we visited Christchurch we went to see if the cottage was still there, & it was! We were surprised, to think it was still standing as the land was quite considerable, & most of the surrounding houses had been pulled down, to make way for more substantial mansions.



15 comments:

Carole Burant said...

Hi Meggie:-) Thank you so much for coming to visit my blog and leaving a comment...I love "meeting" new people!! I wish I could say I made that bunny you asked about but I didn't! lol It was actually a gift from one of my blogging friends...she had bought a few and sent one of them to me:-) It's so adorable isn't it!! I so enjoyed reading your post...love hearing about old memories and seeing old pictures. I can well imagine how surprised you were to see the cottage still standing!! Please come visit me again:-) xox

Paula said...

What lovely memories Meggie!

Sigh.

I had knees like that once...

Paula said...

Um...that sounded better in my head. The memories I meant were lovely was of your family and first cottage, not your knees.:)

molly said...

Lovely memories. Its scary how fast we got from there to here, don't you think?Did you call gooseberries "goosegogs" as we did?

nutmeg said...

What a great post. I really enjoy looking through family albums - especially with black and white pictures and especially if the people in it are named - unlike many pictures in my parent's albums who have been "forgotten"! But I think about that occasionally - someday in the future someone will look at a picture with me in it and say who is that? A bit strange and sad.

meggie said...

Hi Pea, loved visiting, you have a lot of nice nic nacs in your pics.
Paula, I guessed you didnt mean the razor edged knees!
Molly, We never called them that in our family, but GOM's family all called them goosegogs!
Nutmeg, our Mother had albums with lots of lovely old pics, & we tried to get names for everyone before she died, but some got away. It is odd to think of 'in 100 years'. We have some really old pics taken over 100 years ago, & they are better quality than a lot of todays pics.

Anonymous said...

Meggie ,
You are right , many of the older black and white ' snaps' are of better quality than many of the newer ones -- I fear quite a few of the names are going to be missed and lost as although we have tried to get them all some have slipped our older rellies memories now too & of course some they never knew anyway . A shame , but a reminder to us to name all in our photos on the backs isn't it ?

LBA said...

Hi Meggie.

I hope I am not the only one that gets all bogged down and confused in your abbreviations. I know GOM .. and *assume ( SB means Second-born ?

Anyway, i've been meaning to let you know for a while, but sometimes all the abbrev's confuse me.

Maybe it's me.

As for the pics, well, you know I love pics ( and hate rhubarb too ! ), and gee, your knees DO look sharp - ouch ! :)

Also, i've heard that there are grapes for growing for EATING, and those for growing wine ..

So if yours tasted ok... then the french couple probably had AWFUL wine :))

lazy cow said...

Such lovely memories, you all look so happy.I love old b&W family photos too (I almost wish any photos taken of me now were b&W so much more flattering!)

Joyce said...

Loved your pictures and the stories. We all regert our once slim figures I'm sure! I'd love to have a bit of that rhubarb for a pie right now.

Lois R. said...

What sweet old black & white memories. And what a handsome couple Meggie and GOM are!

Mrs. Goodneedle said...

A happy walk down memory lane... thanks for reminding me of our first home and my children as babies and my 22" waistline in those good old days!

meggie said...

Hi, thanks for the nice comments.
About the abbreviations, I do have some listed in my profile at the side, but see what you mean, H & B.
SB is Son B, his name begins with B. Perhaps I should so a key at the end of each post?
Sometimes I forget that 'Blog friends'are also 'strangers' in the sense that they dont 'know'us except in blogosphere!

Stomper Girl said...

Love the photos Meggie. So nice to see you. Gosh, don't you have curly hair?

meggie said...

SG, no one has straighter hair than me!! It was the fashion then to have 'perms' -hence the curls! You made me laugh.