Good old Uncle Horace

After the reappearance of the sun today, thought it time to try and catch up outdoors. On HM's orders, fixed some concrete grouting on slaps at the house entrance, sort of crazy paving. Then some planting of a few shrubs & grasses and deweeding.

Having prepared the ground on Tuesday evening, this evening set about transplanting a second late row of leek seedlings. The main leek crop is, after a slow start, doing well but as Angie is a fan of a very leek heavy Cottage Pie, I thought it best to have as much as possible.

Just hope we have a few more weeks of reasonable (for leeks) weather and have found them a nice sheltered spot where the sun could shine if it does us the favour of appearing.

In order to transplant leeks, I always use my Dad's woooden dibber which I inherited 2001. In fact it was given to him by his eldest sister at some time after her husband died in 1957. Horace Ruddock was born in 1884 and had burnt his initials "HR" in to the handle. Sadly he didn't Blip and so no record of when he did this. Safe to say though that the dibber is older than I am.

I never met Uncle Horace as he died when I was 3. I have a fairly detailed family tree manuscript but for the most part, the birth & death dates are not recorded. So for the lack of anything better to do this evening, I googled Horace and the first place I looked landed me on the family tree page of a Baker family.

A distant relative (Deresley Webb) of the current keeper of the homepage was a Norfolk boy as were my fathers family. Horace was the solicitor who dealt with the aforesaid's will after he died in Burma in WWII - my father was of almost the same age and also served in Burma - despite my grandmother getting a knock on the door and the message that her son was "missing presumed dead", he made it home. I suspect that Horace may have been more than "just" the solicitor and very probably a family friend. His wife, Jessie my aunt therefore, was born in the same district as Deresley. (A bit of family scandal: Jessie and Horace were cousins, his middle name being the same as his future wife's surname).

While checking out the very professional Baker family page, I saw that Jon is also  the OPC (Online Parish Clerk) for several Dorset villages. Had never heard of OPC's and on looking further saw that PurbeckDave's OPC lives in Western Australia!!! Wow, this internet thing is amazing. Also found out that Jon's daughter is doing the Bournemouth Half Marathon in October and raising funds for Crohn's Disease, something very close to my heart - so have visited her "Just Giving" site... sure she would love to have any spare Blipers money!

My father was the youngest of six children, Jessie the eldest. It was while on leave in the UK from Trinidad and staying with his big sister, that he met my mother in 1953 and got married within 6 weeks before returning to the West Indies, leaving her behind to gather up her belongings and follow several months later.

Horace and Jessie had offered my mother an au pair job so that she could learn English. Thanks Uncle Horace for the dibber and your matchmaking!

On the Blip, the dibber with the burnt on initials HR, now barely visible. I should have pencilled in the grooves where the burn marks have now faded. The dibber is on top of a 197o's copy of the RHS, Wisley's vegetable garden book, my father's bible when he returned to the UK at that time. The gardener in the top left hand photo is using exactly the same dibber - he stars throughout the book and in most photos looks to be my father's twin brother, quite extraordinary. I always wanted to meet him and later lived quite close to Wisley but never saw him on my infrequent visits.

(Fiday morning - have updated the photo. This morning saw the initials were much clearer - last night I had washed the tool and didn't think that the wet wood would hide them. This morning it was dry and initials visible)