Photo by Stephanie Musk (Wikipedia)
No season to hedge
Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie by Thomas Tusser www.gutenberg.org
get béetle and wedge
Cleaue logs now all
for kitchen and hall.
A beetle is a hammer and a wedge is used to split logs, so the first thing Tusser enjoins his readers to do for December is to stop digging and hedging and, instead, cut firewood.
He also suggests (if I read the Tudor writing correctly):
Sharpen dull working tooles
Leaue off tittle tattle and looke to thy cattle
and suggests:
Howse cow that is old, while winter doth hold.
But don’t forget:
Out once in a day, to drinke and to play.
He suggests covering strawberries with straw to protect them; Making sure your dried cod and ling don’t rot. Store the products of the Orchard in the attic. Bleed the horse and help the bees with ‘liquor and honie’.
‘Thus endeth Decembers abstract, agréeing with Decembers husbandrie.’
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And.. ‘don’t forget to drink or to play…’
Renaissance wisdom!
Makes me think of Montaigne… ‘Mieux vaut une tête bien faite plutôt qu’une tête bien pleine” …
Balance between the mind and the body…
Winter, to me, evokes Breughel paintings, villages, countryside and people busy on their multiple activities, in harmony with Nature…