A little front garden, bounded by a curved stone wallon the corner of a lonning.A little garden from where its custodians can seethe derelict farmhouse and know its history,the Solway Firth, blood orange sunsets.Where we buried a Border Collie one eveningin a travelling trunk, with grave goodsbefitting a Cumbrian king.A front garden alive with social butterflies,with song and buzz and bumble.A garden that tells you who its people are.*One day, someone might pave this little front garden overfor a motor car.We might find ourselves wandering in another garden,wondering how this one is faring.Remembering the year the wall belongedto the wee red stoat.All those summers we couldn’t resist burying our nosesin the magenta rose.Oh! that chap who couldn’t bearthat we let creeping buttercup creep.*A little front garden.A little garden.A front garden.A garden.Before We Leave with Bee Lilyjones and Friends is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beelilyjones.substack.com/subscribe

Ambition Takes FlightIn 1832, the year after William and Williamson’s twenty-one-year lease of the village colliery began, Williamson made news for something far removed from coal: a balloon ascent over Whitehaven. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beelilyjones.substack.com/subscribe

Lonning Cottage. In the west end of a Cumbrian village, on the south side of a river valley within a rolling descent. Rolling because glacial action created gentle, undulating terrain, from the English Lake District fells to the Solway's coastal plain (I can see the sea and Scotland's hills beyond without leaving my chair.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beelilyjones.substack.com/subscribe

I wrote this essay for a community archive centred around this village in rural Cumbria where I live with my husband. The community archive belongs to the people of this village. But many stories in it are also about how we look after the places and people who shaped a place, not for nostalgia’s sake, but as a radical act of care. In a time when so much feels untethered, returning to the lives that came before us is a kind of resistance. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beelilyjones.substack.com/subscribe