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🗓️ 3 July 2025
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Juliana Horatia Ewing (August 3, 1841 – May 13, 1885) was an English writer of children's stories. Her writings display a sympathetic insight into children's lives, an admiration for things military, and a strong religious faith.
Known as Julie, she was the second of ten children of the Rev. Alfred Gatty, Vicar of Ecclesfield in Yorkshire, and Margaret Gatty, who was herself a children's author. Their children were educated mainly by their mother, but Julie was often the driving force behind their various activities: drama, botany and so on. Later she was responsible for setting up a village library in Ecclesfield, and helped out in the parish with her three sisters. Early stories of hers appeared in Charlotte Mary Yonge's magazine The Monthly Packet.
On 1 June 1867, Julie married Major Alexander Ewing(1830–1895) of the Army Pay Corps. A musician, composer and translator, he was also a keen churchgoer and shared his wife's interest in literature. Within a week of their marriage, the Ewings left England for Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, where he had received a new posting. They remained there for two years, before returning to England in 1869 and spending eight years in the army town of Aldershot. Although her husband was sent overseas again, to Malta in 1879 and Sri Lanka in 1881, Ewing's poor health precluded her from accompanying him.
On her husband's return in 1883, the Ewings moved to Trull, Somerset, and then in 1885 to Bath, in the hopes that the change of air would do her good. However, her health continued to decline. After two operations, she died in Bath on 13 May 1885. She was given a military funeral at Trull three days later.
Julie's sister Horatia Katharine Frances Gatty (1846–1945) published a memorial of her life and works, which includes a publication history of her stories. A later selection includes some of Julie's letters and drawings about Canada. A biography of her by Gillian Avery appeared in 1961.
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0:00.0 | Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. |
0:08.4 | I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, July 2, 2025. |
0:14.2 | Today's poem is by Juliana Horatia Ewing, and I'm taking it directly out of the Oxford book of children's verse, that beloved blue |
0:23.7 | cover with the gold lettering that deserves a place of honor in any home library. The poem is called |
0:30.0 | Garden lore, and I offer it up today as a tribute to all of the parents who have had children |
0:35.5 | out of school and at home for a month or more now |
0:38.4 | and are maybe beginning to think that these kids need to start earning their keep. |
0:43.9 | Here is the poem, Garden lore. |
0:48.9 | Every child who has gardening tools should learn by heart these gardening rules. |
0:56.5 | He who owns a gardening spade should be able to dig the depth of its blade. He who owns a gardening rake should know what to leave |
1:02.9 | and what to take. He who owns a gardening hoe must be sure how he means his strokes to go. |
1:10.1 | But he who owns a gardening fork may make it do all the other tools work. |
1:16.3 | Though to shift or to pot or to annex what you can |
1:19.5 | the trowls the tool for child, woman, or man, |
1:23.2 | twas the bird that sits in the meddler tree |
1:25.4 | who sang these gardening saws to me. |
1:32.5 | There you have it, short and sweet. This has been The Daily Poem. Thanks so much for listening. |
1:37.5 | We'll be back tomorrow with one more gardening gem from Juliana Horatio Ewing. So join us then. |
1:46.2 | In the meantime, you can find our past episodes at daily poempodpod.substack.com, where you can also become a subscriber or join the |
1:52.3 | conversation about any of the poems you've heard on the show. For all of us at Goldberry |
1:56.7 | studios, I'm Sean Johnson, wishing you happy reading. |
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