Sowing season 2011

Now is time to start planning for this year's growth in the garden. I have a hoop tent where broccoli was planted, some spinach, carrots and other seeds sown at the end of January.
On the left is a picture or the Brussels sprouts seedling.
The photo in the middle below is of a broccoli seedling.
To the right below shows the emerging carrot seedlings, with their long cotyledon leaves, on still holding on to its seed cover.
The final picture at the bottom is of spinach seedlings, with their second stage leaves. The string appearing in the photos is the marker dividing the square metre bed.

 

 

Hannah preparing dough

Hannah preparing our weekly bread dough. At the back you can also see some of her recent artwork.

Vietnam, vacation

Here is the view of the shower area. I should have taken more images showing the stepping stone path leading across a bed of white gravel to here, with the twin glass was basins and rich wood in the wash area, but is did not, unfortunately.

Vietnam, vacation

The interior of our villa, showing the bed laid with welcoming heart formed from hibiscus flower petals gathered from plants growing around the villas. This was a delightful touch, adding a feeling of welcome, to the charm of the villa itself, with its thatched roof, white walls, Vietnamese red and black lacquer work.

Vietnam, vacation

Our destination, where the boat will dock and we will disembark, with a villa to the left, similar to the one we will occupy for our stay. We stayed at villa number 5, which as it was sitting on an elbow of the path leading to the villas, and we were reading our way through Winnie the Pooh on the holiday, we dubbed Pooh Corner by writing the name in the sand at the entrance.

Vietnam, vacation

Hannah

Hannah, hair blowing in the slipstream as the boat raced along to our island paradise...

Vietnam

Hannah on the boat going to the small island of Tam Hai, just off the coast of Vietnam. She is excited to be taking this trip, going to a beach villa, in the Domaine de Tam Hai which has only 12 villas. We are all excited, and joyed to see Hannah's face light up and hear her shout in her excitement. Everything is new, everything is different for her, and she was relishing all she saw, all she heard as the boat sped across the water. Soon the jetty and our first images of the villas will appear...

Vietnam, vacation

We spent out summer vacation in Vietnam. Left is a picture taken from a car traveling from Danang to Tan Hai island where we spent most of our time at the Domaine de Tam Hai relaxing. This was a 2 hour trip by car that was at times quite scary as the traffic on the two lane road appeared to obey no rules other than the biggest is the strongest is the one with priority. I will up some more photos over the coming days.

Elegy for Jane by Theodore Roethke

Elegy for Jane by Theodore Roethke

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,

A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.

Girl with Dragon Tattoo - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I have not written for a little time now, partly because the weather has not been good for photographing the garden recently, and progress on the greenhouse / potting shed has slowed by other garden tasks determined by the calendar as well as the weather, such as sowing seeds.
Recently I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which started as an amazing tour de force, of complex plotting with themes and sub-themes without the principle theme being immediately apparent. Eventually, the story settles down and the major theme, plot becomes more conventional with its simplification. I have avoided giving detail as that would spoil an intriguing aspect of the book for anyone beginning it. The story commences with a disgraced financial journalist and magazine owning partner in Sweden being confined to prison for libeling a major industrialist. The girl with the dragon tattoo is introduced as a misfit who obtains a job working for a security firm, who quickly recognise she has major investigative talents and assign her in that line of work, freelance. These two themes become entwined in a mystery of the death of a girl some 30 years earlier which the journalist is hired to uncover... The book is part of the Millennium Trilogy, written shortly before the death of its author Sven Larsson, I have the second volume, but have not yet commenced reading that one as I started reading another book while waiting for the next volume, The Girl who Played with Fire to be delivered in the post.
I picked up Gabriel Garcia Marquez's wonderful book Love in the Time of Cholera that I bought many years ago. I had thought I had read this books, as I read many of Marquez's books while reading a large number of Latin American fiction over a good many years earlier. The last book if his I read was The Melancholy Whore, the last one he has written that is published. But, shortly after beginning Love in the Time of Cholera I discovered that I had read only the first 40 or so pages, where the book mark lay. Why I never finished this, is lost to my memory; as not finishing a book is an anathema to me, even when the books is not enjoyable or turns out not to be so good as expected... I can only guess that some major work, reading or writing project prevented me finishing the book and I simply forgot to pick it up again or put it away during removal of home.
The book is beautifully written, a thoroughly modernist work, with a sense of hope and redemption at the end... I will write more on this book later, now other duties call me as I expected to write shorter comments than this...