Sleepy hollow...

 The decay of the grape vine, the leaves are losing their chlorophyll, as it is a precious substance reabsorbed into the plant, and the leaves develop patterns of decay, pixels of decay.
The vines will be pruned back, and the plants will regrow in the spring. 

 Hannah decorating our Xmas tree. It is 2 metres tall, and rooted in a pot. After Xmas the tree will be put into the garden where it will stay until next Xmas or the one after that. Then it will be brought into the house, decorated again, and returned to the garden. There is nothing like having a real tree in the house, instead of a plastic one. The real tree has fragrance, charm and is alive...

Serpent Squash

It has been raining constantly, almost with a day of break since the middle of May. A couple of weeks ago, a weekend break and I could do some garden work. Last weekend I spotted these two serpent squash hanging from the trellis. They were not there last Sunday, five days before and now they are over a meter in length and growing!

Ode to a Lemon, Neruda

As we anticipate our lemon tree blooming, wondering if it will set fruit this year or not here is a poem to the lemon tree by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. It is a wonderfully organic, sensuous poem. Every year for the past 4 years or more the tree has blossomed, but the fruit drops without setting, at best. This year we live in hope...

Ode to a Lemon
Pablo Neruda

Out of lemon flowers

loosed

on the moonlight, love's

lashed and insatiable

essences,

sodden with fragrance,

the lemon tree's yellow

emerges,

the lemons

move down

from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!

the harbors are big with it-

bazaars

for the light and the

barbarous gold.

We open

the halves

of a miracle,

and a clotting of acids

brims

into the starry

divisions:

creation's

original juices,

irreducible, changeless,

alive:

so the freshness lives on

in a lemon,

in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,

the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon

the knife

leaves a little cathedral:

alcoves unguessed by the eye

that open acidulous glass

to the light; topazes

riding the droplets,

altars,

aromatic facades.

So, while the hand

holds the cut of the lemon,

half a world

on a trencher,

the gold of the universe

wells

to your touch:

a cup yellow

with miracles,

a breast and a nipple

perfuming the earth;

a flashing made fruitage,

the diminutive fire of a planet.

Sowing season 2011

 Here are the seedlings one week on from the pictures below. First, ate the sunflowers, and also one or two globe artichoke, violet. Second,are the emerging barlotto seedlings. Third, are dwarf French beans. Fourth is labelled Goldtuft, which is a variety of safflower. The next is Zinnia, Giant Scarlet, followed by field poppy, with Cavolo Nero in the pots behind. So far germination has been good to very good. The tomato seedlings have grown greatly and need to be potted on. I cannot do that until Saturday.

Feburary Poem

Here is an occasional poem, written in 1916 by Irish poet William Butler Yeats, almost 100 years ago today. It is a simple poem of simple and rich pleasures and as with many of Yeats' poem it is marked by melancholia, mixed with joy. The ephemera of life to be lived in love and with pleasures. Wine is certainly a pleasure, as is being with, seeing the ones you love most in the world. Social beings have social pleasures, drinking wine together is one.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A Drinking Song

William Butler Yeats

Wine comes in at the mouth

And loves comes in at the eye

That's all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth

I look at you and sigh.

Sowing season 2011

I made this cold frame to germinate seeds for vegetables and flowers. The frame is a little over 1 metre tall and the space between shelves is approximately 33 cm. If anything, more space between shelves would be better for ease of watering. So far it seems to be working, on the left there are two pictures of germinating seedlings, French beans and sunflowers. I am hoping to have an array of sunflowers spread around the garden this year, perhaps around 100 sunflowers, as well as other flowers and vegetables and fruits. They look magnificent reaching two metres or more with multiple flower heads that can be cut and displayed indoors as well as enjoyed outside.

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...

New Combo Jazz, 20100131

Left is a photograph taken of the pianist with the Japanese trio, Visions. I watched the images, shadows cast on the wall, the light and shapes seemed to reflect the interacting piano and bass...

Garden Path

I have been trying to figure out how to cover the garden paths between the raised beds, as they are long it would be too expensive to lay any commercial materials.

Well, it got around the neighbourhood that I accept logs, wood from cutting down trees. Shortly after new year a guy stopped his small farmers' truck at our gate. I have never seen him before. In the back of the truck were logs, branches he had chopped from a tree. Do you want these he asked, I heard you took this sort of wood? Of course I replied, so we unloaded the lot. He then asked if I took smaller ones, and point to some thinner branches. Yes, I can use these for kindling, thank you. Off he went and returned twice, later for a third and fourth time. The second two he dumped conifer hedge trimmings. Gosh, what to say, no thank you after he had dumped half of them on the ground on his first return. Okay, what to do with these: 1) make a raised bed and slowly layer them to make a blueberry patch, as the firs acidify the ground; 2) Eureka, how about layering them lengthways along the paths, and make a covering. This will break down over time, will look nice and green, can be trimmed to remove the larger branches, looks good and even smells nice too... So that is what I did, see the photo left of the trimmings being laid. It is a bit springy to walk on, but where it has been frequently used it is flattening down, and it is also easy to run a wheelbarrow over it. So far, no problems, is this a win win?