Voluntary

 

All Is Vanity?

 

White-hot Hot

  

It's getting ghostly, not because there's too much darkness, but because there's too much light...

the dandelions have given up. 

Underneath the ghostly sheet, an oak sapling. Four days of over 40 degrees temperature are enough to extinguish many strugglers -

- this is not an easy country. It makes you or it breaks you. 

I long for a land of plentiful water...

...as does my girl.

Is it an emergency, here, now? I don't know, but even the toughest wilt.

At least there is life still. It is paramount, is it not, to have birds in a garden? It is here, for me at least.

It's no use shutting windows or doors - the heat, it permeates everything.The most challenging time is this, this white-hot season, when the help you hope the world will get may be thwarted. And so you accept it. Or must.

Europe Endless

It was on going to lunch for my sister's birthday at The European in Spring Street that I did a quick wander in this, one of my favourite parts of Melbourne.

St Peter's, Eastern Hill is an institution, a high Anglican enclave on the edge of the CBD. But I'm sorry to say my intentions today have been a little more earthly and temporal...

I like this stark and strictly defined planting round the side of St Peter's...

just as I like this nearby view, European Heritage, with Greens. 

Oops, here we are at the blurry drinks menu at The European. Oh, we ate all sorts of delicious things today; I had gnocchi with broadbeans, mint and peas and sage. The atmosphere was what I think of as European, elegant, simple, refined, relaxed and convivial.

We left little behind...barely enough for a mouse. The cheeses and wines were superb. The waiters were quick, discreet, friendly. I felt blessed, not only to be able to enjoy this - and being the poor relative, I didn't have to pay - but to be able to enjoy it with those I love.

It was something like 34 degrees Celsius today, but they get that heat in the Mediterranean, so I didn't feel it was such a long stretch to feel myself on the other side of the world. But you can in Melbourne, this city of many, and many harmonious, cultures, where life is timeless.

Garden Architecture 1

With a pressing need for an off-the-ground bird feeder but with marginal handyman skills, assembling lying-around bits and pieces into a coherent unity is, well, possible. See above.

The Spladder - de Chirico Model, it is hoped, will spare pecking varieties of birds from FELINE ATTACK. Or, given that The Spladder has climbable rungs, it will at least spare pecking varieties of birds from INSTANT attack.

 So far, of course, 24 hours after installation, not a single pecking bird from the many pecking birds encouraged to visit this garden through the distribution of birdseed ( formerly placed on the ground ) has even noticed The Spladder's aim or utility...

is that a design fault or a failure of marketing strategy? Are the birds here simply too spoon-fed or lacking the sharp instincts of their wild or under-nourished cousins?

I could call a spade a spade but I am not. I am going to call a spade an integral part of a piece of garden architecture and hope my beaked friends can perceive that this particular assemblage has a purpose beyond its stunning visual impact. Birdseed anyone?

Crackers and the Dynamic Duo Being

It's got so hard for me to keep my blog going. Do I really want to keep telling you what I do each week? Do you really care? Is something that happens any more significant because it's seen?

Maybe it is, to anyone creative. Zara and Biscuit, the Dynamic Duo, have been caught out here eating crackers. What sort of dog or cat eats crackers? I don't know. I was feeding them to the birds. But then Zara got interested, and then Biscuit got interested.

 It's got to be a little bit unpleasant here, what with the temperature getting to 38 degrees Celsius, but NOTHING can stop a dog and a cat in need of some action. Faisal meanwhile is sitting down under the shade of the mulberry reading Australia's best newspaper, The Age, a newspaper that never veers to the left or the right but keeps an open mind and an open heart.

Zara nibbles. Biscuit nibbles. We're all crackers, in some way or other. I will have to keep the blog going. The wind is blowing out there. Soon it will get hot inside the house too. Me, I nibble on hope, hope that everything everywhere will turn out fine. And with two little crazy crackers such as these two -

- I know that it will. What I get to see, which photographs fail to capture, is the unending playfulness between these two. Never has either of them been hurt, but to see them chase about, you'd think you were watching World Championship Wrestling.

This then is my back porch. The little girls are growing admirably. We must love, must we not, wherever we are, whoever we are among?

It's too easy. Gardening's hard work and I sometimes couldn't care less if what I do gets noticed by anybody. What I care about are the lives around me, which, to me, never die.

Frolicking

As I write this post, I look out my window and see again that neighbours in the court opposite have let their two bunnies out to nibble the verge. Zara is entirely unaware of them, so far, for she and Biscuit and I have been frolicking out the back...

 ...where the grass has been allowed to grow. Hang on a minute - it's been allowed to grow all over the place! - but that's a lawn-mowing story.

 I'm not always a big fan of 'cute', but everyone weakens somewhere among the flowers -

- where thrilling adventures are to be had.

It helps to have a partner, someone furry, inquisitive and wide-eyed.

There may of course be occasional procedural differences...

...but on the whole not a second is wasted. At least you'll get some sort of glimpse of my garden, which glimpse I've been avoiding out of sheer embarrassment. It's more the sort of  tangle of a place you can run around in, tail flying, than the sort of elegant composition that will ever grace a magazine.

And that's enough for me, now, just to know it can bring delight, that it can be the stage for delight.

And speaking of 'cute', you can see above why I fell in love with Zara, can't you?
By the way, despite madcap rough and tumbles, neither of the gals gets hurt. So I'm allowed to turn my back on them and get gardening, without anxiety. And that makes it a frolic for me too!