A Fleet Scramble to Footscray Park

Melbourne is such a vast city now, that you can have lived here for over 50 years as I have done, and not have seen considerable stretches of it - especially when you don't drive.
I had reason to visit Victoria University at Footscray today, and afterwards, took time to explore adjacent Footscray Park.

Created in 1911 after a campaign by local residents, this 37 acre park beside the Maribyrnong River is regarded as one of the most intact Edwardian public gardens in Australia.

The first garden to be listed with Heritage Victoria, it has, in its formal framework, a series of rustic pergolas, arbours, bridges, pools and stonework walls made of local basalt. 

The lovely fountain above has a platypus either side of it.
The park seems to have only a small number of visitors, cut off as it is from its surroundings by busy Ballarat Road. I saw only a handful of others during my visit, among them builders making repairs as part of the park's centennial upgrade.

Above, a handsome and oblingingly composed Chestnut Teal ( Anas castanea ), and below, part of the gateway through which I came and went.

Plain as Knuckles

Plain as knuckles, plain as sleet,
plain as nothing left to eat.

Phones are plain, that never ring,
toil's plain as anything.

The facts are plain as dentistry,
and numb all spontaneity.

Dump all plainness in a bin,
and get things un-plain happenin',

 

'Cause plains of sameness are a sin.



As I've made only too apparent, there's alot of work to do in my garden-in-winter, but it is not a photogenic site. Today I got a sequence of tasks done, and in-between, wrote this poem and composed these 'plain' pictures.


Plain as Knuckles

Plain as knuckles, plain as sleet,
plain as nothing left to eat.

Phones are plain, that never ring,
toil's plain as anything.

The facts are plain as dentistry,
and numb all spontaneity.

Dump all plainness in a bin,
and get things un-plain happenin',

'Cause plains of sameness are a sin.


Faisal Grant, 02 July, 2011.

Beast in me, be still.

My grandfather, Royce Spinkston, fought at Gallipoli and later in France, during WWI. He abhorred war, and was much happier gardening. The German sword below ( Deutsche Maschinenfabrik, A-G, Duisburg ), which I suppose came home with him as a trophy, was used in his garden as a stake, a much better purpose than the one for which it was made.
A hotel broker, he helped found the Australian Iris Society in 1948, and became its first Honorary Secretary and Editor. It seems that he was also Australia's major importer of irises ( his favourite flower ) at that time. A good part of my own interest in gardens has come to me through him. He wrote a vast number of  letters too, so perhaps that trait is also genetic.

Evidence of Gardening...

Don't think I'm just sitting around, staring into space...

Don't say I don't get involved, or get down to business... 

See? I told you: it's all go, go. go...

Evidence - wherever you look...

I even have a witness...

Invisibility

Perhaps it is wrong to admit that I am a writing gardener. Gardeners garden, and writers write. For me, you do what you do, whether it's sanctified by habit or authority, or not. Life starts all over again each day...when I write, the words may not pertain to custom, just as when I garden, the gardens made may not pertain to customs taken as customary gardening.
But the custom is, of course, to explain what I'm doing. In these poems, I am living the life I would otherwise be living if my garden were other than it is. I am writing myself out of the way.. I am writing to transplant myself into the garden I have always seen, but never encountered...

( Please note, the writer apologises for not gardening ).

Invisibility

Colourless, I nonetheless
wade through
the night, unblinking.

Who'd have thought
such camouflage
would last?

Some there are, suggest
such faith unthinking,
the future, past...

Faisal Grant, 24 June, 2011.

A Grey Garden

Nearer now, am I, to returning to 'garden' posts. But for this poem, sprung out tonight:  

A Grey Garden

I was dead - wasn't I? -
but then some hands

came dowm from the sky
and got me sprouting.

This bulb I am -
twisted, grey, antique -

has started to declare
itself, to end all doubting.

Faisal Grant, 24 June, 2011.

A Public Face

This poem is way outside the context of gardening, so I'm sorry to gardeners, or anyone preferring something less cerebral. Cold, grey weather in Melbourne has seen me writing much more. I am working on some garden ideas to post any time soon.

A Public Face


I

He has only this,
his public face.

No-one has asked him
if there is more,

in case it shatters the air,
or breaks a law.

II

If he has gone
on to convey

misgivings,
the public's shock and fear

relay a gulf
unbridgeably clear.

III

He shuts a door
more tightly fit,

dumbfounded by the strangers
and their chosen fates,

unlit. A life is real
inside, and emanates.


Faisal Grant, 23 June, 2011.