Persephone's Return

Less than three weeks ago, in Frost and Feathers, I contemplated the struggle that Winter was facing in evicting Autumn from our garden in the Valley on The Mountain.  The battle continues, with icy assaults shredding leaves on some of the most delicate plants, but Winter is now under attack from the other side, as Spring brings daffodil sunshine to many corners of the garden, and the first new shoots are opening on a nectarine tree that has not finished shedding last Summer's foilage.

Most of those old leaves are still verdant, as are the remnant leaves on the Chinese Elm out front, though the calendar says they should long ago have fallen.  The secateurs are hard at work as I try to complete the pruning that normally might wait until mid August.  The Honeyeaters are brightly coloured and loudly assertive in their territorial campaigns, and our Magpie landlords are flat out gathering nesting material.  Yet there are still yellowing leaves on some of the Apple limbs for the Eastern Yellow Robins to imitate as they sit and watch for their next morsel to show itself.

Is it too early to venture a few bean seeds in the garden yet, or should I sow another row of peas?

Question and Answer

Q:        When can I call myself a writer?

A:        When you pick up a pen and write?

It's a simple answer, but true - if you write, you are a writer - if you paint or draw or sculpt, you are an artist - if you fish, you are an angler.......

Perhaps the question was wrong?  What many of us are actually asking is "When will I feel like I am a writer?"

For me, it is the moment when, after having performed my allotted labour with pen or keyboard - be it a set amount of time at my desk, or a set number of words on the page -  I have moved on to some other task (cooking, gardening, cleaning, or even trying to go to sleep) only to find myself wanting to return to my desk and write down all the extra bits of plot and conversation that are now caroming round my skull, begging to be put on paper. Creating has ceased to be a struggle and has instead begun to flow.

Though most of us (especially we procrastinators) can find it painful to make that first pen stroke each day, there comes a moment when, after consecutive applications of self discipline have led to a growing body of work, we begin to develop a sense of achievement in our writing.  It is not far from there to genuinely enjoying not only the results, but the process - then, though you have been a writer ever since you first put pen to paper, you begin to feel that you truly are one.

Savour the feeling, but don't rest on your laurels (they will only prickle your bum) - get back to that desk, notebook, keyboard, scrap of paper, or beer coaster, and write.

There will be other days when the distance from your lounge to your desk is so daunting that it might be measured in miles instead of meters, but call up that memory of creative joy and march once more into the fray.

Mindless Creativity

Does anyone else find that it is during those mundane, often repetitive tasks - in my case, today, the slow, steady turning over of a fallow garden bed - that really interesting creative thoughts arise?  And do you also find that by the time the allotted task has been completed, those thoughts have partially evaporated, like the memories that remain of most dreams after waking?

Why, someone asks, do you not record the thoughts on your mobile phone?  Oh, if I had a dollar for everytime I've left that thing on the table or the sideboard, having intended only to be outside briefly.

My pen, pencil, and notepad are, of course, comfortably ensconced on the table in my study, awaiting my next session of writing - perhaps I should keep some by each door, to pick up and carry with me into the garden.

Today the journey began with a few steps through the back door to the veranda rail, to watch a wild, noisy game of tip being played by most of the tribe of grandchildren.  A few more steps were taken across the deck to the lawn, to have a quiet word with one of the more rough and tumble individuals, and then, well, that fallow bed that I had forked over yesterday had come into view.

Situated with lines of sight across the back yard and a good part of the front, it seemed an ideal place to stand.  I could work the loosened weeds free with the long handled claw, and be available for any unexpected (but ever possible) umpiring or first aid duties.

Working quietly but steadily along the bed, soaking up the warm sunshine, chatting with the robins and wrens and honeyeaters that flit about the turned soil seeking morsels to consume at the safety of the fence or a tree branch, checking the apple branches for any sign of budding, and the broccoli for any heads worth picking - all these things calm the mind.  It is never long before the half formed ideas of previous writing or thinking sessions come back to the surface - and it is amazing how much of that material is now closer to fully formed.

But then the children all vanish - the noise is coming from somewhere out of sight.  Of course - they are being packed into the cars of their respective parents, ready for the journey home.  Farewells must be said, and missing shoes, jumpers, hats, and teddy bears rounded up, and all the while, those wonderful creative thoughts are slowly sinking back into the darkness from which they arose, quite forgotten by me - until later, when what remains is just enough to let me know I had something good in mind, but have lost it beyond retrieve.

What is the solution?  I could drop the hoe or weeder and dash back inside to record those thoughts, but on a day like today, would most likely be derailed by other inquiries or assignments before reaching my desk.   I am not good at carrying the mobile phone with me all the time, no matter how smart and useful it is supposed to be, and the same goes for pen and paper.

I sometimes wonder if I should keep one of those tourist "bum bags" on me at all times, with phone, house key, wallet, pencil, and notepad all within - and perhaps some small binoculars, and a camera, and, well, what else might came in unexpectedly handy? - but that seems so clunky and annoying, and is likely to be put down in the wrong spot and not found again until after a rainy spell.  Any suggestions, anyone?

The Sad Irony of Evolution

The resilience of life can be quite amazing, as any gardener knows. Turn up a piece of ground and seedlings will appear everywhere - often of plants not seen in that space for many years, if ever.  Turn over a garden bed thoroughly, two or three times, and still, just as your delicate brassica seedlings are appearing, all sorts of other sprouts will explode out of the ground and race skyward.

In the Blue Mountains there  are plants that qualify as delicate elsewhere, but here, once entrenched in a garden, will never leave.  Potatoes and strawberries in the vegetable garden, or violets in the shady corners, or buttercups anywhere, will seem to succumb to the hoe or spade, but, as soon as the gardener's back is turned, they will spring up again.

Bushwalkers can testify to the number of toppled trees, torn from their place by storms and tossed flat on the ground, that suddenly send up vertical shoots along their trunk to form a new grove - not to mention the vigour with which giant orb spiders will replace a massive web that was cleared from a walking track only the previous afternoon.  Never walk away from the camp site without a torch, thinking that the track will remain clear once darkness falls.

Fragments of willow branches need only to land in a spot that will remain damp for a few weeks, and a new tree will soon be growing.  Last year, Council inspected our neighbours across the creek and ordered the removal of a long clump of bamboo that grew along their bank. It was sad to see it go, as it screened part of our yard from view, gave us the feeling of living in a clearing in a rainforest, was a lovely windbreak, and provided safe haven to a family of black ducks as well as other birds.

The neighbours complied, and after the next rains, complied again - most of the bamboo has fallen to the repeated onslaughts of chainsaws, chippers, and spray, but even in this droughty, frosty winter, enough little shoots persevere to make me think that the bamboo is plotting its return.  The bare ground, despite the amount of poison hurled at it, is being colonised anew by other species, too.

Likewise can the angler testify to the times when a fish is landed that has a great scar, or even a scalloped bite missing from part of its body, that has healed over - the fish having escaped a larger predator and continued on with its life.  One eyed or one legged birds seem to keep up with the flock, spiders with fewer than eight legs continue to stalk their prey - life, as the man in the movie said, persists.

The persistence and resilience of life in the face of all sorts of hazards and assaults is a remarkable thing, and so it should disturb us all the more when we see species of any life form becoming extinct at the hands of our species.  Life on this planet has pushed through, and flourished after, all sorts of catastrophes, from massive ice ages to enormous cometary impacts and their subsequent fire-storms.

It doesn't seem right that a complex web of life that has survived and recovered from everything the universe has thus far thrown at it might be failing at the hands of one of its own very prolific and resilient progeny - for if the web collapses, it is certain to take us down with it.

Elderberry Blues

My gardening history is littered with "it seemed like a good idea at the time" moments - one of those is the Elderberry I bought as a tiny green sprig in a 6 inch pot, five years ago at a regular Leura School Market Day.

I'm not sure what I was thinking at the time - was I contemplating some herbal use of its flowers or berries, perhaps? Was it nostalgia for something that had grown in other gardens I had known, decades before, such as the family farm, or my grandfather's place?  Or was it simply the idea of those lovely, creamy, bee-filled, elderflower panicles?

Where ever there is a bright spot, there are likely to be shadows nearby - elderberry may look good above the ground, but beneath...... that is a different matter.  While the brittle branches slowly spread out to display their delicate leaves and lacework flower clusters, just below the mulch and soil, a vast net of rubbery tentacles is reaching out far beyond the dripline of the parent tree, seeking dominion over all the garden.

It is only when you disturb the ground around other plants, many meters away, that you discover how far elderberry roots reach out from the trunk, and how easily new trees spring up if any of those roots are in any way nicked or cut. 

As I contemplate the effort that may be needed to eliminate the tree and all its suckers, I suddenly feel a tiny inkling of what some of the early Britons felt when they realised that the Saxons they had  foolishly invited to their island had no intention of leaving.

Heard while writing

A meeting of our little writing group, held in a lovely house at the head of a gully, halfway up The Mountains, led us down some interesting paths - as it always does.  One of those roads less travelled, for me, at least, is poetry.  Try as I might, it nearly always stumps me.

One of our group, though, brought with her the idea of black-out poetry.  An interesting term, when you haven't heard it before, and one that left me wondering where we were about to go.

A simple enough idea, once she had explained it to us - it was, after my initial reservations, a lot of fun.  The idea is to take a page from a paper or magazine and go through it searching for words that might form a poem.  Use a marker pen to cross out all the unwated words, and see what is left.

I got the TV guide, and this is what happened.....

The long

dark shadow

imposing a

power pendulum

Creating opportunities

excites old powers

and the truth

projects my characters abroad

A huge paradigm shift

provides intrigue

gender bias

reflects the other

Does it mean anything?  Read in the right tone of voice, it sounds like it could.  One of our group produced a short piece of prose using more or less the same method.  Once again, by constraining ourselves, we open up new pathways.  The fascinating thing is that once this prompt got me started, I found myself willing to dash out more bits of poetic whimsy.  At least, it could be poetry - only the experts could say for sure, and I ain't no expert in the field of poetry.

However, here is an aural representation of our afternoon together.

 

AT WRITERS GROUP

When the magpies and

squabbling rosellas

have gone,

for now

The creak and scratch

of pen and paper

is all the sound

I hear

But listen – just then

the fireplace creaked

A distant dinosaur

growls its diesel roar

Small feathered bells tumble

through shadowed leaves

A page turns

A writer sighs

Outside a crow

calls the falling sun

The fridge

hums back to life

 

Frost and Feathers

This year in the Blue Mountains, Summer hung on well into Autumn's allotted months, and Winter has only finally begun to fight its way into the valley on top of the mountain.  It's first assaults were brief forays, soon pushed back by balmy days and drying winds.

But at last, after some rain, a little snow fell.  It soon melted, but since then frosts have taken control of the mornings, and the scent of wood fires has permeated the evenings. The rhythm of the day has changed.  The kookaburras don't bother with their dawn chorus until the sun has properly climbed into the blue, and the magpies don't come looking for their breakfast treat until the golden light has reached over the tree tops and begun to melt the ice that seals the top of the bird bath.

Before the rays of warmth get past the trees, there is already movement - a pair of red-browed finches sorting through the remants of yesterday's offering to the rosellas and parrots.  Tiny bundles of pale olive-brown, visible only because of their bright red visor, they seem comfortable in a landscape stilled and muted by a thin layer of frost.

White crystals rest on the twigs and leaves, and lay on the grass like the finest muslin.  Nearby, the broccoli leaves show dark green through the white veins of ice, and the cauliflower leaves seem grey instead of the blue-green that daylight will give them.  When the frost has smoked away in the sun's warmth, all the brassicas, even the cabbages, will show some variation of green, but with a hint of blue that seems irresistable to the red whiskered bulbuls and the satin bower birds.

Some of the yellow jonquils and white narcissus are already blossoming, undeterred by the frost and snow, while the apple trees that mistakenly flowered in May are blushing now at their error, and trying to hunker down for the Spring that wasn't really here.

As soon as the first rays of the sun reach into the clearing in front of the house, the larger birds arrive too. They are abundant, colorful, and noisy - food can be scarce at this time of year, so the offerings we make tend to draw a crowd.

The brilliant green shoulders and ripe-tomato breasts of the king parrots, and the brilliant crimson and blue of the rosellas brighten the the almost bare limbs of the oak tree, and their squabbling for the best twigs shakes a few more brown leaves to the ground.

The male crimson rosellas spend the first few minutes blustering at each other like miniature, brightly coloured sea lions on the mating beaches of the southern ocean.  Rising up on their talons, they bump chests and make threats with their beaks, while chittering and chirruping loudly.  Each confrontation is over in moments, and, unlike the sea lions, blood is never drawn.

When the crisp black and white of the magpies swoops in towards the veranda, everyone ducks for cover.  All returns to normal as soon as the magpies begin singing, and the smaller birds know that the butcher bird and currawong won't dare come near them.  Our landlords, the magpies, are jealous of their property rights - parrots, honeyeaters, finches, wrens, spinebills, and silvereyes are all treated as part of the scenery, but the magpies do not welcome their cousins into their territory.

The smaller birds take no chances, though, and flit through the shadows of the shrubs and bushes in the gardens, brief glimpses of brown, black and white, yellow,and buff,  scattering tiny chiming peals as they keep track of friends and family.  When they lay claim to territory, they are careful to do so from within the thickets, where they can keep a careful watch out for the bigger birds that might threaten them.

When every tree top is full of sunlight, the sky fills with the screeching of yellow crested white cockatoos, holding loud, long range conversations as they decide which of their favoured foraging grounds to visit first.  Soon, when the day is full, the tiny bells and the larger chirps and squawks will fall silent, as even the parrots seek shelter from the occasional hawk that patrols the ridge beyond the creek.

They'll be back, though, with all their colour and music, when the shadows stretch out from the trees to cross the lawns and clearings, and the latent frost of tomorrow begins nipping at ears and noses that are braving the clear evening air of Winter.

How to Get Things Done

Is winter closing in before you've built a woodheap sufficient for your needs?  Are your onion seedlings drowning in a sea of chickweed?  Are your grapevines and fruit trees threatening to welcome spring before you've wielded the secateurs?  Is your chimney holding less smoke than your living room?  Is your "To Do" list growing faster than your "Done" list?

Never fear - the answer is here.  In one simple step, the solution to all these problems is at hand.  All you need to do is sit down at the table for half an hour, pen poised over paper, and commence the novel that has been lurking within you for so long.

At the end of half an hour, put pen and paper down and promise yourself that, now you have begun, you will return to the task tomorrow, full of diligence and enthusiasm.  Before you know it, the publisher will be writing the cheque, and your masterpiece will be gracing the windows of every bookshop, just in time for the Christmas rush.

Or that, at least, is the plan - instead, by tomorrow evening, the gardens will be free of weeds; by the end of the week, not only will the pruning be complete, but there will be a row of pots on the bench by the garden shed, each with its carefully trimmed cutting in place, ready to add to the garden next summer.  By Sunday afternoon, the firewood will be stacked so high and so neatly that people will begin asking if you are setting up a wood-selling business.

"No time for that" you will say "I have to finish my novel" and you will set off for your study - with a minor detour to the landscaping yard to buy the pavers with which to construct that path you promised to build ten years ago.  It is truly remarkable how much can be acheived when that novel is lurking in the shadows - but, look, is that a wobbly tread on the back steps?  If I'm quick I can get to the timber yard before they close, and then I will be able to start preplacing that tread first thing tomorrow - or, at least, after I catch up with mowing the lawns.

And yet, it is remarkable what can be achieved when the pen is taken up again, and that first ink is spidered across the page - why is it so often so difficultto get started?  Oh, look, there's that runner I bought months ago to replace the broken one on my beach fishing rod.