Cardoonifications - Mr Farmhand' s Non Plus Ultra

The Cardoon has arrived in Lambertville, and Frank Winkler, ever on the look out for schemes that scam, and noticing  how similiar the cardoon leaves are to the plaster detial in the local Art Deco cinema the Morpheum. The Morpheum is more than a little in need of repairs and Frank thinks he can cut a few corners by using the stylish Cardoon leaves. Here we see Frank Winkler (below) encouragingly waving his hoe (burnt, you might recall in the Marshmallow Incident - see Rhubarbative Moments in Fieldwork for this story), and shouting, 'Non Plus Ultra' as  encouragement, and warning, to Mr Farmhand who has beeen hoodwinked, or as the local expression has it, winkled,  into the job of actually harvesting the leaves and is feeling mighty woozy. His long-distance vision, as you can see, has gone completely out of focus and one of the cardoon tips has nicked his favourite - well his only - hat. Frank's further remarks, well ravings, that he, Hercules, has declared this Cardoon, one of the seven pillars of the World, is not in Mr Farmhand's view, worth replying to.
Thanks to Ms Ingrid Periz for the photographs.

Pan De Siècle

About 20 years ago I bought a set of three cast iron fry pans from Chinatown, one – the least useful size-wise – I gave away to a friend who was undersupplied kitchen-wise. The other two I used for some time, cultivating on each a seasoned surface. At one point I gave the smaller pan to one of my brothers, for some reason I am not quite clear on. I knew it had the makings of  a great pan, but I was prepared to share. The pan I kept, by diligent application of oil, avoidance of soap, hundreds of tempering with delicious things, cleaning with hot water and nylon scourers, the pan acquired a patina, intrinsically black, that developed into a very decent non-stick surface. No Teflon, just patina. 

Once, sadly, an overzealous friend, scoured off all the black with steel wool, but I started again and gradually the surface regained its equanimity. Perhaps it was even better for the polishing back.  The pan builds up patina till it starts to become blackly nacreous, like a bad oyster.  The surface starts to acquire too much topography. When the pan starts to leave itself on the food, then the relationship between cooker and cookee has broken down, inexorably.  Steel wool, wiry scourers, even, even, paring knifes (only for the underside)  might be, or must be, put too. The pan de cycle has come around, and once again, the fry pan must be taken back to metal.

Time's Winged Warrior

Like most of us with busy lifes, Farmer Bart Brassica is always on the lookout for time saving devices, and in Farmer Brassica's case, given that the weather can be curmudgeonly, too much rain and his experimental crop of wasabi will suffer from wasabi blight, too little and the crop will fail to thrive. So he has often wished he could go back and rejig  his planting strategy.  To this end Bart, perhaps after watching too many episodes of Dr Who has devised this Clock O'later - the idea that he winds the invisible elastic attaches it to the clock hands, hops on board and as the hands start spinning backwards viola! so will time. He has explained to Mavis Eggwhistle that the extra candy loop is designed to provide an aura field and fuel source.  Mavis says something about Fool Source being well supplied already.

Life Drawing and The Evaporation of Time

Life drawing is an odd term, as if the human form has a monopoly on life, but only as long as there are no clothes involved. Of course this is a quibble, and going to my first ever life drawing class, any qualms I might have thought I might have had did not get a look in, as I was far too busy trying to get a handle on pushing charcoal across the page. The model was wonderful, calm and elegant, well balanced and with a great sense of line. The class is weekly one at the Brett Whiteley Gallery in Surry Hills. Though the drawings fall quite a ways short of working out - what is with arms, for example - the process is mesmeric.

Chatterton Squared

There is more than a strand of nostalgia in my prediliction for volumes in the World Book Club series.  As a child, in a small town without a bookshop, these, and the Time Life Ancient World Series, would arrive in the post, the robust packaging promised a deft exit to another place.  Not all the novels in this series were the best work of the novelist, and Chatterton Square being a good example. I first met EH Young via Virago and her  Miss Mole, and then The Missess Malletts,  both mild domestic depictions of middle class life, with fine character portraits, invariably featuring a stalwart spinster, often with a pointy nose, an abrupt manner, a repertoire of tics and a generous heart sometimes undermined by ill-judged actions to protect herself or her loved ones from further loss. Chatterton Square, is the mild sort of thing that intrigues despite of it being far too well larded with political declarations of the dreadful complacency of English pollies and people that would bring everything badly undone in the lead up to World War 2. I wondered, given this must have been, at least, E H Young's tenth novel, if perhaps the editors had just given up on her, or her, them.

One reason why I ploughed on to then end was my curiosity as to whether Young might flaunt convention and let her heroine, deserted by an irascible out of the scene husband, have an affair, or at least a fling with a suitor, who if not exacting dashing,  at least had a dash. Perhaps, given E H Young's reputed personal circumstances of being the third party in a menage a trois, the conventional ending here shows that the editor, might after all, have had some exercise.

The New Electric Enlightenment - Episode 4 of In The Ponderings

How did Bart arrive at this floored state of quasi-electrification?  Impatient in his on-going quest for enlightenment, [see In the Ponderings Episode 3]  Bart decided that the process could be accelerated by standing, well if not on the shoulders of The Enlightened ( below), than at least by standing on their pedestal and,  given that more is more, he also set up a live circuit, figuring the electricity is the natural fluid medium for enlightening. Adding to this sure fire method  he recruited the Buddha's friend Padmapani, to speed things up.  While the Buddha and Padmapani are non-plussed by 240 volts the questions is will Bart recover from his singed state?

Honey Dew, Zygopetalum"s Draw Card

After too many seasons where the possums got in first and ate all the flower buds from my zygopetalum orchid,  this year I bought it inside early and was rewarded by three, by my modest standards for orchid culture, perfect flower spikes. These have been out for about four weeks now, and by the second week the nodes started to produce a sticky clear nectar which takes delicious to a new level. It might be that just having a single drop of the nectar makes it precious but this is sweet, in well, a complex floral way  that subtly echoes the flowers perfume. This must be what Coleridge wrote of in Xanadu.