Perma-Crops , Farmer Bart’s Frost Resistance

 While Winter is not yet out and about in Huntingdon County Farmer Bart Brassica has been, well experimenting would suggest some kind of orderly and systematic testing that this venture does not involve, so it is more a process of messing around to produce Frost Resistance, and here Bart has come up with two candidates for what he claims are Perma-Crops - he is aiming at the Christmas tree and feather pillow  markets. Will it happen?  And where did Bart get that snow from ? 

Spring Hits the Blossom Button Twice

 

Spidery white denbrobiums here tick the Spring, Sprung box -  this Denbrobium linguiforme may be small but it’s lightly, if I could be jealous of myself for having this in my garden I would be.  Not sure what it is that makes orchids exhilarating but they are to sigh for.  And then that white blossom - ornamental here is an understatement - though I will add I did nothing to cultivate these except stop by the florist. 

An Orderly Consideration of Five Dehisced Eucalyptus Leaves + A Tin Moth = A Leaf Sentence

Playing tennis early Sunday morning I was distracted in a forehand volley by a charming leaf,  you will realise this does nothing for my game, which was more a general case of hit and run than keeping score, and when it ended I stooped to scoop up interesting leaves, some of which had descended while I watched, thinking they would be scan into some kind of assemblage, so they might be better considered.  The Tin Moth acts as a kind of title to make the second leaf from the left into an lower case i, the leaves at either end could get work as brackets, so what we have here is perhaps, A Leaf Sentence.

Bart Brassica enters the Leaf Storm Time Vortex ?

 Some Readers will remember Bart Brassica’s attempts to give Time the slip in Time’s Winged Warrior episode, when he invented the Clock O’Later,  which was patently quite silly, and now it is not so much that this kind of attempt to get the better of Time is a waking pursuit, but dreams are weird and timeless vortexes fo the unconscious mind, and here Bart may have been reading too many botanical articles about Euculyptus, and as for double portrait of the Lady in Brown,  that may be due entirely to loitering in Ink Aisle at Michael’s Arts & Crafts. 

The Thing Plus the Thing’s Reflection

 What happens when an image’s reflection is apparently under-imposed, fractionally misaligned,  as in this photograph?  What is more real, the photograph of the thing itself, the thing’s reflection or the sum of these two?   It may seem there is a double exposure here, best observed in the visual echo of the daffodils and the stem of begonia flowers , and then there is that graphic echo of rabbits ears, though the Alessi kitchen timer  long ago ran out of tick,  in the same manner as the Velveteen Rabibit,  by the time it did, it was already real, and so it doesn’t matter that it does nothing but keep me company, and smile for in photographs. 

Nabokovian Moments in Balmoral : Picnic? Lightning ?

 Of course there is nothing better than an afternoon picnic, while watching Sydney Harbour change into its swath of Fortuny silk blue for evening, and first walking past this picnic Tuesday at sunset - the champagne bottle down two glasses, the food untouched, the picnickers, were absent, paddling or perhaps one had not arrived, and the jilted party had drunk the second glass and took a huff home?  On Wednesday evening the picnic was - as shown here - still perfect, not picked over by gulls, or blitzed by ibis. By Thursday morning one strawberry and a breadstick had gone.  A photo shoot?  A trap for speculation?  Pnin?  

Postcard from the Great Encyclopaedic Dictionary

 Once at a Life Book Fair I found Volumnes One and Two of the Readers Diges Great Encyclopaedic Dictionary, and though I fluctuate between a queasy guilt and mischievous delight in scissoring  out the black and white illustrations - mischief is a clear winner when it comes to making collages, like eggs in an omelette, things must be broken so as to be reassembled.  Mostly my collages were made the scanned type and objects like the faux soy sauce fish could be recycled, but hey now it’s no longer a peripatetic collage object.  Now the question: To Post or Not to Post? 

A Deco Horse? Sea Horse of Course at the MCA

 If you’re cruising the old building of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA ) occasionally a panel or wall will open to reveal an Art Deco gem from the buiklding’s previous life as the Maritime Services Board building, like this frosted glass sea horse with it curlicue tail inset into an interior door.   Curatorial demands may mostly cover up framed views of the Quay, and glass sea horses but it is always worth peaking behind blinds, though this sea horse was out in openn waters. 

Tree’s Company: Tawny Frogmouth’s Affinity for Camouflage

 What had looked like an accidental aggregation of sticks turns out to be a nest for two Tawny Frogmouths in the jacaranda tree just a metre or two outside my upstairs window - make that Frogmouth Vieiwing Platform.  Two of these camouflaged charmers take turns to sit, maybe puff up a bit, deliver lugubrious side-eyes, and sleep.  Watching Frogmouths sit still proves to wonderfully dynamic,  at one point the larger parent bird did a shuffling rearrangement of, I assume, the egg layout.  Are there any more satisfying measures of garden success than having a Tawny Frogmouth nest?   I await the hatchlings, and yes, of course, I will keep Readers posted.