Three things: Penny Lane, music, and more music!

We’ve all been sticking our noses into these roses everytime we walk past them this week. I planted this climber, ‘Penny Lane’ (it makes me want to hum too), a few weeks ago and already have a few flowers to enjoy.

Preparing for winter again by thinking of outdoor things we want to do (the suggestion of making boats out of leaves and sailing them down the kerbside rivers has come from my 4 old year old more than once)  and indoor activities when it is too wet and cold to be outside.  For this, we are beginning a soundtrack and, as per the 4 year old’s request, Penny Lane is there, and so is this, and this (what can I say–the kid’s got passion)… suggestions received gratefully!

And this wicked track (with its amazing video) got me through a hard winter once before, and I am hoping it will be there for me again.  Oh Aberdeen winter, you shall not defeat me this time.

Haiku-sday: Brambling

We walk the long way

to fill mouths and buckets with

juicy studded jewels.

 

 

 

Challenge 2: A tight budget (Part II)

Many of these herbs–in a strip of garden beneath my kitchen window–I inherited from friends when they left Aberdeen.

This continues the series I have been doing on the three challenges of my garden.  This is Part II of the second challenge.  You can read Part I of the challenge of a tight budget here where I explain how narrow constraints (like a tight budget), are often helpful for the creative process.

Another “upside” I have found to having a tight budget is that the most cost-effective option has often bought with it the added bonus of friendship or community, not to mention a sense of legacy.  The other day I was on the bus with my two kids and we had a few short but pleasant interactions with an elderly couple sitting behind us.  When they went to get off the bus, I realised that they belonged to a garden we walked by almost daily.  I quickly confirmed, “you have the beautiful garden on the corner, don’t you?”  She replied, “well, I don’t know about beautiful, but it certainly gives us a lot of pleasure”.  The bus door was almost open when she walked back to say to me, “you must come and get some plants from us”.

Like other making/creative communities, the gardening world is full of people who simply can’t stop sharing information or resources.  Gardening is often a solitary and meditative activity, but I have also found connection with many people who have the same passion–this is why community gardens and allotments are so wonderful.  And, ahem, gardening blogs.  I am looking forward to visiting this couple soon, not just for the plants (in many ways, that is secondary), but because getting to know them, even to a small degree, will “lively up” our regularly walk down the hill.

I like to think that many gardeners are generous with their information and resources because their gardens have taught them to be.  Gardens often provide for us without stinginess.  When a plant does well, it can be prolific and in many cases, it pays for a gardener to share the love.  Plant division needs to happen to maintain plant health, and if there is no room or place for the divided extras, why not just give them away?  Our gardens are living, breathing organisms, and there is nothing to be gained when we hoard or stockpile plants and seeds when we don’t have room or the right spot for them.  They will die, go to waste, or require more work than what they return.

I have clear memories of the journey home from my grandparents’ place, tucking my feet up above a bucket of root cuttings and divided plants from their garden, to be replanted in my parents’ garden.  Years after my grandparents’ deaths, a couple of these plants remain.  If I lived in New Zealand, I wonder if cuttings from these would be in my garden too?  There is something beautiful about looking out to your garden and remembering the legacy that is out there.  I have a similar feeling when I look out over the plants I have bought inexpensively from plant sales at the Botanic Gardens or at church fairs, or when I have been able to share with others.  There is a place and a people behind those plants and it helps me to feel a little more grounded in this land.  Indeed, the most memory-rich plants are the ones I have received most inexpensively.

So I am going to write one more part on this challenge of having a tight budget.  You can read about the first challenge (one of design) here and here.

 

 

Three things: craft love, birds, and Stephen King

I am really enjoying the comments on this post at The Craft Sessions (one of my favourite blogs).

A beautiful wee film to help kids identify river birds.

He’s probably right, but I have only recently discovered The Gilmore Girls and I will wait until I have finished all seasons before I do this (besides which, doing this would mean actually blowing up my computer on which I write):  If you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.  From Stephen King, ‘On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft’.  I am listening to the audio version which he narrates, and it’s great.

Haiku-sday: Harvest Moon

 

Camp smoke in my clothes

brings that moon, my friends, the beach

home for the winter.

 

Like Liz saving sun-

dried sheets for winter’s end.  A

summer memory.

 

The locket

That night I pulled out the locket.  I opened it up and looked at the picture.  We’d studied Greek myths in school that year.  In our book, the goddess of crops and the earth had a sad mouth and flowers around her, just like the girl in the locket.  I scraped off the rust with our dish scrubber and shined up that locket as bright as I could get it.  Then I opened it up, just a crack.  Then I whispered, “Save our lettuce,” to the girl. 

Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks

 

Three things: Open studios, banana boats, and bucket list

My family is going “glamping” this week on the Moray Firth coast.  A happy coincidence is that we will be travelling during the North East Open Studios event.

Must remember bananas so we can have these for dessert.  Yum.

A great idea for a Family Nature Bucket List.  I think we will make one specifically for gloomy Aberdeen winters.

Smooth wax spots on a sandstone step

From where I sit

the stained glass memorial window illuminates

the step up to the altar, and a constellation

of wax spots emerges from the stone

each time a cloud passes by.

Innumerable wax droplets I never realised

my shoes touched on Sunday mornings.

 

One–maybe two–of those drips fell from a candle I held

on a midwinter’s feast day.

Just last month was Margaret’s funeral–

she was responsible for a few, I’m sure.

My two lively children will leave their share

of Advent and Easter candle wax spots too,

all to be walked over

by priests and acolytes leaving theirs.

 

Smooth wax spots on a sandstone step,

have been touched–will be touched–

as often as lips taste from the chalice.

Challenge 2: A tight budget (Part I)

This post continues my series on the challenges of my garden.  You can read about the first challenge here and here (in that order).

When we first moved into our flat, I had a clear idea about how I wanted this garden project to go… simply, I wanted to get plants and trees in the ground ASAP so that we could begin to reap the harvest ASAP.  I got a few things in the ground, and then our boiler died.  And then our washing machine.  The oven broke.  And we discovered that the fridge was keeping a rather tropical temperature.  In short, it has not been a good summer for our whiteware or the pocketbook.

However, my whole adult life has been a rather frugal existence and living with less over the years has given me some creative insight for working on all sorts of projects, including this garden project.  There are definitely some sucky things about working within a narrow budget, and I won’t get into those because they are probably fairly obvious (and to be clear, I am talking about a narrow budget, NOT poverty).  But here are some of the “up sides”:

First of all, parameters (including financial constraints) are helpful for the creative process.  When I was at architecture school, occasionally people would ask what my dream home would be like if money were no object and any location possible.  I never had an answer.  While I love looking at plans for imaginative places and worlds, I find it hard to think of real projects (like a home to live in) without wondering what its real constraints would be.  As with poetry, some of the most beautiful and creative architectural projects I have seen are ones that were made within extremely strict constraints.

I believe this is because a creative project tells its maker what it hopes to be.  It speaks through available resources (including materials, budget, skills, etc), the site in question, and the intended use of the finished project.  It is somewhat of a spiritual practice to pause and to be open to these things before designing.  It is a contemplative practice to “listen” to these things whilst making, in the way that a carpenter is guided by the texture and grain of the wood she works with or a sew-er works with her fabric’s drape and texture to create a beautiful garment.  In the same way, our budget has creative implications for our garden.  Our financial constraints (among other things) are showing us how our garden will look and come about.  For example, we wanted to pave an area in our front garden for outdoor eating, and we were grateful when a neighbour said that we could take her cracked old pavers that were sitting in a heap.  Their broken edges suggested which other broken edges they could be lined up with.  The size of our table+chairs instructed how large the level area should be before it could slope away to the garden path.  My partner shifted them around like weighty puzzle pieces, until they matched up and looked as though they’d been in our front garden forever.

Indeed, this approach is a playful one, and humans are at their most creative when playing.  Although the “rules of the game” (in this case, cracked pavers, area needed, amateur paver… all implications of a tight budget ) are quite clear, play allows us to go beyond these constraints, to work around them… and this is where creative surprises occur.  For our paving, the main surprises were the beautiful, wavy edge that meets the grass (or rather, our grass of the future) on one side and garden on the other, and the chance now to grow things in the grout between the pavers.  You can see some creeping thyme and opportunistic sisyrinchium coming up in the picture.

Now, I am not so punk that I am completely against quality materials (although I would argue that found, inexpensive, or second-hand materials can be good quality too) or employing expertise, and there are certainly times when those are called for.  We could have spent money on new flagstones or bricks, and then we would have also wanted to pay someone with the skills to come and lay them.  But… budget… remember?  We like the result.  It looks good to us, it does the job, and it seems like it will last.  And had we not done it ourselves, we would not have had the fun of the creative moment.

 

Three things: Herbs, hidden lives of trees, and vocation

Gathered some herbs this week to make a (giant) bath “tea-bag” as a gift for friend.  This relaxing one has calendula, rose, rose geranium, and lavender.  Oats would be a gentle addition.  Also tied up some peppermint and rosemary for a refreshing shower (just hang from the shower head and let the steam do the work).  You can find more information here.

From Tree to Shining Tree, a fairly recent episode from Radiolab, blew my mind…

Finally, this thought-provoking passage about vocation has been turning over in my mind recently.