a little bit of earth - my not so secret garden

I call it my not-so-secret garden, because everyone I meet gets told all about it and everyone who comes to visit has to go on a long and very boring tour around the thing - but I do love it so!

And my very best christmas present so far has been harvesting the first zucchini fruit from my garden today!

There are still three or four immature little fruit growing, and the plants themselves (there are four blackjack zucchini plants, only two of which are old enough to flower yet) have almost taken over my herb garden! But I do love them so I can't bear to replant them!

I planted in October, and this is where it was at in November:

and this is where I am today (late December)

So far the gardening has gone splendidly.

I have blackjack zucchini, prolific thai basil (and some very slow growing sweet basil), chilli plants, camomile, lettuce, spinach and parsley growing in the long bed

(the close up is of the lettuce, spinach and chili)

Small vincas flowers and some slow growing cosmos in the front garden.

Baby Tomato, mignonette lettuce, iceland poppies and more sweet basil in a portable greenhouse which doesn't seem to be as fabulous as the label promoted.

Some darling pots of geranium cuttings which are taking off fast, as well as garlic chives, lavender, some small little succulent leaves which are yet to root and little christmas egg cartons slowly growing seeds for family members.

The sweetest little sunflowers and marigolds growing in a little bed alongside the fence...

...and...

...PUMPKINS!

HURRAH!

Book Review - "A Pair of Blue Eyes" (or "Victorian Girls Want Sex") by Thomas Hardy

I'm sorry I can't cut this behind a link - unlike lj, blogspot has some complicated html happening.

A Pair of Blue Eyes or Victorian Girls Want Sex
By Thomas Hardy

This book took me a week to get through and I shouted and laughed and hurrah'd and ranted at Hardy's sheer audacity to publicly be such a bastard to his characters.

A Pair of Blue Eyes follows the generic Hardy tragi-romance mould whereby a set of pure, intellectual and personally aspiring young men are emotionally crippled by the thoughtlessness of a fickle woman.

The story follows the heroine, Elfride (to whom the eponymous ‘blue eyes’ refer), as she navigates all the pitfalls of love and courtship that any attractive lass from the English countryside might be expected to charter. Secretly, of course, Hardy is channelling all the positives (and probably negatives) of his early relationship with Emma Gifford (before he locked her in the attic) and Elfride resonates a range of the very characteristics loved and despised in his most famous later female protagonists.

The novel opens with Elfride presented as a curious, naïve creature who is as delicate as any swooning 18th century romantic heroine. After a particularly exhausting round of chess (where her tender female brain is quite taxed) she retires to her room and it is pronounced by the doctor that “on no account whatever was she to play chess ever again”. She is susceptible to guilt also and turns uncharacteristically and briefly to brandy in a moment of emotional overwraughtedness.

Yet, as the novel progresses, Efride shows she has far more vim than most of her male counterparts give her credit for – she is both impulsive (though this is often to her detriment), resourceful and passionate. She admits the first dawnings of sexual feeling for one the village’s only cultured suitors, Mr Stephen Smith – a London man who visits their village on business with her father, the vicar. Elfride wastes no time feeling overwhelmed with the simultaneous emotions of both guilt and lust:

STEPHEN: Elfride, I’m too poor for you, and by you I mean your father.
ELFRIDE: yes that is a bit of a problem.
STEPHEN: I really haven’t any money…
ELFRIDE: yes I know – not a good match for me at all.
STEPHEN: and I haven’t told you my darkest secret yet…
ELFRIDE: I get the picture – let’s run off and get married already.
STEPHEN: why don’t you wait here for me while I make my fortune in India first?
ELFRIDE: so we won’t be having sex then?

Watching Elfride unwittingly destroy her bevy of suitors doesn’t leave one as cold and unsympathetic as reading the fate of Hardy’s later heroine Bathsheba, who gets her comeuppance in the hands of the adulterous Sergeant Troy. Elfride is driven by emotional stimulation and understands her actions and reactions only within a strictly prescribed social code of manners that isn’t always adhered to by its participants. Hardy is clearly describing a lass who has been left quite uneducated about the realities of social behaviour and responsibility and the ending to her tale, though sudden, is both at once outrageous and satisfying.

Elfride takes risks in ways that shock her suitors (and indeed, the Victorian audiences of the day) – and this exploration of her sexual awakening, and the effect it has on the world around her, does wallow somewhat in Victorian sensibility. However, beneath this, contemporary readers can note a celebration of her femininity and Hardy has little of the soured bitterness he implies of his more famous heroines. Elfride is just a nineteen year old girl, after all – she fishes for compliments, is a sucker for a bit of chauvinistic misogyny and makes stupid, impulsive decisions (which Hardy’s voice blames on her female vanity) that often put her life in danger:

ELFRIDE: Watch me walk around this incredibly dangerous cliff face/mountain ridge/church parapet so that I might impress you, pretty boy, and win your lovin’.
SUITOR DU JOUR: I’m not sure we can make love when you’re dead, not legally anyway, so why don’t we go back down and read a bit of Plato?
ELFRIDE: Plato’s a bore – watch how well I walk around on this very high ledge *slips*
SUITOR DU JOUR: *saves* I think I love you for this moment of stupidity.
ELFRIDE: want to sex me?

Throughout the novel the men she is enamoured by are of two moulds. Either they are wet boys who froth romance from every pore and wade through the shallows of emotion, flattering and winning the heroine with an inflamed fervour for sex —

YOUNG MAN: *walking in the countryside* let’s just have a little sit down on this seat for a minute
ELFRIDE: oh look at the time –shouldn’t we be getting back?
YOUNG MAN: you have such beautiful eyes, Elfride
ELFRIDE: I’m not entirely sure it’s proper that we’re sitting alone and so cosily like this…
YOUNG MAN: And you have such stirring lips.
ELFRIDE: You go too far, sir.
YOUNG MAN: *snogs her*
ELFRIDE: Can we try that again?

— or they are older, reclusive, intellectual types who claim the ‘cruel to be kind’ courtship model, mocking and insulting the heroine till she’s left in a state of subjugated adoration.

ELFRIDE: Tell me what you like about me – do you love me for my hair?
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: Don’t be ridiculous, it’s mousy and quite unfashionable.
ELFRIDE: Do you love me for my fair complexion?
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: Be quiet, you brown canker, I’m trying to remember my Latin conjugations.
ELFRIDE: Do you love me for my eyes. Some say they are my best feature. Didn’t you notice that they are even the title of this book?
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: I find you vapid and uninspiring. And a little bit stupid.
ELFRIDE: do you want to snog me?
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: I’m not sure I understand what you mean.

In both cases, of course, Hardy insists the men are absolute pictures of virtue and sexual innocence – inspired only to lust by the heroine’s unwitting fabulousness. Prior to meeting Elfride, the men have no past, no indiscretions, no lusts (but for what the heroine inspires in them) and their characters are only marred by a violent jealousy for Elfride’s increasingly chequered past.

This past literally stalks around the background of this novel as a real life haunting spectre – the hovering and veiled shape of an angry widow which cuts a ghostly and demonic domestic figure. This plot device – a manifestation perhaps of Elfrides guilt (or lack of guilt?) – seems frequently out of place amid the foreground of vapid sensibility and frothy teen love:

DEEP INTELLECUTAL TYPE: *kisses her* have you ever done this before?
ELFRIDE: um *changes topic* have you ever done this before *snogs him back*
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: you know what I love about you – your honesty and your innocence.
SPECTRE OF HER PAST: I curse you to an eternity of unhappiness with my veiled glare of rage.
DEEP INTELLECTUAL TYPE: wha—?
ELFRIDE: do you want to see what’s under my corset?

And yet this character does manage to lend a sense of gothic darkness and justified danger to Elfride’s perhaps wonton fickleness.

But don’t get me wrong, for all my criticism I adored this novel. I devoured it vigorously, my pen spouting opinions in the margins of every page. Hardy is clearly new to this – the book hasn’t the considered plot development of Jude or Tess and his narrative devices and character descriptions sometimes ere on the idealistic penetrations of fanfiction-writing adolescents. However, he writes with wit and the plot veritably rollicks along, always surprising and always engaging. I love imagining the young Hardy (he was just over 30 when he wrote it) truly in love with his heroine and yet despairing at her shortcomings as he despaired about those of his wife.

This is a passionate work that sends both an unpleasant moral message about fickleness but also comments on the behaviour society expects of its women. If you’ve read Hardy before you will thrill at making comparisons to his better known characters and stories, and if you haven’t you will adore this simple romantic tragedy and really enjoy the feeling of outrage once you reach the end of the novel.

A corker read!

guesting

Entertaining. My friends have always been about entertaining - generous and lavish and in particular, have always been fabulous guests. But this past fortnight, in my new place, the friends (fabulous friends who I love dearly) I have had around for dinner have left me feeling poor of pocket and, worse, a highly disgruntled host.

What has happened to halcyon days where said friends would turn up with a little yoo hoo! at the front door - carrying exactly what you'd asked them to bring (and even a little novelty bottle or box of sweets for afterwards).

I put together the post below in the vein of my current favourite book of entertaining (as left on our kitchen table by my flatmate Anne), Entertaining Under the Influence. But the post doesn't stand alone as a mere didaction of unspoken advice. It is couched in the frustration of a fortnight's strained entertainment and longings for Things Past.

It is an in depth description of the one rule I would remind my guests of, if I had the courage, or better still if they read this blog:

Guesting

Rule Number 1:
You should bring something to the table that offsets the labour and cost your host has expended on you by adding a degree of unanticipated enjoyment to the evening. A bottle of wine is favourite classic. Though a fabulous salad or dessert (check with your host first!) or a lively but unusual pet that you can bring out for the party's amusement and then put comfortably and humanely away in a cage during dinner, never misses the mark either.

Rule Number 1.1:
When asked explicitly to bring a bottle of wine. You should not turn up empty handed. Or worse, with the dregs of an old bottle of party liqueur. Nobody wants to drink liqueurs before, or even with, dinner. Midori rarely goes with anything meal short of a sponge trifle and erroneously assumes your host even enjoys Mexican cordials.


Rule Number 1.2:
If you've been asked to bring the wine, then you're responsible for bringing the wine. Never assume your host has some in reserve.

From the host's perspective, with this in mind, it's necessary to tailor your meal and indeed the structure of the entire evening to your guests' little ways.

For example, if you have a guest who likes to stop in at McDonald's before they come for dinner - plan a light meal and a wide range of starter canapés beforehand so you can feast up and still have salvageable leftovers for the next day.

If, on the other hand, your guest likes to fill up on the starters and then cry off the main - don't offer any. Make the meal big and simple and straightforward. Make the wine a-plenty (assuming they bring a bottle) and make sure the music is up.

Above all - generousity is at the heart of entertaining, but it's a heart with two very separate very necessary ventricles through which the generousity must pass* and if you friends just aren't giving to the unspoken code of guesting, the entertainment will, starved, expire.

I have no answers to this - I have the same two friends coming over again on two separate occasions in the next fortnight.

Perhaps if I withhold their dinner...?

* :P yes, I'm all about the awkwardly constructed biological metaphors right now

wherein I blog again and the internet is finally connected

A backdated series of entries from Week One in what Anne and I are calling Lady M.

.................

Saturday

Today I moved into M street. The house is enchanting in an incredibly ‘shabby chic’ fashion (emphasis on shabby). A mishmash of architectural styles – art deco patterns on the ceilings, giant Marvel characters scrawled in biro on the baser block walls of the downstairs studio space, paint jobs from every tenant and every decade and the rippled glass and white window frames from the post war workers’ cottage (which I suspect was the original design). I even went to lifeline and bought a wardrobe from the 1920s and ‘50s vanity and drawers.

I love it. It is making me happy, even though it lacks a certain crisp to the corners. One thing it doesn’t lack is spice. Anney has brought more spices than Coles stocks, including bacon flavouring bits and popcorn seasoning that has made many people very excited. I am happy in a house with many and varied spices. I am so glad she’s moved in.

Monday

A divine walk to work – a tad sunny and given the Brisbane weather extremes, just hot enough to use the sunbrolly – and just long enough that I might one day walk up the hill behind our house without panting.

Tonight, should I have wished it, there could have been a grand cookup, but instead, I bought Subway.

Tuesday

One should walk 23 minutes per day, according to Steven Fry. The weather is steaming tonight. When does he expect me to do my 23minutes I wonder?

Thursday

I had started to make the macaroni cheese – but was interrupted by phonecall from my parents:

PARENTS: where are you, our little cherub?

ME: well, at my home. That place to which you banished me after that big fight we had and after which you said I couldn’t live at home with you ever again.

PARENTS: but why aren’t you here?

ME: I felt that was fairly self evident.

PARENTS: no, we’re at the curry connection waiting for you. Why aren’t you here? You were told last Thursday. You should be here if you want curry. We will pick you up.

This was a positive experience on so many levels.

Friday

Tonight was mum’s exhibition. I felt very elegant, but also very judgemental and very self righteous. I tried to hide it behind the chipper exterior of the general patina of awesomeness. The works looked striking in the gallery and though she didn’t sell out in the vernissage, she had a heap of approval, a small wealth of works bought and a bevvy of positive reinforcement – especially one lady, a return buyer, who bought two works to offset her raging exccentricitieees… (it is about this time I fall asleep!)

Moving House 1

This has been written over a couple of days - as moving house is rather distressing and needed documenting, but quite sapped all my vigour.

It's six twenty five in the morning and I am sitting on my bed surrounded by too many boxes. There is a problem. All these boxes contain books. Underneath these boxes are my other belongings, but I can't box them because they're under the books. 

Am going to ask the help of professional movers to make this transition. Last year I broke a stack of ribs because of ill-considered lifting and most of my family and friends conveniently have had horrid back pain at some point this year.

And besides, I am practically an adult now. Certainly mostly-employed, at least, and it is only a civic duty in these economic times to make the stretch to hire flex movers who pride themselves on furniture removelists that "are fully trained, hardworking and enthusiastic".  They are also advertised as all "under the age of 25, extremely fit and genuinely enjoy moving houses."

I wouldn't want someone who didn't enjoy his job.

I'm excited about the potential of this house. And a bit worried about what state I'm going to find it in. I move in on Friday. Friday afternoon, after work. That's when my stuff will (hopefully) be delivered.  But I can't put anything out until I've at least cleaned the place and turned the electricity on. I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed about organising all that before the move date. 

Thankfully, it's very likely Anney will be my lady lodger - and she's very good with a broom, so I am led to believe.

It's now Saturday.

Anne and I are set to explore the garage sale potentialities of Indooroopilly - all those middle class students moving house and what not. This is very exciting. I have visions of buying distressed and rustic (it needn't be both) hardwood wardrobes for an ant's of the price, and discovering ancient oriental throws  to toss over the backs of chairs and sofas.

Today I will also Finish Packing. I have been beastly lazy. I have books still  to fit into boxes - not to mention the rest of the shit I own.

Moving house seems to me a cluttered and impulsive business - nothing can be planned because the house moving gods don't seem to both reading the plans we lay.  And I'm not really sure what has to happen next.

Thankfully, we found out yesterday that the electricity is already on.

in which the blog starts with a general complaint... from here it can only get better.

I used to keep a journal religiously. I have volumes of diaries in my cupboards at home and innumerable posts on my old livejournal account and yes, I've somewhat fallen off the proverbial wagon in recent years.  

But it's a friday evening and I am on the cusp of turning 26. I have noticed my once attractive pot belly is turning into a bit of a keg, and I have just this morning been officially given notice that I must Move Out (after my over-reacting and emotionally excessive father and I argued last night about... the news).

My birthday picnic is tomorrow - and after a full two months of blue skies and brilliant balmy sunny afternoons the forecast is for either more dust or rain. Perfect timing, Mister Subtropics. 

There are mozzies biting me in abundance and I have a sniffle. 

I've also found a beautiful little shabby house to rent but it'll cost me more than $300 a week.  And did I mention that thanks to Education Qld the likelihood of my getting any sort of teaching job with holiday pay this year is practically naught. Meaning I'll have to find a casual job over the Summer.

So they're my complaints.

Maybe this was why I gave up writing a diary. It always ended up a grand self-involved postulation.

It's my birthday tomorrow and I am well disappointed with it all. I wish it could be Sunday already.