A garden meme

It's not fair, I tell you. That Denis! Wait 'til I see him! I'll hit him over the head with something round and heavy that has a handle! You see, dear Reader, Anni tagged each of us with a literary meme. Your correspondent did her bit and completed her meme and tagged some others. But what did that Denis do? He piked and changed the rools with Anni's permission. He says that he doesn't read ordinary books any more. He says

"In the past I have been a very enthusiastic reader. In recent years, I have found myself reading plant books - reference books about native plants, Orchids, Peonies. I love these books. In the past I have been a very enthusiastic reader. In recent years, I have found myself reading plant books - reference books about native plants, Orchids, Peonies. I love these books."

So Denis has transposed the literary meme to be a meme about plants. Now, as far as Miss Eagle is concerned that's OK and his plant meme is wonderful. Trouble is he tagged your correspondent. Now she gets to do two memes to his one. And Miss Eagle knows stuff all about plants compared with Denis who calls things by their proper names as well as their nicknames and seems to be on really intimate terms with them.

Anyways, Miss Eagle will NOT be known as a piker. She will struggle on and see what comes out the other end of the sausage machine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. One plant that changed your life.

Miss Eagle can't think of a plant that changed her life but here she wants to talk about two plants that live in her memory. When Miss Eagle was but a slip of an eaglet, her school used to have an annual ball in which we little ones turned up in long dresses and suits. Miss Eagle's mother always made her a beautiful coronet of flowers. These were made from crucifix orchids and sacred bamboo which just grew wild in our garden. We didn't yet have a refrigerator so once made the coronet was put on the block of ice in the ice-box to stay fresh.

2. One plant you've planted more than once.

Miss Eagle loves her herbs. It is hard to choose between them but for this exercise she has chosen Italian parsley and has a picture of it growing in her own garden.

3. One plant you'd want on a desert island.

This is a no-brainer. Miss Eaglet would want the Tropical Lima Bean otherwise known as the Madagascar Bean. Miss Eagle, when she was living in the desert in Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, came across the description of the Tropical Lima Bean in the Permaculture Journal. It was described as capable of being grown to make a green wall - just what Miss Eagle wanted for her back fence. She asked everywhere - no one knew of it. Miss Eagle has only just discovered its proper name. In desperation she wrote to the people who had written about. They were in WA and back came a packet full of beans. They are wonderful. They are productive. Miss Eagle had a teeny weeny garden in TC but what she grew made her rather sustainable if not 100% so. The garden grew rocket and silver beet. A wonderful basis for salads. Tomatoes and basil - those wonderful companion plants. And the tropical lima bean. The bean cooks wonderfully and becomes beautifully tasty and tender. It is wonderful in a salsa accompanied with pasta. It is ideal in bean burgers. Just keep on picking and it keeps on producing and it does become a very high green wall if you train it on a trellis.

4. One plant that made you giddy?

Miss Eagle thinks the plants that make her giddy are the breathtakingly beautiful ones. She recalls a rose from over forty years ago. It was so red it was nearly black and it was like velvet. And the scent. Miss Eagle longs for a rose like that.

But there are other beautiful flowers. Here is a picture of one, a camellia, from her own garden.

5. One plant that wracked you with sobs.

The ones that wrack me with sobs are the ones that are needlessly destroyed. Miss Eagle recalls the declaration of the World Heritage listed rainforest in North Queensland. It included the Daintree. This area received all the publicity during the campaign to save the rainforest. But the rainforest covered by the listing began just up the road from Miss Eagle's home at Bluewater, half an hour north of Townsville. The National Party was still in power and it, along with its cohorts, fought tooth and nail against the listing. Miss Eagle remembers travelling along a road she wasn't supposed to be on behind the Wallamin Falls near Ingham and seeing absolute destruction - the width of a four lane highway through the forest. No coverage for this. This was out of site and out of mind. When will we ever learn!

6. One plant that you wish had been grown.

Miss Eagle can't answer this. There are so many. The wishlist is best summed up in the Garden Plans ofEdna Walling. Edna's garden, her choices of plants, her designs are the stuff of dreams and wishes.

7. One plant you wish had never been grown.

For a Queenslander like Miss Eagle, this is a no-brainer. It is of course the Prickly Pear.

8. One plant you are currently growing.

Currently this Azalea is in full and glorious bloom. It is a gay plant in the best sense of the word. It reminds Miss Eagle of a wonderful dancing lady in a gay yellow ball gown. It is a joy in this season of Risorgimento.

9. One plant you've been meaning to grow.

Miss Eagle realises her limitations as a gardener and her ignorance as a plantswoman. So she is not meaning to grow anything. It is all she can do to maintain what is there now and replace those that are annuals or of limited life span.

10. Now tag five bloggers.

Alice at A Growing Delight

Tanya at The Purple Giraffe

Mary at Devonhouse Recollections

Jane at yarnstorm

Kali at Enjoying the Journey

A literary meme - Part 2

This follows on from the previous post.

6. One book that wracked you with sobs?

Miss Eagle doesn't think she was wracked with sobs when she read this book - and she can't remember the last time this happened - but the tears flowed. The book in question is Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. What a beautiful book! How Miss Eagle would love to be able to write a book such as this. Miss Eagle is a great fan of Kingsolver. I only have three of her novels under my belt (the other's are the Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees) but Miss Eagle's project is to read all of them.

7. One book you wish had never been written

If anyone is writing another conspiracy theory/mystery thriller which includes gnosticism and the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, could you please desist. Put down that pen! Delete that stuff from your computer! The world does not need one more piece of this drivel!

Back in the 80s, Miss Eagle read Holy Blood, Holy Grail which talked about the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Interesting ideas but nothing to write home about. Then in the 1990s, Miss Eagle came across Foucauld's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. This tour de force by one of the world's great public intellectuals covers everything - every mysterious organisation ever thought about by a conspiracy theorist. A sort of history of everything laid out in 600 pages with a satirical edge. Coming from the intellect of Eco, it is sometimes difficult and is nothing if not comprehensive. After that, Miss Eagle decided, why would one waste time reading The Da Vinci Code.

8. One book you're currently reading

Miss Eagle is currently immersed in Karen Armstrong's latest, The Great Transformation: the world in the time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah. This is going to be another tour de force from a great public intellectual. And, while on the subject of public intellectuals, can we name Karen Armstrong - who describes herself as a freelance monotheist - the most intelligent woman in the universe? Now this topic takes a huge sweep through time and across cultures, regions, and religions. Miss Eagle will suspend judgment on whether this Axial Age concept is worthwhile or merely another bundling book of life, the universe, and everything. Miss Eagle got in early with her copy on backorder from Readings based on a review in The Age. You see, dear Reader, the eight century BCE holds a great fascination for your correspondent because of the eighth century prophets of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. This was a period of strong voices, often from simple backgrounds, speaking out on ethics, justice, and humanity's relationship with its Creator - and the consequences should we contravene these natural laws. So if this was the situation in the middle-east of that period, then Miss Eagle was eager to participate in Armstrong's exploration into this period in other spaces and places.

Miss Eagle thinks that the purpose in Armstrong's epic is to help us to understand one another better at the deepest levels of the human spirit - something she lives out in her own life. This understanding is something that humanity is in sore need of at this point in history. Let's take up the challenge and join her on the adventure into these little known realms.

9. One book you've been meaning to read.

Miss Eagle keeps a list of books she means to read in a Task on Microsoft Outlook. Now, this doesn't mean she gets to actually read these books but as interesting ones come to her attention listing them means they are not forgotten. One from this list is Traumascapes by Maria Tumarkin. Traumascapes is a book about place - places scarred by tragedy. Miss Eagle, dear Reader, is a great believer in the spirit of place and so the theme of this book is appealing. But let Miss Eagle tell you one story that almost certainly has not made it into this book. A friend of Miss Eagle's from her Mount Isa days is a keen historian. In her research, she visited Linda Downs. Linda Downs had been the site of a battle between Aboriginal people and police. Seven police died. The police then decided to take their revenge and killed ten Aborigines for every police killed. 70 people. My friend tells me that, in accord with Aboriginal spirituality which says the spirit of a dead person returns to a tree, there are 70 trees at this site. All are dead and the atmosphere is one of ethereal silence. A sacred place of great trauma, indeed.

10. Now tag five bloggers

Aah, who gets tagged now?

Suse at Pea Soup, Lazy Cow,

Pete over at Crooked Paws Retreat, Clarice at Storybook Woods,

and Barb at Woofnanny.

A literary meme - Part 1

Big Tree, Gardiner's Creek - Louis Buvelot

Collection of the City of Whitehorse, Melbourne

Anni Heino has tagged Denis and Miss Eagle with a book meme. So here is Miss Eagle's literary effort, Anni.

1. One book that changed your life

Miss Eagle's earliest memories of reading are the volumes of Australian poetry on her grandparent's bookshelves at Wilston in Brisbane. Here began her love of the Nationalists - those new generations of Australian poets whose stories of the social life and character of a newly discovered continent became woven into our lives; those poets who were published in the Pink Pages of The Bulletin.

Nana O'Carroll's particular favourite was Fair Girls and Grey Horses by Will Ogilvie. Needless to say, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson were there. But Miss Eagle's earliest very own copy was a volume titled The Australasian Book of Verse for Boys and Girls. This book was on her bookshelf for decades until it literally fell to pieces. All the greats were represented along with people who talked about "out where the crow flies backwards and the pelican builds its nest". In adulthood, this love of Australian poetry became a love of the bush and transferred itself to art in the form of the works of Louis Buvelot and the Heidelberg School and the novels of the period of which the foremost is Such is Life.

And then, of course, there is no substitute for seeing Australia for oneself which Miss Eagle has been doing consistently for three decades and will continue to do. Next weekend, Miss Eagle traverses central and north-western Victoria en route to Broken Hill and then across to Robertson in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales up behind the Illawarra where she may, at last, get to meet Anni.

2. One book you have read more than once.

For this, Miss Eagle has singled out a little known 20th century spritual classic, A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly. Miss Eagle tries not to be without a copy of this little masterpiece but has given away numerous copies. Last year though, on Ebay, she obtained from the USA a first edition complete with dustjacket. What joy!

3. One book you'd want on a desert island.

At the age of 17, Miss Eagle fell hopelessly in love with Boris Pasternak after reading Dr Zhivago. Since then, she is never without a copy on the shelf. Pasternak's masterpiece gives the appearance of prose but it is, quite simply, poetry paraded as prose. And if you loved the movie, Miss Eagle wishes it to be known that the movie is only a very small portion of the book. But the main reason Miss Eagle keeps a copy on the bookshelf is not the novel itself but the collection of Dr Zhivago's poetry which comes at the conclusion of the novel. Aaah, the romance, the religion and the tragedy of Russia!

4. One book that made you giddy?

The award for this goes to The Outcasts of Foolgarah by Frank Hardy. Outcasts is a political satire published in 1971. The book is dated now because the politicians it lampoons are virtually unknown even to people of middle years these days. The Outcasts were the dunny men. The thesis of the novel is that the only ones with true freedom are those who are very wealthy who can own or flout the system or the very poor who are outside the system. The dunny men were too poor to have mortgages from the bank over their homes. They built their homes out of materials salvaged from the dump. They owned their own homes and so had a wonderful freedom. Miss Eagle had led a sheltered Catholic girl hood in a respectable family. Frank Hardy gave Miss Eagle an education in amongst the hilarity of The Outcasts.

5. One book that you wish had been written

Miss Eagle has a dear friend, Jenny. We live far apart these days and our friendship is the occasional email letter interspersed with funny emails. Jenny is older than Miss Eagle and a former animal control officer and pound keeper. She is or was a world expert in her field and what Jenny does not know about animals and their owners is not worth knowing. Jenny is of British origins and grew up in Kashmir where her father was stationed with the British Army. Jenny had a privileged lifestyle. She came to Australia, completely helpless but ready for adventure, when she was 18. She knew precious little so when she wanted to learn something she asked someone to take her on and teach her. This was how she came to be a panel beater at one point in her life. Jenny's adventures were many and through them all she became a woman of great wisdom and great humour. Miss Eagle used to say to her that she had to write her story and, if she didn't, Miss Eagle would follow her around with a tape recorder. This has never happened and Jenny emailed Miss Eagle a couple of weeks ago to say she has lung cancer. She has returned from treatment to palliative care. Now Jenny is at an age where news of life coming to an end is not a surprise. But I don't think this what she or her friends would have chosen for her. So, it looks like Jenny's story will not reach a wider public. But there are those of us who love her very much and there will always be a very warm space in our hearts which is especially hers.

Miss Eagle will take a pause.

The second five questions of the meme will be in the next post.

Miss Eagle has been tagged.

Sorry, Ms Robyn. Only just discovered that you have tagged me. Health hasn't been too good since half-way through March and the immune system got run down. The last week it was the 'flu. But enough of the excuses. Time to meditate - and tell of my 10 Simple Pleasures.

No. 1: A Life Enlarged
Miss Eagle has been a widow for sixteen years and there is one thing she misses more than sex. That one thing is the end of the day when two people get together in the evening light before it's dark. There will be a drink in their hands - tea, coffee, a beer or a wine. It is a time of sharing, a time of one life interacting with another and enlarging it. When this time is subtracted from one's life, existence becomes one-dimensional.

No. 2: The Memory of Moonlight

The full moon high enough in a clear sky to brightly illuminate the land or the water. Miss Eagle thinks of her early childhood when she lived at Bay Terrace, Wynnum Central in Brisbane and her home looked out over Moreton Bay. She has never forgotten the moon on the water. Her second favourite memory of moonlight is the opposite. It is the view of moonlight from the hill behind the Overlander Hotel in Mount Isa, North West Queensland looking east towards Cloncurry over the flat expanse, transforming an arid landscape.

No. 3: Domesticity with Love

Miss Eagle was never a brilliant sewer like so many women in the blogosphere are. She is a plodder. Take away the McCall's paper pattern and she is likely to collapse in a heap. Her knitting was done with patterns from the Australian Women's Weekly. But if Miss Eagle sewed or knitted with little skill, she certainly did so with lots of love. Miss Eagle has kept a select collection of these items. Baby clothes; a little white dress with a blue sash lovingly constructed for Herself; teeny weeny suits for two boys who grew into two metre tall men, Mr Brick Outhouse and Mr Pump Water. Lastly there is an olive green gabardine safari suit constructed for Big Red, Miss Eagle's Dearly Beloved, when such things were in vogue.

No. 4: Saturday lunch

Miss Eagle's favourite form of entertainment is Saturday lunch. The preferred place is outdoors under a shady tree. There is something about a Saturday lunch. The weekend stretches ahead and there seems to be lots of time: lots of time for conversation and sharing the company of family and friends. Saturday lunch is a great success if it extends into early evening and the left overs come around again.

No. 5: A Garden Room

Miss Eagle loves a home that integrates house and garden. In her current home, there is a sun room that opens on to a courtyard with lots of flowery pots. From this room, Miss Eagle can look across to the hills of the Dandenong Ranges National Park. Miss Eagle's home before this was at Bluewater north of Townsville in North Queensland - between the World Heritage listed rainforest of the Bluewater Ranges and Halifax Bay looking across to the Palm Group of islands. It was a sprawling home of western red cedar with a garden room, walled only on three sides, opening out into the garden. The Garden Room and the Terrace it opened onto were paved with stone laid by Big Red just prior to his death. It was a gathering place - for parties and afternoon teas - with living and dining areas opening on to it.

No. 6: A Night of Crime

Friday night is not the same if there is no decent crime on the ABC. The particular pleasure that Miss Eagle recalls is when she was a corporate PA in a Kerry Packer company working in North Sydney. Now Miss Eagle has never been a beer drinker - except that, when living in Sydney, she took a liking to Toohey's New. So the pleasurable memory is of leaving work on a Friday afternoon, heading through Greenwood Plaza to North Sydney station and, en route, picking up two bottles of Toohey's New at the supermarket. Jonathan Creek would commence at 8.30pm and Miss Eagle would curl up on the couch and take the top off the first TN. Pleasure, indulgence, relaxation, a week's end!

No. 7: State of Origin

The three great football games of the year are Rugby League games: Queensland -v- New South Wales (Cane Toads -v- Cockroaches) in the State of Origin series. Miss Eagle is not a pretty sight at this time. She is known to be very loud in barracking for Queensland. In Sydney, the TV viewing was accompanied, as before, by a Toohey's New. In the Northern Territory and Victoria it is accompanied by Rum and Coke (Bundaberg Rum - from Queensland - and Diet Coke). Miss Eagle has never seen a State of Origin in person - but she notes that the third Origin Game will be held in Melbourne this year and Herself has said that she will shout the ticket. Miss Eagle will almost certainly freeze - but, oh, the pleasure of seeing Billy Slater run!

No. 8: The Official Family Dinner

There is an official family dinner in Miss Eagle's family. It is in its third generation. It is a roast dinner - a corner piece of topside, approximately 3kg, especially ordered at the butcher shop because the selvedge of fat must be left on top; vegetables and gravy; and a Yorkshire Pudding. So when there is a family re-union, we don't kill the fatted calf - we order the topside roast.

No. 9: Celebrating the Seasons

As readers of The Trad Pad know, Miss Eagle likes to mark the seasons: the changing patterns of the planet; the spiritual calendar. Particular favourites are those that incorporate food.

No. 10: Making Memories

This is the most important of the simple pleasures and bookends nicely with No. 1. In a marriage, in a family, it is important to have shared memories. This is the story, the biography of a marriage, a family. It helps to forge the bonds that keep people together. While memories come in all sorts, shapes and sizes and a range of price tags, the best ones are simple and pleasurable. They can be funny, adventurous, inspirational, or just drawing together in the mundane minutes of daily life. There are two things, two very short sermons, Miss Eagle preaches following the experience of her Dearly Beloved's death. The first is that relationships are the most important thing in the world. Whatever looms large in your life at the moment - unpaid bills, job loss, difficult children, insecurity - none of these holds a candle to personal relationships and the bonds of marriage and family. The second is: make memories. Don't sit in front of the television like couch potatoes with little conversation. Go make a memory.

PEOPLE MISS EAGLE WANTS TO TAG

Miss Eagle wants to tag the following people:

1. Sharon at Beyond 'the blank page'
2. Kali at Enjoying the Journey
3. Mary at Devonhouse Recollections
4. Bec & Kim at Glamourouse
5. Carol at My Garden and Decorations
6. Anni at Mayday 34°35'S 150°36'E
7. Kitty at Peregrine Sojo
8. Mindy at Peaceful Corner
9. Revem at Rev Em's Ponderings
10. Barb at Woof Nanny