Friday Five: Seamus Heaney

1. Requiem for the Croppies

...And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.

2. Mid-Term Break

...Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

3. Death of a Naturalist

...There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,

But best of all was the warm thick slobber

Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water

in the shade of the banks.

4. Mother of the Groom

...What she remembers

Is his glistening back

In the bath, his small boots

In the ring of boots at her feet.

5. An Ulster Twilight

...Eric, tonight I saw it all

Like shadows on your workshop wall,

Smelled wood shavings under the bench,

Weighed the cold steel monkey-wrench

In my soft hand, then stood at the road

To watch your wavering tail-light fade

And knew that if we met again

In an Ulster twilight we would begin

And end whatever we might say

In a speech all toys and carpentry,

A doorstep courtesy to shun

Your father's uniform and gun.

http://www.poemhunter.com/seamus-heaney/poems/page-1/

Friday Five: Preview

Today was one of the loveliest days this summer, because it involved all the things that make me really happy and content with my lot. Actually, that's not strictly true; most of the things that make me really happy, happened today. So, nit-picking over, here are some of the things that happened today;

I woke up early;

The patron saint of car-parking spaces blessed me yet again;

We all had breakfast in a greasy spoon in Nottingham, that I found through the Phantom's blog;

We bought squillions of books at Waterstone's;

We came home before lunch so had the whole day ahead of us.

And standing about in Waterstone's I found this. Flicking through this slim volume, I remembered that I love Seamus Heaney's poetry more than I love Kevin Costner's characters, but less than I love Pablo Neruda's Sonnets. Friday Five to follow.

Early Morning, August Bank Holiday Monday

Early morning flight paths as pilots play noughts and crosses over sunny Derbyshire.

Clever Clogs Jan And A Pair Of Laundry Books

Very early on Sunday morning, sitting at my pc opening emails, and up pops a little email of scant words:

"Hi. I found a book about clotheslines and posted it on my blog today! You are one of the few people who might be interested!"

Hmm, I thought, so over to Jan's blog and Oh My Goodness, her few words belied a Grand Canyon of delight. Books about laundry, and even better, not just doing the laundry, but about arranging your laundry room. Oh how my little heart leapt for joy.

I love the sun with the sticks for rays, the woman's pinny and red polka dot skirt, I love the wicker laundry basket, but best of all I love that she's hanging out rectangular laundry. Oh this book must surely have been designed and written for me. If you click on this link, you can read a few pages and check out what sort of laundry liner you are; a willy-nilly clothes hanger, an uncomplicated hanger, or are you, like the photographer for this book, someone who, "remembers everything his mother told him but hangs a renegade clothesline."

This book is just as gorgeous, and if you click on this link, you can scroll through a few pages of the book. Who in their right minds keeps clothes pegs, (albeit gorgeous wooden ones that are utterly impractical and useless in conditions any greater than 2 on the Beaufort Scale), in a large glass screw top jar? Who knows; who cares, but I'm off to Nottingham this morning to buy some wooden pegs to keep as a decorative item in my laundry room. You see Jan, all this from your 25-word email.

An Early Morning Towards Summer's End

The birds woke me before six this morning. After the early morning ritual of making tea, I stood at the french windows in my jimmies, and watched the day start. After a few minutes I stepped out into the chilly air, and began my morning rounds. The lawns at the other parts of the gardens were heavily flecked with dew, my flipflops no protection for my feet or the bottom of my jimmies, which soon became wet. Best of all, the nasturtiums were covered with tiny dew droplets, just at that stage before the droplets start to run together and form tiny rivulets across the leaves. The leaves on the roses were all edged with droplets too. Summer's coming to an end, and this morning I got the first whiff of autumn on the air. Wonderful. I love the summer and the heat of the sun on my body, but autumn's still my favourite season.

And the crockery from yesterday's tea party with girlfriends. Colourful and lovely and light and wonderful.

Friday Five: Budweiser Ads

Inspired by Mr Anthrope's latest blog entry, I've been cruising YouTube for visual highlights of my formative years; that is, TV adverts. The UK is acknowledged by the marketing gurus to be the most sophisticated marketing audience on the planet. And if you've had the misfortune to watch telly anywhere else in the world, and caught their commercial breaks, you'll have watched some of the most banal drivel ever created. Except of course, the rash of Budweiser ads that came out of America in the nineties, and just one, I think, from the noughties. Oh man, these were brilliantly observed. Whoever came up with the "Real Men Of Genius" campaign, is a genius themselves. Here are my top five Budweiser adverts of all time.

1. Mr Really Bad Toupee Wearer makes me scream with laughter. "You think it looks natural, but it couldn't look phonier if it had a chin strap. Made from space-age fibre, it can repel anything; rain, wind, snow and especially young women."

2. Mr Pro-Wrestling Wardrobe Designer is outrageous. "While lesser designers would shy away from putting three hundred pound men in spandex, you embrace it."

3. Wassup. "Nothing. Watching the game, having a bud." This is how men communicate; they're not from Mars, but planet Budweiser.

4. The Budweiser Frogs Outwit The Lizards. "Frogs sell beer. Number one rule of advertising."

5. And finally.

Queenship Of Mary

Christmas preparations begin today.

Summer Pruning In The Peach Case

Look what I found in the peach house yesterday, but only after giving the apricot fans an overly severe summer prune, a.k.a. "How to manage the cumulative effects of pre-AS level exam results stress whilst wielding a very sharp pair of Felcos."The AS results are out this morning, and Merci Beacoup Enfant Deux passed extra specially brilliantly, thank goodness. Summer pruning is another lovely horticultural routine that marks the turning of the gardening year, and encourages the development of fruiting spurs ready for next year's crop. I like the summer prune as it always lets the sunshine into the fans and espaliers, reveals fat juicy fruits just waiting to ripen, and brings such a sense of space to the peach case afterwards. I can actually walk along the cast iron path without feeling I'm fighting my way through a jungle of overgrowth. This bird clearly took the opportunity for some undisturbed nest building, incorporating some of the builders' hazard tape into her own construction site. Her nest is empty now, this year's chicks grown and gone. We have done our duty to her as gardeners, given her a place of safety, warm and dry to raise her chicks.

The standard apple and pears will not be pruned until midwinter, probably January. The standard stone fruits, or drupes, are never pruned until late spring / early summer, or between April and June, when the sap is flowing freely. This bleeding prevents the spores of the silver leaf fungus Chondrostereum purpureum (syn. Stereum purpureum) entering through recently injured surfaces such as pruning cuts, broken branches and frost cracks. The spores produce fungal threads, which grow through the living wood, killing the tissues. The fungus does not spread into the leaves and there is no danger of infection from the silvered leaves. Silver leaf fungus produces a toxin which spreads upwards in the sap and causes the cells of the upper leaf surfaces to separate, so that air accumulates between the cell layers, altering the light-reflecting qualities of the leaf and giving it a silvery appearance. Fruiting bodies develop on dead wood, forming tiers of small, purple or brown bracket-like structures with a whitish woolly upper surface. They also develop on recently exposed stumps and felled logs. The spores produced cause new infections, occurring in fruit trees from September to May.

I have peach, nectarine and apricot fans and espaliers in the peach case, the drupe next to the bird's nest is an apricot.

Assumption Of Our Lady

Sacred Space writes about today's Holy Day of Obligation thus;

When Jesus took his mother, body and soul, into heaven, he did honour to the poor clay of which our human bodies are fashioned: a first step towards making all things new. ‘The whole of nature groans in a common travail all the while. And not only do we see that, but we ourselves do the same; we ourselves, although we have already begun to reap our spiritual harvest, groan in our hearts, waiting for that adoption which is the ransoming of our bodies from their slavery.’ (Romans, 8, 22-23)
Until I watched Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, I had always thought of Mary thus,

And after watching his film, I now think of her courage, walking right beside him through his horrifying last hours, "It begins." She didn't turn away or hide her face, she watched everything they inflicted upon him. And the closing scene of this film is her face turned to us; he did this for you, he did this for us.

Where Your Treasure Is, There Your Heart Will Be Also

Catholic Church of All Saints, Ashover, Derbyshire*

This from Sacred Space;

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Luke 12: 32-34

"Some of this is ancient, natural wisdom. The Romans compared money to seawater: the more you drink, the thirstier you become. Your message, Lord, is not about insulating my heart against the shock of loss, but about treasuring what will last beyond this world, the love of you and of your kingdom. It is about extending love, not limiting it to what is perishable."

*As this church was built before 1536, it is of course Catholic, temporarily under the guardianship of the Church of England.

A Passenger To Tehran

"Imagine that you have ridden for four days in summer across a plain; that you have then come to a barrier of snow mountains and ridden up the pass; that from the top of the pass you have seen a second plain, with a second barrier of mountains in the distance, a hundred miles away; that you know that beyond these mountains lies yet another plain, and another; and for days, even weeks, you must ride with no shade, and the sun overhead, and nothing but the bleached bones of dead animals strewing the track. Then when you come to trees and running water, you will call it a garden. It will not be flowers and their garishness that your eyes crave for, but a green cavern full of shadows and pools where goldfish dart, and the sound of a little stream."

Vita Sackville-West

"A Passenger To Tehran"

Rosa Margaret Merril

David Austin describes Rosa "Margaret Merril" thus; Dainty, high-centred buds opening to white open flowers overlaid with a satin-pink sheen. These possess a delicacy not frequently found in modern roses, and they have a quite exceptional fragrance. Dark green foliage. Alan Titchmarsh describes Margaret Merril as one of his most favourite, and certainly a most fragrant rose.

These roses figure strongly at Beth Shalom. When it opened in September 1995, it was the first dedicated Holocaust Memorial and Education Centre in Britain. It was called Beth Shalom, the place of peace. It soon became a place of education, a place of memory, a place of testimony, a place of art, a place of academia, and much more besides. The Centre was created in the grounds of a former farmhouse, in the village of Laxton on the edge of Sherwood Forest in North Nottinghamshire. The surrounding countryside provides a peaceful setting and the Centre itself is set in two acres of beautiful landscaped gardens.

The Centre provides a range of facilities for people of all backgrounds and persuasions to explore the history and implications of the Holocaust. It houses a permanent exhibition on the Nazi period and offers space for reflection in the memorial rose gardens. The memorial gardens contain a number of different areas, including a beautiful rose garden that has become a place of pilgrimage in its own right. Over 800 visitors to the Centre, many of them survivors and their families, have planted roses in memory of the victims. For many, it is the only place where the names of their parents and siblings are permanently inscribed. If you look closely at the pictures above, you can read the dedication plaques next to the roses. The plaque underneath the pillar reads; "Beneath this pillar lies soil from each of the six death camps whose names are inscribed upon it. These six camps were built by people during the Nazi era specifically to murder their fellow human beings. In less than four years millions of men, women and children mainly Jews, perished in these places."

If I had room in my garden, I would plant Rosa Margaret Merril in memory of Lord Shawcross, Britain’s chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials of 1945-46. His advocacy is the stuff of legends. "In measured tones, the more effective for being entirely without histrionics or anger, he relentlessly built up the indictment against the accused of waging aggressive war in breach of treaty obligations. The very calmness of Shawcross’s exposition made it the more terrible. He let the appalling history of Nazi oppression unfold itself to the courtroom through a dispassionate relation of facts which told their own awful story."

The Nuremberg trials initiated a movement for the prompt establishment of a permanent international criminal court, eventually leading over fifty years later to the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Conclusions of the Nuremberg trials served to help draft:
The Genocide Convention, 1948.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.
The Convention on the Abolition of the Statute of Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, 1968.
The Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War, 1949; its supplementary protocols, 1977, and in 1998, to The Human Rights Act.

Never be a perpetrator. Never be a victim. And never, but never, be a bystander. Yahuda Bauer

The Purpose Of Negotiation Is To Hold The Point Of Conflict

Here is a conversation between Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux and I this evening.

m.b.e.d. Are you going shopping mum?
mum. No, I'm watching the news.
m.b.e.d. When you've finished watching the news, are you going shopping?
mum. I could do. What do you want?
m.b.e.d. I'd like some bread.
mum. There's some in the pantry.
m.b.e.d. Is it white bread?
mum. Yes.
m.b.e.d. Is it sliced?
mum. Yes.
m.b.e.d. Did you make it?
mum. No.
m.b.e.d. Ok I'll have some for supper.

Ungrateful wretch.

The Transmigration of Dream Into Salad

My heart, queen of the beehive and the barnyard,
little leopard of the string and the onions,
I love to watch your miniature empire
sparkle: your weapons of wax and wine and oil, garlic, and the soil that opens for your hands,
the blue material that ignites in your hands,
the transmigration of dream into salad,
the snake rolled up in the garden hose.
You with your sickle that lifts the perfumes,
you with the bossy soapsuds,
you climbing my crazy ladders and stairs.
You taking charge: even my handwriting, its characteristics,
even the grains of sand in my notebooks - finding in those pages
lost syllables that were searching for your mouth.
Sonnet XXXVI

Friday Five: Chuck Norris

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Chuck Norris (But You Were Too Afraid of Roundhouse Kicks To Ask)

1. Chuck Norris can divide by zero.

2. Hannibal didn't sack Rome; Chuck Norris did.

3. Chuck Norris can believe it's not butter.

4. When an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger was shown in Iraq, Saddam surrendered to Chuck Norris just in case.

5. Chuck Norris has the greatest Poker-Face of all time. He won the 1983 World Series of Poker, despite holding only a Joker, a Get out of Jail Free Monopoly card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a Blockbuster Video card.

Prunus Domestica "Warwickshire Drooper"

This is a lovely plum tree, producing masses of yellow plums towards the early weeks of autumn. It's had quite a chequered past, and more than likely started life as Prunus domestica Dundale from Kent. It was grown commercially in the English Midlands under the name Magnum, until that was replaced by Warwickshire Drooper.

Keeper's Nursery describes it thus: medium sized, oval-oblong fruit. Yellow skin speckled with red spots, brownish russet patches and covered with a thin grey bloom. Tender, yellow flesh. Thick skinned. Quite sweet. Fruit hangs well on the tree. Very vigorous tree with a conspicuous weeping habit. Very heavy regular cropper. Attractive tree particularly in the early autumn when it has long hanging branches full of yellow plums.

I've been sitting at my garden table throughout the summer, marvelling at this little tree's ability to live up to its name. It seems as if each week the branches of Warwickshire Drooper become more curvy; reaching upwards all spring, then curling outwards and under the combined weight of DNA and a bumper crop of plums. The June drop took few victims. Then last night I sat near one of the thymes cutting some herbs for a supper of toasted bread and herbed feta, and my eyes were entranced by the sheer weight of plums bending the tree so low. So low that the trunk looked to be pretty much 45 degrees to the soil. Enchantment eventually gave way to the realisation that it wasn't the weight of plums but a loosened trunk where it entered the soil, that was the problem. Closer inspection revealed a gap measuring a good couple of inches around the base of the trunk, and mild panic set in. I called beloved firstborn to help, and whilst he slowly pushed the tree perpendicular, I dug over the surrounding soil, then firmed it in with good, strong boot action. I added a supporting stake and then went through each branch in turn "June dropping" with secateurs and a new sense of urgency. There's only so many plums you want to eat warm from the tree, and I like this plum tree so much, I didn't want to lose it due to carelessness on my part.

It's an unusual variety. I first saw it summers ago, in the Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens, near the flight path of Birmingham Airport and within the suburbs of Birmingham itself. The Hall was built in 1599 by Sir Edward Devereux and extended by Sir John Bridgeman I about 100 years later.The Walled Gardens cover some 10 acres, and were developed by several generations of the Bridgeman Family (later to become the Earls of Bradford) reaching peaks of excellence around 1740 and 1900. The Gardens fell into decline during the second half of the twentieth century until they were rescued by the Castle Bromwich Hall and Gardens Trust in 1985.

The Walled Gardens (listed grade II*); a rare example of formal English Baroque garden design, are being restored as near as possible to the period 1680 - 1740. I like everything about these gardens, especially that they are cared for by a largely volunteer workforce of committed individuals, passionate about our horticultural heritage. And I like the little tea rooms, where they serve cakes and scones made by the workforce, all "ladies of a certain age," and sell you packets of seeds, harvested from the Gardens and made from folded brown paper with hand written labels. RHS Wisley this isn't, but it is a place full with passion and commitment and love.

http://www.btinternet.com/~jimperkins/page66.html