Some Hydrangea paniculata I came across while wandering through Bounds Green in August.
I believe these particular ones are Sundae Fraise.
Some Hydrangea paniculata I came across while wandering through Bounds Green in August.
I believe these particular ones are Sundae Fraise.
I took these photos of Sabine's azaleas during my last cat-sitting for her before I went to Australia.
The blooms were beautiful and eye-catching.
According to Wikipedia: Azaleas and rhododendrons were once so infamous for their toxicity that to receive a bouquet of their flowers in a black vase was a well-known death threat.
But they were apparently immortalised by Tang dynasty Chinese poet Du Fu in the last two stanzas of his poem, Alone, looking for blossoms along the river:
The sorrow of riverside blossoms inexplicable,
And nowhere to complain — I've gone half crazy.
I look up our southern neighbor. But my friend in wine
Gone ten days drinking. I find only an empty bed.
A thick frenzy of blossoms shrouding the riverside,
I stroll, listing dangerously, in full fear of spring.
Poems, wine — even this profusely driven, I endure.
Arrangements for this old, white-haired man can wait.
A deep river, two or three houses in bamboo quiet,
And such goings on: red blossoms glaring with white!
Among spring's vociferous glories, I too have my place:
With a lovely wine, bidding life's affairs bon voyage.
Looking east to Shao, its smoke filled with blossoms,
I admire that stately Po-hua wineshop even more.
To empty golden wine cups, calling such beautiful
Dancing girls to embroidered mats — who could bear it?
East of the river, before Abbot Huang's grave,
Spring is a frail splendor among gentle breezes.
In this crush of peach blossoms opening ownerless,
Shall I treasure light reds, or treasure them dark?
At Madame Huang's house, blossoms fill the paths:
Thousands, tens of thousands haul the branches down.
And butterflies linger playfully — an unbroken
Dance floating to songs orioles sing at their ease.
I don't so love blossoms I want to die. I'm afraid,
Once they are gone, of old age still more impetuous.
And they scatter gladly, by the branchful. Let's talk
Things over, little buds — open delicately, sparingly.
In Chinese culture, it's apparently known as the "thinking of home bush", thus my title for this post.
Sabine's home has become something of a second home for me over the past year and a half, and spending time with her kittehs most months last year and many months this year so far has impacted my mental health positively.
Not to mention the enjoyment I get from the evenings spent in conversation with her the nights before she goes away. And the delicious and varied salads she usually makes us.
Whilst I was visiting Dad last month, we tried to sort through Mum's belongings to work out what to keep, what family or friends might want, what to give to charity, and what to throw out.
We didn't get to her sewing room at all, but we did at least go through her wardrobe, jewellery, bathroom items and some odds and sods. In short, the items in Dad's bedroom.
Before this visit, I probably wouldn't have even vaguely entertained trying on her clothing as we were vastly different in size, shape, and style for most of our lives.
This visit, I'd put on weight, so I wasn't quite so dismissive. Though I knew our sense of style was quite different, and there would likely be few, if any, items I would retain.
I wasn't wrong.
In the end, all I brought back to London was a white shawl (I don't know if it was handmade or bought. It doesn't have a label, but that doesn't prove one way or another), a cream and a royal blue scarf (both bought). And her wedding dress which was tailor-made for her, my Dad thinks, in Sydney.
I spent AU$50 on dry cleaning her wedding dress in Ulverstone before I left as it had rust-coloured mould marks on it from being stored in their walk-in robe in a corner with poor air circulation.
Despite not being kept in any protective plastic covering, it had endured well and came up beautifully from the dry cleaning.
Although unfortunately, at some point, over the years, Mum had unpicked all six of the Marabou trims that encircled the bottom of the dress.
Dad remembers seeing her doing this but doesn't recall what she gave as the reason. We don't know if they may be stowed in her glory box in the built-in robe in their front room (the room Mum used as a sewing room, where my piano also lives) or if she threw them out at some point. Hopefully, next time I visit, I can investigate that.
I remember Mum asking me, around age 18, to try her wedding dress on. She had been 24 when she and Dad married in 1970. The dress fit my 52 kg body perfectly. Except that my bosom was too small, so the bust was loose.
I remember at the time being astonished that my Mum had once been my size as most of my life that I recalled she had struggled with her weight, and in terms of body shape, we were different.
However, when I tried the dress on again at 21, it fit me perfectly.
Now, not so much.
But I love the dress, and even if I never fit into it again and never get married, I would like to keep it. (If I'm honest, marriage hasn't been high on my list of life goals). Maybe, at some point, it will be handed down to someone in our family to use again.
Meanwhile, there was no urgency to go through the things in her sewing room, so we focussed more on working through her clothes and personal effects in their bedroom. We knew others could reuse many of the items in there. And Dad's bedroom needed a thorough clean-out (which he and Cheryl did after I left).
I did try on a few things out of curiosity.
Mum had worked out her style quite early on in life. Though her dress size and shape may have changed over the years, especially as she put on weight, she knew that store-bought clothing was never as suitable for her as homemade.
She made my and my brothers' bathers when we were young.
She made my first collection of knickers with cute elastic and patterned stretch-cotton material. I'm sure my brothers' knickers were also of her making.
She made us vests (singlets for those of you in Australia), the odd t-shirt, many dresses for me, and trousers. I'm sure Mum made many of my brothers' shorts.
She was also a keen knitter and made me various vests (sleeveless jumpers) and jumpers over the years.
Looking at what we took from her wardrobe, she'd probably narrowed the patterns for her clothing down to about 5-6 styles of tops/shirts. And one set of more formal clothes, comprising a suit jacket, trousers (dressed up or down, depending upon the material) and a skirt (also mostly one style, with material variations). She knew what suited her shape and size and worked with it.
She taught me from a young age to shop with the thought of how an item would work with what I already owned. If I were buying a top, trousers or skirt, how many items of clothing already in my wardrobe would it work with?
She wasn't a big dress-wearer as they didn't suit her shape.
But as a dress-wearer, that translated into ensuring my jumpers, tights, shoes, etc., would match any new dresses I bought.
She also taught me when contemplating buying clothing, "If in doubt, don't," e.g., if trying on an item of clothing and I'm unsure, don't buy it. It will just sit in my wardrobe, ignored.
I may have applied this test to other elements of my life over the years (specifically, relationships).
But, pulling out all her clothing, checking it for marks and cleanliness before donation, and reviewing anything that I might try on, over and over, it was evident to me how talented a seamstress she was.
Very little of the clothing we took out of the wardrobe had been made by someone else. All were well-made, well-kept and, in some cases, quite elaborate in their design, including a series of shirts made with fabric button-loops, as shown in this image.
Many would have avoided this type of work, but Mum had numerous tops with this buttonhole style and was quite confident in executing this sort of work.
She also chose some beautiful materials and colours for her clothes.
Dad split her clothing between a few charity shop chains in Ulverstone. (He was aware they often refuse to sell clothing to people in the same town where donated. Thus the decision to ensure they were a chain). I hope other women get a lot of wear from her clothes.
She made them with love and a passion for dressmaking. One she tried to instil in me but for which I had far less talent.
The one thing no one tells you is how much human ashes weigh.
The first night I was with Dad in Ulverstone, we were seated at the dining table after dinner. I don't remember if we were talking about Mum at the time or something completely unrelated, but seemingly out of the blue, Dad said something like, "I have something new to show you, but it's maybe not the right time."
I didn't know what he might mean, so I responded that now I was worried.
He said it was on the piano, it was Mum's ashes, and he wandered off to get them.
At the time, even if we'd been talking about Mum, it felt a little out of left field, and I'd not been thinking about such things, so it was a bit of a shock to my system.
He returned with a navy blue presentation box. Inside was a plastic container like those you'd use for protein powder. There's no better way to describe it.
There was also a plaque that might have been suitable to affix to a cremation plot in a cemetery, but it was light. And, for some reason, Hyde was engraved with a lowercase 'h'. (I can't help it, I always spot those details).
None of these things mattered because we knew we would scatter her ashes. So, the only thing that mattered was having her ashes.
Not the receptacle that contained them or the never-to-be-used plaque.
Dad handed me the box. The first thing that hit me was how heavy she was.
That immediately brought home how real this was.
The soul may weigh only 21 grams*, but the ashes of human remains are much heavier than I would ever have imagined.
The realisation made me quite emotional, and I admit, I was a little in shock. The wine we had with dinner and the ciders I'd had probably didn't help.
I sat at the table with Dad and Mum and let the emotion wash over me. The idea sink in. I handled the container, felt its weight in my hands and made some flippant joke that no one would ever have thought Mum would fit in a box that small.
Later in the week, before my brothers arrived, I made time to play the piano for Mum one last time.
It was terrible. I hadn't played since October 2019, and though I thought I played surprisingly well then after an excessively long break, I was seriously struggling to identify the right notes this time. What had previously come back to me, like riding a bike, felt almost alien.
I think that was the first time I appreciated how much I had previously learned. Like learning a foreign language and then realising how hard it must have been to pick up when you lose the words through lack of practice.
I would go through moments when everything flowed through my fingers, and then a bar or two would completely throw me off. I swore. A lot.
But I wanted to play to Mum that last time because she played a large part in my learning piano in the first place and would often ask me to play while she prepared dinner or did some other chore around the house all through my time growing up and when I lived with my parents on and off as an adult. She didn't mind what I played. She just loved to listen to me play.
Before I played to her, my curiosity was too much. So, while alone, I took Dad's kitchen scale to the dining table. I placed Mum's ashes on it and took this photo. I presumed the container probably weighed less than a kilogram, so her ashes weighed about 2kg.
I contemplated keeping some of her ashes. I thought about bringing them back to London with me.
Some companies claim to be able to make diamonds from human ashes and/or hair. That appealed to me as diamonds are my birthstone.
But in the end, the sceptic in me researched such claims and couldn't verify them, and the process would have been hugely expensive, so I decided I would rather all of her be scattered together.
When we were kids growing up in Brisbane, my parents, brothers, and I used to record audio letters to our grandparents who lived in Canberra every so often.
I remember the four or five of us sat around the dining table in our house in Aspley. Passing a microphone around that was plugged into a radio/cassette player to record updates on our lives.
When I stayed with my grandparents in Perth in 1998 for my cousin Rhys' wedding, my Granddad put his headphones on me to play me part of a cassette. I heard myself talking to him and my Grandma at around six years old.
It was surreal.
The disconnect to how I sounded then, but knowing it was me, blew my mind.
When my grandparents passed away, I asked Mum to ensure she salvaged the cassettes. And she did.
But only one of the four cassette cases I found in my parents' house had a cassette inside.
They may still be there, but Dad and I didn't have a chance to properly go through Mum's sewing room, where I found them.
Pete took the empties and the one cassette home to digitise it for us. His bands still distribute their music on cassette.
While visiting my family in Perth this visit, Rhys told me they did the same growing up in Calgary, and he'd asked for those to be kept, too. I would love to hear them someday if I could.
Hearing yourself on tape as a child when you're an adult is a form of time travel.
Some hypoxylon I stumbled across in Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries a few weeks ago.
The last of the (live) flowers I photographed in St Kilda General Cemetery during a visit in September 2007.
Muscari armeniacum or Armenian grape hyacinths.
Sorry once again for the radio silence.
As I mentioned in my post of images from Bosham back on 10 February, I had some worrying news about my Mum.
At 19:20 GMT on 28 February, I found out my Mum passed away 10 minutes earlier (though, technically, she passed away at 06:10 on 1 March 2023 AEST. Time differences are weird when dealing with someone's time of death).
So, as you might expect, I've needed some time to process that.
As I do in these situations, I've been writing.
It took time, and there were many tears along the way.
I'm currently editing photographs of Mum and photos taken by Mum to go with the piece.
I'll share it here and on my blog as soon as it's ready. Hopefully, tomorrow but definitely in the coming days.
In the meantime, here are some Agrostemma (common corncockles) I photographed in the gardens at Helmingham Hall on the last road trip I took with Mum and Dad in 2017.
Hold your loved ones tightly.
I knew the floral name passiflora through a Flickr friend's username over a decade ago but had never seen one or really even knew what they were.
But then, on a photo walk late last year with Sarah, another Flickr friend I met around the same time as I met Mary Elise, we noticed some Passiflora caerulea overhanging a fence facing onto a park that is literally around the corner from the first two flats I lived in when I moved back to London in 2011.
They are beautiful, intricate and eye-catching flowers.
I was pleased to capture a couple of photos of them that day, though the daylight was starting to fade as we passed through Nightingale Gardens.
Some Dimorphotheca ecklonis I captured in St Kilda Cemetery on the first day of Spring in 2007.
And some beautiful monarch butterflies hanging out amongst them.
I took these photos after going to my old GP practice for a check-up because of some odd sensations I'd been experiencing.
That appointment resulted in me having blood tests that revealed I had vitamin D deficiency and B12 anaemia for the first time.
Good times...
I love when my photography leads me to discover new (to me) and very geeky things.
In seeking an appropriate word to use as a title for this image, I read about an intriguing way of measuring time and dating rock.
No, not that kind of dating.
Rather, establishing the age of exposed rock.
Yellow baby, a yellow baby is a bad sign.
But I don't mind, I don't mind.
Ohhh, Forsythia.
Spider monkey, a spider monkey is a good lie.
But I don't know why.
Ohhh, Forsythia, oh-ohhh.
I don't mind sitting in the way, way back.
I don't mind, lying to my friends.
One thing about Forsythia,
She comes around and I get lost
Against her yellow, I'm no longer me.
Yellow daisy, a dandelion or a pussy willow,
It's a different thing.
Oh-oh, Forsythia. Forsythia. Forsythia.
One thing about Forsythia,
She comes around and I get lost
Against her yellow I'm no longer me.
One thing about Forsythia...
There's one thing about Forsythia...
Forsythia - Veruca Salt
Bistorta amplexicaulis, the red bistort or mountain fleece.
From Wikipedia: 'The Latin specific epithet amplexicaulis means "clasping or embracing the stem", and refers to the leaves' habit of growing around the stem.'
Just a quick post for those who may be considering becoming a patron.
I've been sharing a new series of self-portraits I started while undertaking a recent cat-sitting gig. They're still patron-only access until later in the month.
I shared these three photographs early access with my patrons a month before they'll become public. New images from the series (as I create them) will be shared a month early too.
If you'd like to see the images from the series so far, now's the time to become a patron.