Bookish Gardener

Quake crow kern

What do I know. I'm a mom, and I ply a trade by day. I spent too many years in classrooms after high school, but only a handful were in the humanities end of the liberal arts. I can't take in more than one poem at a time, any more than I can stand to trudge dutifully through an art museum merely to take in a microsecond look at a collection of the masters. I have a very simple test for whether a poem is good (for me) or not: it either bangs the gong, or it doesn't. I have read more good poetry online in the past couple of years of reading blogs than I probably have elsewhere in the past couple of decades. I would never have been moved to write about poems, ever, if it hadn't been for blogging. The best thing I read about poetry recently was written by Rachel Dacus in this post: "We read poetry because it is more difficult, and layered, than other forms of writing. We prize its obscurities, as long as we can barely keep up with them." And the saddest poetry experience I've had recently was to find that Dinsmoor is no longer on the web. I went back to hear A's audio poems again, but now they're gone, like an ephemeral sand painting.

Two-manual piano Goldbergs

I have a problem. I can't listen to any recordings of the Goldberg Variations anymore after hearing a performance last Saturday that I don't want to forget. (This was a recital given by Christopher Taylor, pianist and music professor here at the UW, playing a two-manual piano.) I know my sound-memory of the experience will warp and fade with time, and I'm trying my best to forestall its dissipation.

The work begins with the Aria, starting with two notes on a high G. When they are played with deliberateness, you're made to stop and listen. On Saturday, the first two notes were played slower than the Gould '55, and less slow than the Gould '81. Did time stop? It seemed as though my breathing and heartbeat did. The rest of the Aria unfolded with elegance, precision and restraint, which are emotionless and cerebral words that don't do justice to the fact that by its end I was undone. And although I have heard the notes of variation 25, the Adagio, played dozens of times before, I don't think I ever truly heard it before Saturday.

Ah, what an agonizing craving. When I let myself return to listening to the Goldbergs, I'll probably do so by playing this recording by Angela Hewitt (who'll be coming to Madison this fall, with pieces from The Well-Tempered Clavier on the program), for which she wrote her own (wonderful) liner notes.

Eleanor, Abigail, Bess, and Dolley

Via The Accidental Smallholder comes word of Amy Stewart's new blog, Humboldt Hens, which chronicles her new adventures in raising chickens. Amy and her husband, Scott Brown, have started with four hen chicks (whose names are listed in the title to this post...quick, what do they all have in common?), who, judging from the photos on the blog, are each singularly adorable. (I'm looking forward to following their progress, but then again, I'm excited to read anything Amy writes, and suspect I'd feel the same if the subject were pet chinchillas...or even pet rocks.)

I've heard that Madison does allow cityfolk to keep up to four hens (no roosters!) per household. I haven't independently verified that because there is no chance that my household will venture into poultry raising. My husband had his fill of chickens after a summer job of catching chickens (yes, just like in Napoleon Dynamite, but without the "smoothies") during a hot, humid Midwest summer. And I've had the experience of having chickens around; my Korean grandparents had a large flock (and, er,  not just for eggs...yes, I remember well the whack of the butcher knife, as well as the infernal cock crow alarm clock).

But I'm happy to be an armchair poultry raiser gazer, which provides me with a fine excuse to dip into the John Festus Adams oeuvre again, and check out his Backyard Poultry Raising: the Chicken-Growing, Egg-Laying, Feather-Plucking, Incubating, Caponizing, Finger-Licking Handbook, which is described here as "the only chicken book you might read just for fun."

This blog gets search query hits from time to time for Amy Stewart, consistent with what I am pleased to say is the generally wholesome and topical nature of most of my googling visitors (for example, just from the past few hours: "flower with cotton like bloom," "growing cosmos from seed," "lamento d'arianna monteverdi english lyrics," "botanical pronunciation guide," "david ferry virgil georgics," "lupin gallery red"...and..."morticia knitting" and "disco lady"). Not too long ago, someone came looking for "aimee stuart knock on wood". Um, dear searcher: that would be "Amii" ("two eyes") "Stewart", but yes, thanks for stopping at Disco Central.

Newly blooming: Muscari armeniacum 'Valerie Finnis' (grape hyacinth), Polemonium reptans (false Solomon's seal), Angelica gigas (Korean angelica), peony-flowered tulip 'Angelique', and lots of daffodils whose names I'll have to fill in later.

Whodunit

Look, I got hijacked down the information superhighway (thanks, Fredösphere), so I need to unload this stuff now so I can go get some work done:

We start with:
An intriguing newspaper bit about the true origins of the Doctor Who theme and the uncredited contributions of electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire.

Leading to:
Everything you wanted to know (and more!)—and didn't even know to ask—about the history of the Doctor Who theme (with lots more about Delia Derbyshire).

Which brings us to:
A Doctor Who theme site with sound files—and sheet music.

(How's that song go? "I Enjoy Being a Geek.")

The man who took a wife with the help of a hat

"Crossing Delancey" wasn't our first date, but it was our first movie date. We saw it at the old-time movie theater on Union Street. (I don't have any specific memory of it, but I'm sure trying to find parking was a bear.) And yes, it's a great date movie. (Unlike, say, the double feature we ended up seeing on a subsequent outing: Salaam Bombay!, about the depressing lives of street children in India, and Pelle the Conqueror, about the depressing life of a Swedish boy who emigrates to Denmark. Which is how "Salaam-Bombay-and-Pelle-the-Conqueror" became our in-house shorthand for down-in-the-dumpsitude.)

If you haven't seen the movie, or if you did but have since forgotten (but how could you forget?), there's a scene in the movie where Amy Irving's character, Isabel (who's been uncooperative and exasperated with the efforts of her grandmother to hook her up with a marriageable partner, courtesy of the neighborhood matchmaker), receives a mysterious large box. It's opened to reveal a hat from the pickle-maker whom Isabel has been resisting. Much to her own surprise, the gift makes Isabel happy, and she tells her grandmother, "Bubbe, I'm being wooed."  And we see her sorta kinda thaw toward the pickle-maker for the first time. (C'mon, girl—it's Peter Riegert, for crying out loud!)

Not too long after seeing the movie, we were getting ready to head off on another adventure in the early chapters of The Eating Tour of San Francisco that was our courtship. We had to stop off at the barracks for something, I think is how it was put. Once we were there, a big box came out of nowhere and was handed to me. It was a hat box from Macy's. Inside was a hat. (A great hat.) I was dumbfounded (and being dumbfounded, I hope I managed to blurt out a "thank you", but I don't remember being able to say anything else). You see, it was still a little early in our getting to know each other for things like Gifts. So there I was, speechless. And he had only one thing to say: "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

I do.

Happy anniversary, honey.

The hat.

Reading and writing: Seeds of Wealth

My review of the book Seeds of Wealth is up at Saucy.

Sakura

Julie Ardery's Human Flower Project has a terrific post on the cherry blossom, contributed by Masashi Yamaguchi of the Plants and Japan web site. Sakura is Japanese for the cherry blossom, and the traditional Japanese folk song "Sakura, Sakura" (written on the pentatonic scale G -  A  -   Bb  -  D  -   Eb) unlooped in my head as I was reading the post. Want to hear it too? You can hear it played on the traditional Japanese string instrument O-koto at this site (scroll down to "Sakura Sakura")...and then you can play it on the virtual O-koto at the site.

Newly blooming: Darwin hybrid tulips 'Gordon Cooper' and 'Pink Impressions', peony-flowered tulip 'Lilac Perfection', and Greggii tulip 'Rosanna'.

Catkins

           Photo credit: Jessamyn Roll

This is the first spring in the garden for this willow, Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki', and the first chance I've had to appreciate its tiny and gorgeous catkins (the inflorescences formed by clusters of flowers). The foliage will leaf out with soft green, cream, and pink streaks, but I'll be sad to see the catkins go.

Newly blooming (almost forgot!): Camassia leichtlinii, trumpet narcissus 'Mount Hood', Muscari botryoides alba, Muscari aucheri 'Mount Hood' [all my other grape hyacinth varieties were chomped by the *@#&! rabbits before blooming], and Helleborus orientalis.

Red lupin green seed

             Photo credit: Jessamyn Roll

These are seeds for the dwarf lupin Lupinus polyphyllus 'Lupin Gallery Red', which could pass for mint chutney Nerds candy. (The color made them very easy to find when they *cough* dropped on the floor in the course of my trying to get this photo taken.)

Newly blooming:
Narcissus 'Ice Follies', 'Las Vegas', 'Jenny', and 'Hawera'
Various self-sown pansies
Scilla siberica (slipped my mind!, so I've updated)

Bloomed and done within the past ten days: Iris reticulata 'Cantab', 'Harmony' and 'Pixie'

"Seed Savor"

My new column is up at Saucy.