Declaiming: No. 13 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Tempted to give it a try?  Here's a suitable specimen - but it's up to you to find the appropriate wind-swept battlement or tragic riverbank ...

Oooh to be McGonagall's Lovechild

for William Topaz McGonagall

Oooch! To be the lovechild of William McGonagall and Julia A. Moore,

Those idiosyncratic and misunderstood souls who lived in times they would doubtless have referred to as yore:

Yes! The Sweet Singer of Michigan and the bard of the beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay

Whose reputations are regrettably tinged with derision to this very day.

As to scansion, it is true that their grasp could be said to equal that of a wet cat on a slate rooftop

As if, in building a head of poetic steam, they found it too painful to stop.

With no small cost to euphony and a regrettable tendency, most of the time

To abandon cadence for the sake of a half-broken rhyme,

But never let it be said in this fair land that the passion that flowed in their pages

Failed to engorge the imagination and mesmerise the mind, even of hitherto unswayable sages.

And so I proclaim to the world that, on this basis alone,

These two remarkable literary nightingales should be shown

To thrones of glory flanking the enrobed marbly thighs of sacred Euterpe the muse,

While the rest of us, fettered and unworthy, can only shake our heads and kneel at their shoes.

© Ynes Sanz Brisbane 2010

Bats

A suitable subject, you might think, for a mad old bag. This picture shows a Black Flying Fox (pteropus alecto), otherwise known as the fruit bat.

These beautiful animals leave their safe roosts up in tall trees to visit gardens (see previous post) and street trees, where they will feed and squabble. They search for their food of fruit, blossoms and nectar, using sharp eyes and good sense of smell.

                                                            night walk

                                                           fruit bat beats the air

                                                          with drum skin wings

I often see a stream of them trailing high over the suburbs against the dusk sky when I'm out walking with the hound.

You can find out more about the bats of Brisbane and the people who care for them here: at Bat Care Brisbane.

August is a cruel month

I never could easily bring myself to cut back and prune like the garden experts say, and having inherited a garden with some injudicious planting by a previous occupant, those 'nice little hedge plants' are now rearing horrors 6 metres tall with hidden spines and yellow berries that seem to have a purgative effect on flying foxes. 'Sheena's Gold!' Hah!  If I ever get my hands on that Sheena I'll ... but I digress.

The plants I have put in have mostly stayed amenable, (with the exception of an olive tree which I allowed to grow to some 5 metres high, in a moment of inattention brought on by my expectations that it would stay looking like those charming specimens that adorn Greek hillsides - and this in sub-tropical Queensland!)

Fortunately, even at my advanced age, I am capable of learning from my mistakes. I have found that I can more readily hack the poor things about if I don't have to brutally squash all of the trimmings into the garden bag.

So my reward for hard-hearted horticulture?  A lovely display of grevillea prunings!