The Lord God Planted a Garden

The Lord God Planted a Garden
By Dorothy Frances Gurney (1858-1932)

THE Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.

So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.

And I dream that these garden closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth, –
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

(My mother quoted the last verse)

An expedition deep into the garden where the green metalic folk know...

The expedition 4th Feb 2009
I heard recently of an expedition.
Deep into the forests of the unknown, travelling to an extinct volcano in Papua New Guinea, an expedition is planned to look for species missed by the eyes of previous scientists.
Now I've got to tell you of the world I am discovering when I wander deep into my mother's garden.
Winged-hunters are waiting on every leaf - well I lie of course, but every second leaf some coloured being sits waiting.
What are they waiting for?
The long-legged fly, metallic green stands tall, and I am convinced it stands as tall as it does so as to throw large shadows, large shadows to scare the marauding jumping spider that patrols the leaf margins.
By standing tall the long-legged fly's size is doubled, especially on each folded leaf.
There its shadow is magnified and it casts itself as a winged-dragon, a wasp perhaps, yet seemingly large enough to frighten the sharpened talons of the spider...
I sense everything is in a state of perpetual predatory positioning - (ppp) for short.
The spider hunts the fly and the fly the aphid.
The ant feeds from the aphid and thwarts the aggression of the fly and spider... Ying and yang throw up such challenges... but we, all living beings, opportunistic beings, feeding and reproducing, but not necessarily in that order, stand ever watchful...or blissfully unaware...
There is something to be understood in the garden, deep in the garden.
Here some philosophy is signified for s/he who is watching.
Society, just like this garden bed glimpsed in the highways among the plumbago woven with spider's silken threads between roses, highlight the need for caution.
When in the company of my children, or another's children, I am aware of the predator among us.
Somewhere in the playground he has walked.
Maybe he is not there now, maybe he will come next week, but he will come when our children are at their most vulnerable... predators work that way.
The long-legged fly never sits still for long, s/he changes where s/he stands, that way the dark eyes and eight legs of the hunting spider will be kept at arms length. Spiders in our garden have so much to teach us, of their traits and ours.
"Jumping spider catching fly; strings his web with which to dine; spots his quarry and jumps the fly; waiting patient for its aphid pie"
I hope the expedition returns safe and doesn't end up as some creature's dinner who, like the long-legged fly, are jumping, even when they don't know why, their species have depended upon it, and those who did, survived!
"Long legged and casting shadows and jumping to and fro, I hope the expedition can jump the poison arrows shot from the blackman's string stretched hunting bow..."

The coral garden

The coral reef by the back fence 27th Jan 2009
The coral of the outer reefs remain well visited.
Lace winged dragonflies continue to circumnavigate the green weed 'lawn area' before winging on sorties over the reef and the neighbours' flower laden picket fence beyond.
With my reading glasses I have begun to see/read the coral garden beds like a fisherman might read the ocean.
With my magnified lenses, I see the movement of predator fish - the spiders, prey mantus, and long legged metalic green flies that are hunting...
Visiting the Crepuscule I have begun seeing things I have not seen before.
It is north facing and attracts any number of predators and soft bodied food 'fish' alike.
Fish, how might one deduce or conjure and imagine such a vision?
Have you ever seen the long elongated finned gar fish that swim upon the surface, and the twisting silver sided skip jack and schools of herring?
And have you seen that coloured weed that hugs the pylons of the jetty and the small fish that circle them, around and around...
My mother's garden bed is visited in a similar way by all matter of winged and bright finned beings that follow unseen currents visiting the gardinia, bouganvillia, solanum where they sometimes sit and on the green soft leaves of the plumbago are lulled to sleep.
Here blue barred hover bees zoom and cut leaves for their underground nests.
Blue ended damselflies seek cover from the sun while crickets rest in their green leaf interiors while small glass like egg casings hug the underside of leaves.
The garden's a coral reef and any number of coloured fish and frogs are to be found there!

Blue Arcadia: Smoke in the Plumbago

Blue Arcadia 17th Jan 2009
Today a shroud of smoke hangs over the suburbs.
My mother's garden is blur and blue.
The sharp edges of the garden beds and plants therein are dimmed.
Yesterday, when the black smoke was drifting over the city of Perth, and eddying with violence above King's Park where the flames seemed unstoppable, cinders and ash were falling like snow flakes into downtown Northbridge.
I say like snow flakes because several years ago, while in Prague, I had my very first experience of eating snow flakes.
In Wencslav Square I took aim to a floating falling cluster of snow, and opened wide. Like a child, I played a game that I had never once thought to play.
Yesterday, I contemplated that memory, and game again.
But ash from a bushfire holds no game, but a sense of loss for what once was.
The snow flake is made in the sky, within the clouds, but ash is made through destruction and the violence of burning leaves.
But several days before this smokey event that I now describe, the garden was a vivid green and its clarity of colour and sharp edges allowed me to see, for perhaps the first time, and with an increasing interest, the bird-like world of certain insects.
I noticed, for example, a very small but very colour-full (colour-filled) insect that had a metallic green thorax and abdomen, with tiger stripes like that of a bee. Its wings were banded like the tail feathers of a white-tailed black cockatoo.
But it was its colouring, as well as its long legs that attracted most of my attention.
I took many photographs of it (forthcoming), and some of them, when the wind did not pitch it the wrong way, some of them allowed for a vivid picture of its otherwise seemingly unseen world.
I tracked this newly observed being on the Internet, and found out that it is called a long legged fly or Austrosciapus connexus.
It is a native fly and a hunter of aphids.
To me it represents one of several species of falcon-like appearance and habit that inhabits the plumbago.
It is attracted to the plumbago where it sits in close proximity to another similar specie (it might even be its mate)for are their differences between sexes...??
But this long legged fly, or green eyed metallic rainbow bodied black wing-banded winging aphid devouring carnivore catcher has left its mark on me.
Also, yesterday, I took photos of 'cabbage-moths' embracing and the day before that, I photographed a soon to be settling giant orange winged butterfly... whose name escapes me...
Their stories I am yet to describe.
All stories of wonder from what is now a blue smoke filled garden, where its creatures are flying half hidden camouflaged and hungry...

Hum of the Bee Makes the Rose Grow

Hummm and that Rose will Grow 16th November 2008

I know you won't believe it, and yet maybe you will, but I have observed something amazing, well maybe, maybe not...
But sometime ago, like...say three weeks ago, we had a swarm of bees that fixed themselves to one of the front yard rose bushes.
I think it was the just joey near the letter box.
Anyhow, this rose following the departure of the bees, was marked by white wax.
And then, several weeks later the new shoots appeared red and began sprouting with renewed vigour, unbelievable.
Had the bees said something to that rose...?
Maybe they stung it, massaged it, tickled it, hummed it - lots of hums...and more hums... and feasted on nectar and that rose grew new shoots, they multiplied and shot out every which way...
And today, another story that reminded me of this one about the rose...
My auntie and my mother, the three of us visited Dawsons Nursery on Hale Rd Forrestfield... and beside eating a lemon flan and creme, and a reasonable sized cappuccino whilst the song: "Born Free, as free as the wind blows" played nearby... and besides wandering through a maze of rose delights like Mr Lincoln...wow what perfume, and Angel Face... and all others... besides... I made a chanced discovery of how to grow a magnolia.
"It wouldn't move" said my auntie.
"So I hit it with a stick against its lower trunk and you know it began moving soon after."
And she didn't seem surprised?!
And I am still surprised that plants can react this way.
I always talk to my plants, and I talk to plants I don't even know... sure plants are strangers who really want to be friends...befriend we humans... shake a branch and it drops an apple, hit its stem and it sprouts a new leaf.
But I reckon we should do what the bees do.
If a rose won't move, try tickling it, eat a honey sandwich or drink, sip or slurp some honey tea in its company, or hum to it...
I reckon the humming is what did it.
You can't sting it, because that's something bees wouldn't do, because when they lose their stings they die!
Try humming...and begin today...

Stag Horn: Look within the Little paw-leaf emerging

From the Outer


Closer: The arm extends



The child, the hand reaching for the light...

Felco Secateurs: With a Beak Like a Bird

Felco no. 4 Secateurs: With a beak like a bird