More Words.

Our Garden

It is now quite clear. The garden is reclaiming our house. It started innocently enough with the Virginia creeper crawling up the garage wall without really saying anything. We left it alone knowing the leaves would come down no matter what. It’s burnished gold was pleasing to look at and helped us cope with the chillness of autumn winds. This chillness has now almost become winter but the winds have calmed. In a rebuke to winter I noticed the daffodils are starting to burst through the mulch. The mulch came compliments of a large branch of the Manchurian Pear.

The tree got caught in a tempestuous Willy Willy and it managed to tear off a huge branch. A very large machine was called in which taught the tree a bitter lesson. The branch was fed into this machine which chipped it into a large truckload of mulch. The machine was merciless and you should have heard the screaming protesting wail from the tree branch. All to no avail. I asked the truck to dump the chipped Manchurian tree branch on our parking lot, which it did. This mulch is now feeding the daffodils and jonquils which proves that goodness is often (but not always) eked out of the bad, no matter what.

Reclaiming garden

We had a small shed build in the back yard some 4 years ago after we moved in. Inside this shed are Helvi’s gardening tools including also a bucket full of gardening gloves and several pairs of secateurs. There is a hand mower. The hand mower is lovely to use. It doesn’t have a motor. I could not cope with the noise. The silent rotating blades on this mower is a joy to watch and reminds me of mowers of my youth. There is also a fold-up canvas camping chair. When the sun is out I sometimes sit in that chair, try and soak up a lovely warmth. So does Helvi. We both soak up warmth.

Time passes now with an ever increasing noise of gardening machines and technology. I mean those whipper snippers are really the pits… The autumn has witnessed again the relentless use of those bazooka like leaf blowers. Often people seem to like using those machines. Is it Freudian? I mean they strap them on, march up and down the street, and point hem at the leaves in a revengeful manner. What have those leaves ever done to them? Is it an expression of suffering marital whiplash? Fair enough, but take it out underneath your despairing blankets but not against the innocent leaves or our ears.

We had pasta left over last night. I’ll try and drown it in a mixture of milk, eggs, pepper and salt with lots of formaggio and bake it. That’s it, just wack it into the oven on high heat. The cheese will get brown and crispy. Hoorah!

A bit of peace and quiet goes a long way.

First Love and 1950 Ford V8.

First love and The Ford V8.

We all remember our first love. I certainly do. Her name was Marga. She lived opposite us at 104 Liguster Straat, The Hague. We were of equal age but she was much more advanced than I. I mean, I was getting the occasional twinge but staring at it I wondered what it was all about and did as yet not associate it with having anything to do with the opposite sex. The details are hazy and are of 60 years ago.

She had a broad smile and budding breasts which she implored me several times to touch.  She wasn’t asking it verbally. It was more the way she twirled around and did funny little hop-scotch things in front of me. She was most charming. I was too hesitant and shy but walking home afterwards for my dinner of mainly potatoes and mince, I regretted for not having done so. I made up my mind to do so next time. I was resolute. Yet, next time around, I again refrained. Why was that so?

I often wondered for the reason. It was at the time when my parents decided to give the three eldest boys sex instructions. We were given a few days notice of this monumental event and told not to play outside during the allocated hour or so when we would be informed of the important facts of life. I was the second eldest and had some rough idea of those facts already including that adults did some strange things together, but I had not as yet associated those ‘strange things’ as holding pleasure or joy. I thought it then as some aberration of mankind, seeing they had just bombed each other to smithereens during WW 2, nothing surprised me much at all.

Anyway, with Marga’s continuation with imploring me to touch her breasts and my parents’ well intentioned program to educate her sprouts with the basics, something stirred in me as well, none too late, and I finally touched her softness through her floral blouse. Hoorah. The sex education lesson at 5.30 pm (before the mince and spuds) was pathetic with my father being mainly silent and leaving it to his wife to address the main issue. The main issue being for my mother anyway was, to repeat several times; “whatever you do, keep your hands above the blankets, and don’t touch ‘it’!” Heaven only knows what she implored her husband to do or not to do, but she did have 6 children. Needless to say, I soon did nothing else but keep my hands under the blankets, relishing, rejoicing and reliving my recent bravery overcoming my reticence with the touch of the lovely softness of sweet Marga.

A few weeks after, I experienced an even more unforgettable and momentous event. We lived opposite each other on the third story of our block of apartments where we often used to see each other behind the windows. Holland bares their living space as nowhere else by hardly ever drawing curtains or blinds. One sultry summer evening, we, lovelorn, were looking at each other again across the street, when she lifted her blouse suddenly and utterly spontaneously, and with a smile, affording me a view of her small roseate breasts. Not only having touched them previously but now seeing them as well brought me almost to my knees. My lovely Marga. She soon moved away to Utrecht.

All these idyllic, romantic and sexual mores of my pre-teen years were rudely interrupted by my parent’s decision to migrate to Australia. What a schism. That suburb in Australia of single fenced off green painted fibro houses, empty streets and not person in sight, let alone a Marga. I could not share my loneliness no matter how lovely the rockeries or how well the suburban lawns were kept.

A great consolation was my first car. It was a 1950 Ford V8 single spinner and painted a light powder blue. That first time I brought it home after having traded in my Triumph ex police motor bike with side-car was a triumph. It was almost, but not quite as unforgettable as my memories of sweet Marga. Next morning, turning the key and pulling the starter knob it brought the eight cylinders to life with a roar that brought the whole street to attention.

It was this FordV8 car that I took my first Australian girl friend out in. I decided to show her the devastation of a small village named Woy Woy that had been blown to pieces by a huge swirling tornado  named ‘Willy Willy,’ an obscure aboriginal name . The Newspapers were full of the Willy Willy at Woy Woy. I could not shake the title of those headlines and had to find out what this devastation was all about.

The trip was a disaster even more than the Willy Willy at Woy Woy. She was nothing like my soft Marga. She was unrelentingly practical, hard as nails and tough as leather jackets. She complained of my car giving out blue smoke, also, “Get me a malted banana milkshake” she demanded. Late in the afternoon I dropped her off at Sydney’s Coogee. Her father was formidable, over 6 feet and wearing bib and brace overalls with tools hanging from a belt. He was most suspicious. He should not have worried.

No twinges of any sort.