Thanks to Mr Brown Thumb at GardenBloggers

If you want to focus on writing the blog post. If you enjoy getting your photos to fit the post. But the computer WON'T cooperate!

Mr Brown Thumb has the skill to guide you thru the tricky tiresome bits.

Scabiosa playing with the pinhole effect on the new camera

Social-media-buttons-for-your-garden-blog

And thanks to MBT and his GardenBloggers site, Elephant's Eye is now on Facebook.

How-to-create-a-Facebook-fan-page-for-your-garden-blog

The ElephAnt's of ElephAnt's Eye are on their way ...

When you are Halloweened out, see you on Facebook ... click the new badge on my side-bar

1 November - For all the Saints Hymntime.  And from Wikipedia -  In Portugal, children celebrate the Pão-por-Deus tradition, and go door to door where they receive cakes, nuts and pomegranates.

Pictures by Jurg,  words by Diana of Elephant's Eye    

Pink Ribbon 4 - Spring Promise

This post is dedicated to the memory of

Berlinde Stadler

1958-2010

Librarian to our town of Porterville

I was cared for by three very special doctors. A GP who told my sister – Diana is strong, she’ll be fine. A surgeon who answered a thousand what, why, how questions, and left me with a body I can live in, and a scar I can see and touch. And a specialist who said – nice scar! – high praise from someone who spends her day looking at mastectomy scars.

My body is complete, because it ends here. I regret I have lost the source of that quotation, through ten years that have blurred the sharp edges of memory.

As anonymous said

Dust we are

And to dust we shall return

And in between, we plant a garden.

Two wonderful memories. I would wake each morning and tell my body to stretch, from the tips of my fingers all the way down to my toes. (Starting from the Ungardener laughing at me as I struggled to hang the washing, one arm would go up, but I needed both!). So, I remember the morning I woke up, told my body to stretch, and, TA DA, it DID! And the second was being carried through the waiting time between two operations, in a state of grace. My Swiss friend lit a candle for me in a church in Austria, and so my mother and sisters lit a candle for me in Cape Town. Two prayer candles for a state of grace. A robot on autopilot, the body did what they told it to. And the mind retreated from the horror of the biopsy. Then waking up after surgery, with body and mind hand in hand again.

Lord, Grant me the strength and courage

To give support and encouragement, in my turn

In the beginning my mind kept churning around, then, one day, I realised I had moved on. That, is history, or rather her story. Now, life is a garden! A Blotanical garden blog! I love words, and the garden is beloved.

If you were with me in October last year, this will be familiar. I am leaving the original posts up because I value your comments at 2009 pink-ribbon-4. Before this Spring Promise, Autumn-Fire, Summer Gold, Winter Chill

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Spring Promise is the name I give to the fourth of four beds in my Paradise/Rose Garden. This is the largest bed. Which we see when we look thru the living room windows. The planting plan, see In-a-Persian-garden. Dais cotonifolia, a little tree which will, eventually be covered in pink pom-poms for Christmas. A rather THIRSTY tree, but pretty. Artemisia, wildeals fills the back third all on its own. Smells delectable. And of course Melianthus, honey-flower for the magnificent glaucous blue foliage to set off all the pink flowers. Grows wild along the streams. but plant it in a garden, and visitors ask - What is that? My heart glows when I see Northern gardeners cherishing their plants in pots, and nurturing them thru the winter. Week by week in October I have collected pictures of the four beds. Sorting and updating to make a record of the Spring Promise roses at their flamboyant best in October 2010.

Lavender Jade, miniature

Dainty Bess, single

L'Aimant, gorgeous salmon pink, frilly peony petals, and only a bud right now

New Zealand, flowers from 2008,
which gave me 12 long stemmed flowers for my mother's April birthday
2010, one flower, more coming

Sheila's Perfume, two tone, more red and yellow, but fades to pink

Remember Tevye singing 'To Life, le chaim' in Fiddler on the Roof
youtube watch?

Chaim Soutine, coveted Rosa mundi style, pink and white stripes 

Helpkids, totally over the top, the rose garden was full
but who could resist pink yellow red and white all in one on a rose

Sheila's Perfume
The edges of the petals toasted, even in this late October sun
which is why I pick for the house

Spring Promise

My mid-October walk thru our garden ended in Paradise

Our roses came from Ludwig'sRoses

HelpKids, L'Aimant
Dainty Bess, Sheila's Perfume

Pictures and words by Diana of Elephant's Eye    

Fiscal shriek, sorry, shrike

Jacky Hangman. Dressed in black and white. As the judge used to wear a black hood, when sentencing a prisoner to death. Yesterday the sparrows, weavers and starlings were spinning in distraught circles. Why? Such commotion, Chocolat sat up from his afternoon nap – What’s going on?

Fiscal shrike

Then we saw the fiscal shrike – somewhat larger than the song-birds, with a vicious little hooked beak that says raptor. (Think sparrow-hawk sort of bird)

Fiscal shrike

Fiscal shrike. 23 cm. Common in grassland with trees (not so much in fynbos). They will seek and destroy intruding birds, impaling them on thorns. Eat beetles, grasshoppers, lizards, small snakes, frogs, chameleons, and other wild or caged birds. From Joy Frandsen’s Birds of the South Western Cape

After the Argumentative-Little-Cuss, who is all bark and no bite – this one is Bite. He has a harsh, raucous cry. But the fiscal shrikes in turn, are playing their role in nature. Seeking food for their fledglings. He used the hook on top of Spirulino’s cage as a perch to swoop on bugs and beetles, and a careless songbird if he can catch it!

A-sparrow-called-SpirulinO with Jacky Hangman looming over him sat. Perfectly still. Quite quiet. Usually he does a convincing imitation of a hyperactive child. Hopping from branch to branch. Up and down. Endlessly. We get tired, just watching! No wonder, when the sun goes down, he hops up to the highest perch in between the leaves. And sleeps. Like a baby. Till tomorrow comes.

Pin-tailed whydah

Pin-tailed whydah in flight

Our Lil Cuss

The Lil Cuss, pin-tailed whydah patrols his territory. He has a new routine. He perches on the satellite dish and swoops past the living-room windows, every few minutes. When he flies he has an elaborately choreographed routine, flourishing his long tail feathers, and hovering, just outside the window. To yell at us a string of blue curses – Get the F*** OUT of My Garden you!!! Becomes a part of the background music of our day. He has even perched on the sash window, so he can yell at that bloody cat sitting on the chair inside!

On a normal day, without the fiscal shriek/shrike, Spirulino is visited by the sparrows and weavers. They hop on the cage and chat back and forth. Spirulino is part of the flock, part of the family. High above the songbirds and the busy parent shrikes, the swallows wheel and turn.

Masked Weaver Airlines coming in to land

Touchdown

Retract flaps

Please keep your seat-belts fastenened until ...

The plane has come to a complete standstill.

The Ungardener is learning to use his new-camera. We are amazed -  Panasonic has upgraded a little tweak to the software, download it off the computer, and away you go ...

A handful of photography links. Mine, not so technical. I can do macros and scenery but I battle with mid-distance wide views of the garden. Taking-top-garden-photos by Rachel Warne. 

Photo Workshop with Saxon Holt at gardeninggonewild 

From Canon for Powershot A490 

The Ungardener's are technical From Panasonic for Lumix FZ100. 

Best digital camera for safari and travel? 

Photos to aspire to by award-winning young Hungarian wildlife photographer Bence Mate (sorry I can't do the Hungarian accents on his surname)  

For daily updates in the world of photography 1001noisycameras

Why did he choose this camera?

• 25-600mm Leica zoom lens, no changing lenses. Picture quality almost as good as an SLR
• manual functions (WE can choose what it focuses on)
• swivel LCD screen (for bugs down there, or overhead, or against the African sun-glare)
• fast 11 FPS (frames per second) shooting to capture birds in flight (but the camera is only as good as the Patience and Dedication of the photographer)

Busy bird house

  

When tired by the song and dance routine, the Lil Cuss eats peacefully with the opposition. Will you blog for world peace on the 4th of November?  Click the link from mine at the top of the side-bar, and you can craft your own LOGO from the basic templates.

 Pictures by Jurg, words by Diana of  Elephant's Eye

Come in out of the rain, dear

Around the 25th and it is time for me to see - What is blooming in our garden in October? October is rose month, first prize is looking glorious in the garden. But second prize is bringing a little of the garden in, for a vase.

Come in out of the rain, dear

Noelle my A to Z Plantlady in Arizona has a Monthly Garden Bouquet meme. Until the end of the month you can join us. I find it sad if you say I can’t bear to pick any flowers. Yes if it is the only flower on that plant, leave it to live out its small life in peace. But if you have a few flowers, one can come in.

One shell pink New Zealand, four yellow and orange striped Tropical Sunset

I am mean and meagre and miserly when I pick roses. The stem cut short, to leave as many leaves as possible to feed the next wave of flowers. Flowers chosen before they shed petals and start to look shrizzled and Last Rose of Summerish. If they are poised in utter perfection, I leave them in the garden. Picked, those petals will fall tomorrow. There is a finely judged and balanced point, when to pick a rose. Too early and it sulks and fades into a decline, Without Ever Opening. Sorry, Rose!

Purple Burning Sky, cluster of soft yellow Courvoisier

Last week it rained. Gentle rain, but the roses that were open fill with water, tip over and the stems break. Today we had hail, thunder and lightning and a terrified Chocolat. Followed by steady hours. Of soaking rain, refilling the pond under repair.

Burning Sky with friends

See, if you cut them, you can still enjoy the flowers inside for a few days. And if you leave the good ones out in the rain, the petals get smashed and fall. You’ve lost that colour in the garden anyway. Picking for the vase is just a little premature dead-heading. Making room for the buds to open. Removing that first large flower in a floribunda head, which will fade and shrivel to a brown mess in the centre of the cluster.

In the heart of the roses

Put a Vita Sackville-West style posy, just a flower or two in a tiny vase. On your desk, on the kitchen window-sill, at the dinner table, by your bed, where you read in the evening. Now we are grown accustomed to something fresh from the garden, roses, ‘other flowers’ or just foliage – in each room. It amazes us how empty and lifeless the room looks when the Gardener slips up. I forgot, too busy blogging …

This is why we love Peace, the rose

November 4, 2010
Will you blog for peace in our world?
Rightclick the logo above.

I have been tagged for the Ten Things meme twice more. By Shyrlene at The Bunnies Buffet. And by Chris at Garden Sense. My answers are on the Ten-for-Ellada post, but I prefer to promote blogs when I find them, and as they fit into my posts. PS Ellada has changed her blog host. Find her here now - auxplaisirsdujardin-ellada.blogspot

Raindrops on roses ... Courvoisier with a swirled centre

But here is just one more, for fun. If you as I do, like words and writing. Would you like this StonyRiver Microfiction-Monday meme? Scroll down for this week's picture. You tell the story in 140 characters. For an earlier example Lisa Ricard Claro at Writinginthebuff microfiction-monday.

Pictures and words by Diana of Elephant's Eye    

Pink Ribbon 3 - Autumn Fire

It was January 2000, as I lay sleepless, between diagnosis, and surgical biopsy, and a mastectomy, there were the worst fires in Cape Town that I can remember. (Except once in Camps Bay when we had walls of flame blazing on three sides, the middle of the night so bright you could read a newspaper in the garden …) Everything burned except Cape Point Nature Reserve and half of Table Mountain. That was when they launched Cape Talk radio station. On the first programme Rod Suskin talked about fire as a cleansing/purification ritual. Um Mr God, the cancer was only a few millimetres, you didn’t need to burn down half of Cape Town. When I looked back at my journal, they were evacuating houses in Constantia and Simon’s Town. It went way beyond frightening, to living in Reality TV. Life as Entertainment.

NewScientist Scorched-earth-wildfires-will-change-the-way-we-live

Since we moved to Porterville we have had Fire-on-our-mountain 

After-our-mountain-fire-we-give-thanks     Fire-flowers     We are ticked off that the mountain reserve is STILL closed!!! But one day we will walk there again, I hope. 

And the best words in the English language - this sentence from my surgeon's report. She needs no further treatment. 

We moved to Elephant’s Eye in May 2007. No curtains. Books heaped on the floor. WHICH box is it in? Floods and Swamp Monster mud outside. Our lovely first fire!

First fire in new home

W. H. Auden in his poem "Miss Gee" defined cancer as 'foiled creative fire'.    (The text is here if you haven't read it  Audens-Miss-Gee) Teilhard de Chardin said that when we discover how to be truly loving, we will have discovered the power of fire for the second time.

If you were with me in October last year, this will be familiar. I am leaving the original posts up because I value your comments at 2009 October-Pink-Ribbon-3. Before this Autumn Fire, there was Summer Gold and before that Winter-Chill. Ending with  Spring Promise.

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Autumn Fire is the name I give to the third of four beds in my Paradise/Rose Garden. This is the most visible bed, in the 'corner' which is a quadrant, with the curve of the driveway behind. What we see first when we look thru the living room windows, or a visitor steps from the verandah into the garden. Grateful that it is also the bed which is most plant filled. The trees are grown to be worthy of the name. Prunus nigra is big enough to make a deep chocolaty red presence.  The wine dark Japanese maple in its pot is something I have coveted for ever - this is my first best plant. Acer palmatum Black Magic future size unknown. The planting plan, see In-a-Persian-garden. Week by week in October I will collect pictures of the four beds. Sorting and updating here to make a record of the Autumn Fire roses at their flamboyant best in October 2010.

Autumn Fire in the Paradise/rose garden

Alec's Red

Burning Sky

Duftwolke

Maverick, a miniature

Papa Meilland, a deep velvety red rose, the way a rose SHOULD be

Karoo Rose (it is just called that, it is not from the Karoo)

Poppy with its flames of fire

Prunus nigra, Japanese maple and brick red Kalanchoe

Our roses came from Ludwig'sRoses

Pictures and words by Diana of Elephant's Eye 

First day with his new camera

He is in his element. Trying out the new to him features one by one. Panasonic Lumix FZ100. U3A photographers sit while waiting for the birds to fly in and out.

First day with new camera

We have now a better zoom. You can see all the details of the feathers on the Laughing Dove. And you can see the Masked Weaver hard at work. In each picture you can see his piece of grass firmly clutched in his beak. Bottom left, bracing his legs, and pulling like hell from the tip of his beak right down to the tips of his claws. 

Laughing Dove and Masked Weavers

And you can see how carefully he chooses each piece of grass. How long. How thick or thin. How strong or flexible. Need a bit of wheat, or rye, or oat, or winter grass. 

Masked Weaver with just the right piece
of one of our free-spirited plants

Then the macro, for the drops of water on the petals. And this Painted Lady called Cynthia. 'Rapid flier' - so we try to catch them in the morning when they are soaking up the sunshine. 'Widespread. Cosmopolitan' 

Painted Lady on Scabiosa. Bottom left Dietes

You can even see white erm blobs on her antennae, and the mother of pearl shimmer on her fur coat.

Painted Lady Cynthia

Running on empty - I have a cold - so this is a quick post, short on words. 

Friday will be Pink Ribbon 3 Autumn Fire.

PS Despite having to pay VAT and ad valorem tax  --  after weeks, and months, of careful in-depth internet research  --  it was still cheaper to have the Panasonic camera delivered to our door from  B&H in New York. 

Disclaimer - this is NOT an advertorial. The camera was paid for, in full.

Pictures by Jurg and Diana, words by Diana of  Elephant's Eye

Pink Ribbon 2 - Summer Gold

My Strong Family History, such a sinister* phrase (unless you are just left handed like me). It was a month before her twenty-fifth birthday. With a young husband caring for their toddler, and a baby (who would only feed from the healthy side). Over 40 years later, thanks to surgery and radiotherapy, her daughter can say to a sympathetic doctor – NO, No, my mom is fine! I celebrate the courage that printed the steps I follow in. Those two daughters. And her granddaughter.

Germiston Gold. My sister. Her two daughters. And her grand-daughter 

A second layer of strong family history, is my mother's mother. She was over 60, and each decade that passes increases your risk. Wear and tear on one hand, and an accumulation of environmental toxins on the other hand. They said, breast-feeding your children protects you from breast cancer. My fault - I had no children. But my sister got breast cancer, WHILE breast feeding. All those hormones washing around in pregnancy and breast feeding, presents a sinister layer of risk. Grateful that I was not called upon to fight that battle.

Take your doctor’s advice, but focus on all your female relatives who are WELL. And don’t use no family history as an excuse to avoid health care. Most breast cancer patients have no such family history. There is still so much we don’t know. Draw together 20 women, and ask each to name a vegetable – potato, cauliflower, cabbage, artichoke, carrot, spinach, asparagus, peas, parsnip, courgette, aubergine, broccoli, mushrooms, onion, sweetcorn, pumpkin, beetroot, leek, beans, sweet potatoes ... All different, all vegetables. Don’t focus on my friend had such and such treatment, your doctor will treat you (and Your Vegetable).

Chocolat. Typical cat, perched on top of a wall, head pillowed on the gatepost
and blissfully comfortable thank you! Soaking up the evening sunshine

In 2000 we knew that we needed Vitamin D for our bones. In the meantime we have learnt that we need Vitamin D to fight against breast cancer. Ten years ago, the osteoporosis specialist told me they had just compared Jo’burg and Cape Town. They get enough winter sun, but we in the Cape winter DON’T. 
BCRF-Vit-D-deficiency-linked-to-breast-cancer 
4-steps-to-take-now-to-lower-your-breast-cancer-risk
Melatonin, light-at-night, and-breast-cancer

Youngsurvival-young-women-and-bc-statistic

(*BTW You say that the dextrous are people who use the right hand. By which you mean the not left hand, the English language has no way to separate right=correct and right=not left. You say that people who use the left hand, the not right hand, are sinister, evil, devilish. But dextrous and sinister are simply the Latin words for right and left handed. Me, I am ambidextrous, so I can write legibly with the wrong hand. Which you call the right hand, and I call the wrong hand, the not left hand!) 
PS Last year it was THIS which drew most of your comments ;>)

Peace filled with Summer Gold

To my SFH for the 16th I wish you a happy birthday! 

If you were with me in October last year, this will be familiar. I am leaving the original posts up because I value your comments at 2009/10/october-pink-ribbon-2. Before this Summer Gold there was Winter-Chill, and the next is Autumn-Fire

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Summer Gold is the name I give to the second of four beds in my Paradise/Rose Garden. For some reason, aspect, sunshine, shelter - this is the happiest bed, filled with the most flowers. The planting plan, see In-a-Persian-garden. Week by week in October I will collect pictures of the four beds. Sorting and updating here to make a record of the Summer Gold roses at their flamboyant best in October 2010.

Summer gold rose bed, this morning before the rain rolled in
Dietes, wild iris with yellow splodged petals

Above Peace, open and full blown
Below Germiston Gold bud and Tropical sunset

Elizabeth of Glamis, salmon touched with gold

Courvoisier

Casanova. New house ... My favourite. Smells of apricots.

Germiston Gold

Tropical Sunset

Waiting for Peace, missed the bud to full blown sequence when I had it.

Our roses came from Ludwig'sRoses

Pictures and words by Diana of Elephant's Eye