high up in the trees

hummingbirds, mice & friends

My penchant for mice in tunnels continues this week... only this time the tunnels sport stripes and strange ballooning growths. I've been looking at diagrams and cross sections of the different burrows of various rats, the African pouched rat with a nest chamber and emergency exit, the cactus house of a wood rat, complete with a blind passageway and bolt hole (what every good home requires, don't you think?) and the eye sparkling mansions of the stick nest rat which often house a plethora of other furry lodgers, from bandicoots to penguins... all happily rubbing shoulders as it were. One nest of wood rats even shared their digs with a shrew alligator lizard and two tree toads. Perhaps next week my mice tunnels will be full of other furry and scaly folk too.

As promised, loot hauled back in the boot from the wilds of Ballarat... a brass antelope fresh from a leap across the African savannah, proved too wonderful to leave behind. Amidst the mountain of 1980's board games, viewfinders and National Geographic mini towers stood this handsome fellow, and like a moth to a flame, I claimed this brass wonder as mine, all mine. LJ also managed to put a substantial dint in her ever ballooning Hercule Poirot collection. With a 1974 publication date, her collection of Christie novels featuring the Belgian detective and this statuette seem made for each other.

Two new birds also flew into the car:

Plus, for those who requested a Hummingbird Cake recipe, you may like to try this one. I'm sure it'll pass muster and taste great, though I can't actually vouch for the recipe myself... culinary flair is not in my bag of tricks. So quicken your pace to the kitchen if you choose:

Hummingbird Cake
Preparation time:30 minutes
Total cooking time: 1 hour
Makes: (only) 1

2 ripe medium bananas, mashed
1/2 cup (125g/4oz) drained crushed pineapple
1 1/4 (310g/10oz) cups caster sugar
1 2/3 (210g/7oz) cups self raising flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon or mixed spice
2/3 (170ml/5.5 fl.oz) cup oil
1/4 cup (60ml/2fl.oz) pineapple juice
2 eggs

Icing
60 g unsalted butter, softened
125 g cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1-2 teaspoons lemon juice

1. Preheat the oven to moderate 180°C. Lightly grease a 20cm square cake tin and line with baking paper.
2. Place the banana, pineapple and sugar in a large bowl. Add the sifted flour and cinnamon or mixed spice. Stir together with a wooden spoon until well combined.
3. Whisk together the oil, juice and eggs in a jug. Pour onto the banana mixture and stir until combined and the mixture is smooth.
4. Spoon into the tin and smooth the surface. Bake for 1 hour, or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the cake. Leave in the tin for 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.
5. For the icing, beat the butter and cream cheese with electric beaters until smooth. Gradually add the icing sugar alternating with the juice. Beat until thick and creamy.
6. Spread the icing thickly over the top of the cooled cake, or thinly over the top and side.

five friday lovelies

Late again, the weekly Friday round up of five likely characters - taste, feel, hear, see and smell, with a wholehearted tilt to all things Ballarat. A predominantly visual wrap up of the fabulous five senses this week, which found me wandering from antique store to second hand bookshop, wrapped in many layers of warm clothing (ergo the sun shone brightly).

to taste

The four cupcakes, one apiece, with rose patterned, mismatched teacups...
A hummingbird cupcake with a side of cream in a heart shaped glass dish.
A white chocolate & raspberry cupcake, with a hot pink flower to boot.
A mud chocolate cupcake with rose flavoured icing and lashings of oh so decadent cream
A mint flavoured mud chocolate cupcake with powder blue icing and tiny chocolate drops and a single spherical scoop of ice-cream
(Can you guess which one I polished off?)

to see, to smell
So closely tangled up together this week, perhaps largely due to a wristwatch in need of repair, nudging me to tell the time and register things in a slightly different manner.

Keeping a watchful eye over the china, clocks, bird statuettes, antiques and collectables on Humffrey Street. The familiar scent of polished treats, tarnished gems and a whiff of a promise in the air. Housed in a former school, throughout numerous rooms, treats for both the eyes and nose.

A trio of 1930's pups in a glass cabinet (with a deer plate in the distance).

The bowerbird within us unleashed onto a sea of bewildering, amassed splendour... leafing through Agatha Christie paperbacks from the 1970's at Burly Babs Collectables and Retro Relics... a dog-eared copy of Mrs. McGinty's Dead features a cover painting by Tom Adams of a giant life size fly hovering over a quant tea room setting... an ornamental glass apple or a gaudy goblet on the others.

Amber glassware on a round table, and more this way.

to hear

A family of swans in conversation by the lake... and chairs in chromium, chairs of wood, red velvet backed dining chairs and deck chairs, all engrossed in deep conversation too.

And, lamps begging to be used... "turn me on, pick me", dangling in the sunlight.

to feel
Straight to my heart, plus a little bit of "I want it, I need it, I really, really need it"... materialistic necessity and want take a hold and refuse to let go. A price tag of over $500 ensures this little elk remains safely in the store and not in my actual possession. Perhaps he'll find his way through the forest and into my hallway tomorrow (if a zero were shaved off).

What I actually snaffled up will come a little later...

four-leafed clover wednesday

Who kills a spider,
Bad luck beside her.

Oh luck, luck, luck, luck, lucky day. Luck abounds today, with a new shiny black nokia mobile due to make a beeline to our door sometime this morning... a free upgrade zooming to our rust coloured front door. The local neighbourhood cats are on high alert, ears pricked in readiness, awaiting the courier's van. Each time our front door swings open one or more felines make a desperate, fast trotted dash down our hallway, much to the mounting displeasure of Omar & Olive. They scamper along, casing out the joint for future warm nests and the location of food bowls.

Two free tickets to the flicks also the order of the day, to see Separate Lies compliments of Brunettis. Few folk must enter as we seem to keep winning the double movie pass with two hot complimentary beverages. Free, lucky treats always seem to taste just that little bit better.

Conjure up your own little spot of luck with a secret spell:
See a pin and pick it up,
All day you'll have good luck.
See a pin and let it lay,
Bad luck you will have all day.

So, off to sew this bundle of buttons from L on to all things before me... with a needle and thread, and naturally a pin.

(2.30pm. Still awaiting the nokia delivery van... in an accent worthy of a Mitford: "I do hope he hasn't got loorst".)

mighty mice

Where's the cheese? Where's the jelly? Not in there. A couple of new mighty mouse drawings for a rainy Monday evening made visible to you thanks to a new mighty mouse for the mac... click, roll, squeeze, scroll.

Once plugged in, my truly mighty mouse led me on a crazed goose chase up the garden path in search of beloved fictional and animated mice from my past. From the wonderful Graham Oakley Sampson and the Church Mice series of children's books, The Church Mice & the Moon and The Church Mice Adrift to name but a few... to the dire straits of the widowed Mrs Frisby, the field mouse forced to flee the annual plowing of her Winter abode in Mrs Frisby and the rats of NIMH... the marvellous The Town Mouse and Country Mouse which features a familiar pearler of a line: "Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear"... and the mice in the Narnia Chronicles who free Aslan from the Stone Table through deft nibbling of the ropes which bind him... to say nothing of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...

Then of course there's Mighty Mouse himself, that unassailable mouse in possession of a swag of super powers ranging from the ability to fly, to juggle two girlfriends, Mitzi and the wonderfully named Pearl Pureheart, as well as the gift of x-ray vision. No black & white vista for this mouse (especially handy as apparently mice cannot see in colour). And who could forget that other animated rodent DangerMouse (with his sidekick Penfold), every inch a parody of that other 007 Secret Agent. Yes, there are mice everywhere, and especially in pipes.

A further two, dear to my heart, fictional mice - the clever private detective cut from the very same cloth as Sherlock Holmes, Mr Basil of Baker Street, and Anatole the cycling mouse with a jauntily tipped beret who toils away at the French Duval Cheese Factory as a champion cheese tester, both of which created by Eve Titus. Full of such characters as Francois de Pamplemouse, the wealthy and misguided aristocrat and Pierre Pigeon who is loathe to take flight, hunt out a copy today... to give to someone knee high or to keep for yourself.

And finally, hear the song of a pet deer mouse as recorded by owner John Sankey upon returning from his crocuses early one Spring day.

5 latecomer senses

SMELL
The aroma of a pair of lime green and bejewelled black slippers replete with coordinated pom-poms on the tips of the toes, all the way from Turkey for LJ & I. The smell of said slippers has filled every corner of the house, a heady fragrance, part synthetic, plush wonder, part camel. Needless to say the two cats have been curious and a little perturbed. Odourless and colourless are two words which cannot be used to describe the new magical presence of the slippers.

The strong smell of the little yellow cleaning cloth as I polish two small silver rabbits and a pair of heart shaped charms patterned with many small dots and dashes which resemble fur. Habitually polishing them to ensure they remain shiny and relatively tarnish free.

HEAR
The sound of my brain ticking away as I struggle to recall the name of the author of My Name is Red: "He lives in Istanbul... his name starts with the letter O and his surname begins with a P". Louise manages to find Orhan Pamuk's The New Life amid the chaos at Borders. With an opening line: "I read a book one day, and my whole life changed"... I'm hooked.

The grinding of the brakes heard in the far distance as my mind wanders elsewhere whilst riding the tram to yoga.

SIGHT
A fox head door-knocker on a green door in my local neighbourhood.

Wrongly turning Mondrian's Vertical Composition in Blue and White, 1936 upside-down: "Was it the blue in the top right or in the bottom left?".

Clicking my way through over 400 travels snaps from the Crescent City.

FEEL
Trimming the loose threads from a special order owl pinnie for Erin, now finished and last seen enjoying a cafe latte en route to his new home.

A bright pink and bursting at the seams sack of buttons from Hong Kong from L. Small plastic packets contain a button fanciers paradise... mini pastel star shaped ones, ones coloured like a watermelon swirl, canary yellow ones shaped like daisies and pale glass buttons with a tiny flower motif. The owl hospital is relieved to know so many of the parliament will soon receive 20/20 vision thanks to this generous button donation.

TASTE
My greatest stumbling block of the five senses, so I'll keep it brief - Rediscovering the joys of Strawberry Quick and relishing the last sip of coffee laced with chicory.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Create your own attention grabbing headlines with The Newspaper Clipping Generator here... (via loobylu).

Also in the news... A North Island brown kiwi receives a prosthetic leg at the Wellington Zoo, NZ. An artificial limb using especially small parts was created for the little fellow named Tahi, by the folk who crafted Hobbit feet and Ian McKellen's nose. Tahi is now happily poking about for worms and other invertebrates like other flightless, forest-dwelling kiwi (read the full scoop here).

I spy with my little eye... further things I have seen of late:
A new cat to the neighbourhood climbing up the flyscreen of our front window. His big white belly pressed against the screen, clinging on for dear life as he clambers with everything but the greatest of ease, before crashing to the ground with a thud. A slip of the claws and he tumbles down, bringing with him a potted, flowering succulent. With wounded pride he scurries off... we've yet to see him since.

A screening of Hidden (Cache) by Michael Haneke in the late morning. A film about guilt, of how we handle stress, racism, and inspired by the October 17, 1961 Paris massacre during the Algerian War of Independence (more).

may 1983

Digging in the archives... revisiting favourite books on the shelf since I can't be here.

All the books on the shelf are arranged in three different camps, the big art books and reference books organised by a logical order of scale. The next size down are grouped by genre to ensure that gardening doesn't rub alongside collected catalogues and essays... and finally novels by author, though never alphabetically. If I separated them into those I hardly ever read and those I continually fall back on, usually quite literally earmarked and perhaps with scuffed knees, I would have quite a different pattern before me.

Sometimes they like to move around, Iris Murdoch likes to keep Graham Greene's Monsignour Quixote company, or Calvino likes to sidle up alongside Victoria Finlay's travels through the Colour palette, whilst sandwiched in-between This Is Not a Weasel - A close look at nature's most confusing terms and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory lies The Master and Magarita.

So as I scanned this one particular shelf before me, I rediscovered one of my bound scrap books begun in May, 1983. Full of handwritten excerpts in curly, ornate penmanship favoured by those in Primary School and colour images from a Wind in the Willows calendar (I would have been six and a half at the time)... and many drawings of mice and other creatures, scraps and postcards.

just in time... 5 senses friday

The theme of travel lingers a little while longer for my weekly dive into the Friday Fives, which began with this one by Shari... now scheduled to randomly appear on a Friday as a lucky, occasional gem... and which has morphed into a series of beautiful mind maps.

E.L.K. spells elk.

Owl ring = oh-my!

TO SEE.
Seeing my folks walk through the doorway at the airport... tanned, happy and wheeling their extra heavy suitcases before them, a canvas tote filled to the brim, slung over the shoulder.

Unzipping the cases to reveal a pirate's bounty. Trinkets, flyers, presents and garish plastic pink flamingo garlands entwined in a bed of socks, Tower plastic bags and hoarded magazines. Other items included a coffee mug from the Bluebird Cafe on Prytania Street, Make Levees Not War badges, a small silver bird brooch with a golden feather, and an owl ring eerily close to one I'd previously lusted after (though for a fraction of the price).

TO HEAR.
Enjoying the cds which made the return trip, the New Orleans Jazz Vipers, a new cd from the Lost Bayou Ramblers Bayou Perdu (Hear tracks Pine Island, North Louisiana Blues and Pilette High Society on their site), and the Pine Leaf Boys.

Listening to a copy of the first episode of Theme Time Radio Hour with Your Host Bob Dylan devoted to songs referencing weather... the Carter Family Keep On The Sunny Side slides into It's Raining, Irma Thomas (Find the full playlist here.).

Receiving news that L has snapped up trillions of tiny, glittery potential owl eyes for us in Hong Kong - a bag of colourful buttons.

The woebegone meows of a neighbours wet cat, soaked to the skin in a recent downpour, seeking refuge in our back garden. A new black & white longhaired feline, new to the neighbourhood, has heard along the grapevine that little bowls of dried fish and salmon flavoured biscuits are known to appear at the backdoor (at all hours of the day and night) as if by magic. The word has clearly spread - crestfallen welcome. Our humble, improvised cat Bed & Breakfast is rapidly transforming into a fully fledged hotel for lost causes.

Green eyes for the sewing.

All the way from Ecuador.

TO TOUCH.
The soft feel of a new, unworn tee adorned with an elk.

Two small, painted Ecuadorian llama pins made from dough and from a village near Quito, arrive on our door from Risa, who is busy feathering the new nest for Otto Owl.

Owl fabric and a pair of green button eyes are also delivered to our letterbox, wrapped in an envelope constructed from a Melways map from Erin.

And, today our letterbox also issued forth a postcard from G, exploring Ireland. Snail mail abounds from destinations both near and far, causing its recipients to beam with delight. Cool white DL business envelopes pale in comparison to the packages carefully wrapped and bearing stamps from foreign lands.

TO SNIFF.
Cooking with spices, the fragrance of onion and red pepper fills the house, serves of jambalaya and sprinkling Tony Chachere Creole Seasoning "great on everything!" over everything. The directions: "When it is salty enough, it's seasoned to perfection".

And, the aroma of coffee with chicory from the French Market, brewing away.

The smell of the dogbane, all lush and green, in the front garden after the rain.

Imagining the smell of fish chunks and diced seal, as the 82 year old Eagle Lady of Homer, Alaska feeds her band of merry bald eagles.

TO CHEW.
Perhaps you'd like to do this one?

through the round window?

Only two mice drawings visible through the peephole today. Tomorrow, I promise you the moon... well, maybe.

In the meantime, why don't you read about Laika the Dog sent to orbit the Earth in space aboard the Sputnik II (November 3, 1957), and some of her K9 cosmonaut companions.
(more).

Head to the Earth & Moon Viewer to see what Belka and Strelka couldn't quite see from their space dog boxes.

five belated senses

It's another late in the day five senses friday (why don't you play along too?)... and travel is still on my mind. So, I'm sure my five senses (saturday morning) will have a distinct whiff of a boarding pass to them. Maybe they'll be all about the trinkets and hoarded keepsakes around me which evoke travel. My travels, as I remember them... and the souvenirs of friends and family.

Pack your bags... I'll try to make this as lucid as possible.

SEE:
My favourite catalogues and books, those weighty lumps that squeeze between socks and toiletries on the journey home... leafing through them now, I am reminded of all the things I don't want to forget.
Birdspace - A Post-Audubon Artists Aviary at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Olreans, featuring small drawings by Amy Jean Porter Birds of North America Misquote Hip-Hop and Sometimes Pause for Reflection, Kiki Smith Three Crows and many more.
Portuguese Tiles from the National Museum of Azulejo, Lisbon, located in a former Convent of Madre de Deus.
Turning through the 352 pages of Paul Klee triff Joseph Beuys Ein Fetzen Gemeinschaft, a drawing exhibition with over 200 works and a catalogue essay I'd love to read if only I knew German (alas, it will have to remain a mystery to me), I am taken back to the Kurpfalzisches Museum der Stadt, Heidelberg... waiting for it to open whilst the banks of the Danube flood.
A Miscellany of Objects from the Sir John Soane's Museum allows me to clamber about The Crypt with Seti I's sarcophagus, and to wander through The Dome Area, The Picture Room and Monk's Parlour once more.
And Joseph Beuys - The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland, the first book ever purchased with foreign currency, at the V&A.

TASTE:
I recall... enjoying falafels and carrot juice at the Da-Da Falafel after spending the day at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for the Present Berlin, housed in the former Hamburg Train Station.
Green lima beans & rice with okra at The Praline Connection Restaurant, "Three Generations of Pure D'Goodness!" on the corner of Frenchman and Chatres.
Sharing a punnet of fresh strawberries with C & L in Vienna, as we strolled down the longest market.
Sharing two shots of peach palinka in Budapest three ways because our budget was not as extensive as we'd hoped.
Salami cut into flower shaped pieces at the Hotel Orphee for breakfast.

SOUND:
Sitting around B's kitchen table in her flat in Kreuzberg, listening to her stories and hearing her slip with ease from German to English and back again. Cactus plants on the window ledge behind her.
Bear Dance, Fox Dance and Leaping Dance from Musicians from Transylvania and Moldavia on cd.
The flutter of a postcard falling from its perch on the shelf when the window is open. The Spanish bullfighter with his red cloak and bull take a tumble to the carpeted floor beneath them on a regular basis.

FEEL:
Pins & needles in my arm as I lie on the floor watching Everything is Illuminated, travelling through the Ukraine with my hosts, including a dog named Sammy Davis Jnr. Jnr..
The folded maps in their cigar box homes waiting to be called upon once more. Dog-eared road maps of Spain and Portugal, alongside expired train timetables marking the route from Milan to Ascona. On top of this lies a stolen menu from Mother's World's Best Baked Ham Restaurant, which sticks out of the bookshelf, causing me to knock it each time I pass.
Little slippers of pink and blue for bound feet from LW to us, from Hong Kong to the shelf in our bookbinding studio.
Woven with metallic gold thread, countless saris from Madras from M.
An empty purse.

SMELL:
I'll leave that one up to you. What smells can you recall?

sightsee

Snail mail from my parents and a letter from Allen Tupper True to Jane True (1927) as seen in the book More than Words.

Lately I've been thinking about travel, the notion of travel and why we travel.

The travellers have managed another call from New Orleans, where an operational phone line is a lucky thing few possess. Snail mail has also continued to dribble through telling me of in-store appearances at the Factory and Tower, hearing Dr John at The House of Blues, the Meters and Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys at the festival, Blue Monday - Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock'n'Roll a book filled with 75 rare and unpublished photos, and what remains of the city, especially outside the Quarter. Driving around the 9th ward and the lower 9th ward with a friend of theirs who lives in N.O's, they saw the unfiltered and depressing scene some several months later. Amidst all this, they discovered The Morning Call still standing and still serving cafe au laits out in Metairie, having been damaged by 6 inches of water. A late night cafe that used to be located in the Quarter (it now resides in the 'burbs)... a sentimental pit stop on the way home all those years ago, proves today to hold the same memories.

Further momentos have been collected - the white paper hats from The Morning Call Coffee Stand, old postcards from the Crescent City, and tins of coffee from the French Market to be brewed at home to instantly jog the memory and transport you with every hot sip to a now distant destination that resides at the fuzzy edge of memory... Reinventing the scene as you go, unintentionally or otherwise.

It has been a long time since I travelled in the above sense, with a boarding pass to an OS destination. I still have all my collected travel tokens littered about the place to remind me how the experience felt, and what I wanted to remember about that feeling. From the more obvious travel photos that adorn shelves and walls - snorkelling underwater at the Great Barrier Reef encircled by a brightly coloured school of fish, my parents standing outside the Jean Lafayette Guest House where they had previously stayed in '69-'70 on honeymoon, the familiar view of the snow capped mountains across the river from the bookbinding studio in Ascona, a gypsy band in a local hall in Budapest, a favourite Berlin streetscape, Louise taking a sneaky photo of the Kusama exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wein, a local stray cat in Portugal who has no idea his portrait hangs on our lounge room wall... some are easy to spot, easy to pick the location, easy to read why they have been left up, leaning against the bookshelf, others are more ambiguous - through to local cds, catalogues, an old t-shirt from the Old Point Bar, Algiers. Labels, ticket stubs and cafe napkins bear the marks of my adventures, the recipients of thoughts they are covered with hastily scrawled notes or overheard remarks. All these snapshots and trinkets carry me back to another time, though this time the journey is cloaked in a thick fog of nostalgia. I didn't think I wore rose coloured glasses but I think my stored trinkets tell otherwise.

Today I travel vicariously through the tales of friends or through episodes of Foreign Correspondent on the telly... last night, the plight of the landless in Northern Brazil (more) and the life of most dogs in China (more), or Global Village with a story on the poyas which decorate the gables of Alpine farms in Switzerland . Or I can travel about the room I'm in now and my local surrounds... and most importantly, I can travel through my imagination which requires me only to be dressed in pyjamas. Here I am free to explore implausible cities or trawl the briny deep.

Want to travel too?
Why not send me your own imagined travels as a postcard... here.
Visit Vintage Luggage Labels - The Lost Art of Travel and The History of the Luggage Label.
Leaf through the pages of More than Words, Illustrated Letters from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art by Liza Kirwin... Chapter 1, BON VOYAGE!

mice monday

Three new drawings from over the weekend to kick off the week... three lucky mice for the month of May.