A wine enthusiast?

Luke Slattery, in his column in the Australian a little while back, said -

"I am not, I like to think, a heavy drinker.   I am, rather, an enthusiastic one".

Must remember this description next time my doctor questions me about my consumption of alcohol!

Edna Walling

We've stayed at the same house at Lorne for many years, but this year for the first time I noticed that one of the books on the shelves was A Gardner's Log, by Edna Walling. This was first published in 1948, and is a collection of her articles from Australian Home Beautiful. The edition here was actually published in 2003 with a number of fresh photographs (as well as photographs from the intermediate editions, especially the 1985 edition).

The book is blog-like!   Of course Edna Walling is from another era but many of her notes, made in the course of the seasons, are still of interest.   They include suggestions under heading such as “Plants for Rock Gardens and Other Places”, “Garden Steps”, “Plant Hunting”, "April in Victoria" and “Roadside Beauty”. However, under these various headings there is a wealth of information about various plants and associated matters.

Just a few quotes at random: “I …. always feel that the part of a garden near the entrance should give the first sensation of rest to those returning home to those returning home. There is nothing very restful about masses of annuals, conjuring up, as they do, hours of labour, and much expenditure on seed, fertilisers and water.” (These displays, she thinks, should be kept for the rear of the house).

“After the architect and the interior decorator have finished with the client, the garden designer starts the battle of trying to achieve a fitting garden with what is left. The client is still there, but the funds, alas!”

“How to become a Landscape Gardner – Walks into the country provide the best lessons on landscape gardening. Notice how the trees are naturally grouped, how the ground-covering plants grow in drifts of different species round their feet, how boulders help to make up the natural scene, and how little tracks, made by cattle perhaps, wander about in lines that are never straight.” 

"I decided this morning that as there is neither the time nor inclination to trot around holding the hands of those plants that look up at you and gasp. "Water! I can't stand this heat another minute", I would take an inventory of those ground-covering plants that can take it."

"...[Q]uite often ... owners  [of flowering climbers] are puzzled as to manner in which they should be pruned and trained.   It is all very simple, the general rule being the same as for flowering shrubs:   prune immediately after flowering."    

The Picador Book of Crime Writing

I took this anthology edited by Michael Diblin from the library shelf on a whim. I often read detective stories but this wasn't quite what I expected.

I was encouraged by the opening statement in the Introduction that it is dedicated "to the proposition that good crime writing is good writing".   A little further on, it is said that when describing a man coming through a door with a gun in his hand, you don't need half a page describing the door!   This statement resonated with me, as did the statement that "...for every writer who pads out a two-hundred -page detective story to twice that length with decorative frills and flounces there are ten whose work might have been written not just on but by a word processor".
Hmm, I have to say that I can think of prize-winning authors (not of detective stories) whose work seems to me sometimes to come into this category.   Diblin appears to agree, as he says "good crime writing has nothing in common with 'fine writing'".   But I'm definitely not an author and certainly not qualified to judge literary merit, so I won't pursue this angle (surely he wouldn't reach the conclusion that 'fine writing' isn't necessarily 'good writing'....?)!

Back to the anthology, it's a collection of more than 50 short stories, by authors ranging from Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde  and C P Snow through to people I hadn't heard of.  Some are extracts from longer works, and some were written as short stories.  If one's view of traditional "crime" writing is about solving crimes (that is "detective stories"), this isn't a book in the traditional mode.  Many stories are about the committing of a murder! In a few, all the circumstances for the commission of a crime exist, but none actually takes place.  There are some police stories, including one where a gang who have committed a robbery is apprehended, based on information provided by an informer.   There are a couple of stories about hangings.   There's a bizarre story about a bomb disposal team deliberately allowing the bomb planted on a criminal to explode.

It's all unpredictable.   Certainly the variety of scenarios covered in itself kept my attention.