Horn Seed Company: Gardening in the Fall

One of my favorite things to do in my spare time is go to my favorite gardening store, Horn Seed Co. in Oklahoma City. Especially in the Fall when gardening begins to slow down for winter, I can't help needing a garden fix to get me through the colder months. Horn's always has an amazing display of beautiful plants, both seasonal and year around, ranging from cactus varieties, perennials, annuals, vines, shrubs, trees, herbs and seeds.

Horn's also carries a large selection of garden items such as bird baths, bird houses, wind chimes and garden accents of all kinds, along with gardening tools and materials. There is always something beautiful and unexpected for each season. One of the features that captivates me along with the sights and scents of the garden are the sounds of wind chimes, running water, and the classical music which plays throughout the greenhouse and store for the enjoyment of the plants and customers. Everything they do at Horn's is with expert taste and care.

Last week, although most of the summer inventory has been put away, the greenhouse was still alive with beautiful fall color. I took a few pictures of my fall favorites: pansies, mums, ornamental cabbages both small and large, multi-colored ornamental peppers, and some Dwarf Alberta Spruce trees that were ready for the Holiday season.

I also found a cast iron Hibachi grill that can be used to grill with or to burn scented wood. I asked if it was for sale because I've been looking for one a long time with no luck. This one was used, but the design was perfect for me. The owner said I could buy it for only $7.00, which was beyond generous (photos below).

Ornamental peppers and yellow mums

Pansies and small ornamental cabbages

Small ornamental cabbages

More varieties of ornamental cabbages

Dwarf Spruce tree, large ornamental Peacock (brassica) kale and red mums

New-to-me Hibachi grill

Exploring "The Wasteland":

Here is the link to a blog I started to explore themes of T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland":

http://fullfathomfiv.blogspot.com/

The Hawk of Gold

After "the last two weeks'" posts about hawks, reading poems about hawks and different beliefs and representations of hawks in nature and in ancient cultures, especially studies in the ancient Egyptian culture, along with the poem by Aleister Crowley who saw the hawk-god Horus as one of the foundations of his religious theory, I had to wonder about a visit that turned "a golden hawk against the turquoise heavens" from lore to legend yesterday just outside my door.

Previously, when I was taking a semester course about Edgar Allen Poe I kept having a large black raven that came and roosted on the street lamp post that stands next to where I park my car in front of my apartment. He would especially like it when my phone would go off while I was checking my oil and it would play "Electric Feel" by MGMT. He would flap his wings and make a lot of caw-ing sounds. He even tapped on my window one morning which woke me when I overslept and I would have missed class.

I wanted to feed him, but when I checked on the habits of crows and ravens, I found out from Wild Birds Unlimited in OKC that if you make the mistake of feeding a crow, they will return with lots of their friends and can become pests and even destructive if you don't supply them all with food! So I thought I'd let nature take care of itself and enjoy the visits while they lasted.

However, yesterday was the first time I have had a golden hawk appear roosting at the top of the same light post. He watched with huge golden eyes, looking down on us as we passed him, and only when I got excited about the unusual occurrence and squealed in excitement that a hawk would appear so close to my house inside the area where I live did he decide to take flight back to the tree tops.

In the years I have lived in Edmond, it is the first time I have seen a large hawk, the type that is usually only seen in rural areas and not the small urban dwelling gray Georgian hawks. I was amazed when our eyes met!

I don't believe that things happen by coincidence, which made me think, "Are we being watched?!" Maybe only the hawk-god Horus or Mr. Crowley knows for sure! But look at those amber-colored eyes!!

The Hawk and Mr. Crowley

"Hawk Roosting" by Ted Hughes is a contrast in modern style when compared to the poem by Aleister Crowley, "The Hawk and the Babe." Hughes' poem is more direct, like the flight of the hawk, and shows a more modern approach to the subject of his poem and it's reference to humanity.

Although the poem by Crowley depicts the imagery and nature of the hawk, the language is more ornate and ornamental, of an older, romantic style. His language identifies him with the gold and turquoise of Heaven as seen in his studies of ancient Egyptian religion. Welcome to the magical world of Aleister Crowley.


The Hawk and the Babe by Aleister Crowley
[Dedicated to Raymond Radclyffe]

I am that hawk of gold
Proud in adamantine poise
On the pillars of torqoise,
See,beyond the starry fold,
Where a darkling orb is rolled.

There, beneath a grove of yew,
Plays a babe. Should I despise
Such a foam of gold, and eyes
Burning beryline, so blue
That the sun seems peeping through?

Did I swwop, were Heaven amazed?
With my beak I strike but once;
Out there leap a million suns.
Through the universe that blazed
Screams theit light, and death is dazed.

In my womb the babe may leap;
Seek him not within my eye!
Nor demand thou of me why
I should plunge from crystal steep
Like a plummet to the deep!

See yon solitary star!
What a world of blackness wraps
Round it! Unimagined gaps!
Let it be! Content thy car
With the voyage to things that are!

Nor, an thou perchance behold
How I plunge and batten on
Earth's exentrate carrion,
Deem torquoise match midden-mould
Or deny the Hawk of Gold!

"Hawk Roosting"

In the Native American tradition it is recognized that the eagle and the hawk function in a somewhat different way. The eagle uses his ability to see the whole picture or general area, then movement, then he finds his specific prey. The hawk is more specific, sees his prey and goes directly for it. The difference in seeing the whole picture compared to the more specific approach is demonstrated well in the following poem by Ted Hughes. The poem uses the personification of a hawk to consider in human terms what can become a predatory nature when a view is adopted that separates one from cooperative evolvingness or community, in shamanistic terms, one who becomes separate from their community can become inadvertently or purposefully harmful:

"Hawk Roosting Analysis" by Ted Hughes

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.

Inaction, no falsyfing dream

Between my hooked head and hooked feet:

Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.The convenience of the high trees!



The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray

Are of advantage to me;

And the earth's face upward for my inspection.My feet are locked upon the rough bark.

It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my footOr fly up, and revolve it all slowly-

I kill where I please because it is all mine.

There is no sophistry in my body:

My manners are tearing off heads-The allotment of death.

For the one path of my flight is direct

Through the bones of the living.

No arguments assert my right:The sun is behind me.

Nothing has changed since I began.

My eye has permitted no change.

I am going to keep things like this.

The Ancient Egyptians used the symbolic form of the hawk as the most powerful representation of the sun god Ra, also known as Ra-Horakhty, Ra - Lord of the Horizons. The hawk form of this deity represents ruler of the sun, sky and horizons which are symbolic of death and rebirth. Ra is considered to die in the west every evening, travel through the underworld in the belly of the sky goddess, Nut, and be re-born every morning, younger than the day before. He represents renewal and many other realms, such as Ruler over all the other gods and keeping them in line, ruler over the Pharaohs, over property, and much more. The pharaoh was also associated with this deity, as his representative, and he held the kingdom in his grip, much like the hawk in Hughes' poem as he held the bark in his grip or rotated the whole creation in his foot as ruler over all.

Ra-Horakhty


My eye: as the Eye of Horus/Eye of Ra

"In Praise of Limestone"

W.H. Auden's poem "In Praise of Limestone" was one of the poems we read this week in our class (Modern British Literature). The poem appeared in our reading schedule at the same time I happened to be working with Plaster of Paris to make a mold of a Roman theater mask so I could hang it on the brick wall in my garden above the cobalt glazed ceramic birdbath. The original mask is heavy and also might disappear if hung outside, so I am attempting to make a duplicate with a plaster cast. I forgot how messy plaster can be, although I have been living in its dust for the last few weeks.

The last few weeks my house has been covered with dust in my apartment from builders who were replacing our roof. Before they could complete the roof, it rained heavily and ended up raining into our apartment and ruining much of the ceiling. The work continued inside the house with sheets of plastic covering everything in several rooms, but the sheet rock and plaster dust still managed to escape and leave a thick layer of fine white dust on everything in the house so I'm still working on excavating the rooms. The workers even left all the sheets and mess for an entire weekend where we had no room to move except a small area in one room to sleep on the floor! Boy, can I relate to this poem!! I have slept, ate and drank the dust of limestone or similar compound for a while now. So, while I am enjoying the results of our new roof and ceiling, rediscovering my space and belongings, and shaping new forms of creativity with the very limestone dust he speaks about, I thought I would take some time as Auden did, to praise the Limestone.

I couldn't help to think of the area around Naples that he visited while writing his poem and all the landscape and ruins that surround the area. The past and the present are embedded in the landscape and I found some images of the limestone features included below:

Italian Car in Ischia: This little lime-colored car would be fun to drive around in to see all the sites/sights...


Herculaneum Fresco: An example of pigment in limestone which retains its color over time.

Herculaneum - Painted Columns: Similar pigmentation used in limestone as well as the walls which have been layered over the centuries.


A Pompei couple: Dressed up in "the best" for their portrait, the baker and his wife want to be remembered as literate and elegant.



Plaster cast of a Pompei citizen caught in "the worst" destruction at the time of Mt. Vesuvius' eruption:

Neptune, Triton with various sea creatures/Tiled Womens' Bath which contains no water, but still retains "an older colder voice, the oceanic whisper:"


View from Ischia:

Sometimes the best interpretation of a poem is how we interact with it, whether by interacting with the text mentally or through hands-on experience. Limestone and water seem to mix well, but Auden says it so beautifully in the last lines of his poem:

Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

"In Memory of Sigmund Freud"

W. H. Auden writes about Sigmund Freud in his poem "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" and first asks: "When there are so many we shall have to mourn, / when grief has been made so public, and exposed / to the critique of a whole epoch / the frailty of our conscience and anguish," and in the next stanza, "of whom shall we speak?"

Sigmund Freud, "an important Jew who died in exile," who gave back to humanity "while as they lie in the grass of our neglect, / so many long-forgotten objects / revealed by his undiscouraged shining" and which "are returned to us and made precious again; / games we thought we must drop as we grew up, / little noises we dared not laugh at, / faces we made when no one was looking." Auden goes on to say "But he wishes us more than this. To be free / is often to be lonely. He would unite / the unequal moieties fractured / by our own well-meaning sense of justice, "...

Auden speaks of our fractured inner lives as "exiles who long for the future" and in the next stanza he continues the stream of thought: "that lives in our power, they too would rejoice / if allowed to serve enlightenment like him / even to bear our cry of 'Judas', / as he did and all must bear who serve it."

We live now "in a world he changed / simply by looking back with no false regrets; / all he did was to remember / like the old and be honest like children." and we are now "able to approach the Future as a friend / without a wardrobe of excuses, without / a set mask of rectitude or an / embarrassing over-familiar gesture."

The accomplishments Freud made by developing scientific methods of psychoanalysis through talk therapy between a patient and analyst, through dream analysis and free association, entering the subconscious realm where he descended and embraced humanity on its deepest level with love rather than hate helped restore life in a broken world. He also taught by example which was one of the best accomplishments of all.

“We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.” ― Sigmund Freud

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” ― Sigmund Freud