Sharing your New Year’s resolutions publicly
increases your chances of sticking by them. That, at least, is the claim made
in an article I skimmed in the Otago Daily
Times early this year, just after having made my resolution to read more carefully. So here goes. And on the off-chance any of you are
on good terms with Rongo yourself, put in a word for me.
When we moved to our house in early Autumn
last year there was a beautifully ordered vegetable garden at the back prepared
and left ready from the previous owners. It was sleek, full of the produce of
the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, and an inspiration. I stood
looking at it on the day we took possession, inspired. And then I spent the
rest of the year neglecting it – and the rest of the garden, for that matter –
until the weeds and the bolting and the general going to seed (the garden;
myself, dear reader…) all took off. A stray – and self-seeded – new potato
discovered perfectly-formed quite by accident just before Christmas last year
made me feel guilty – and inclined to resolutions – around all of this neglect.
Hence what’s to follow.
If any of you are gardeners yourselves
please read on with a generous eye – too self-centred ever to help my own
father in the garden when I was a child, and much too priggish ever to learn
from my many talented gardener friends now I’m a man, I’m starting this with
nothing but three decades’ accumulated ignorance and a new copy of the Yate’s
guide as my companions.
Here’s what’s to come:
This has been sown with green onion
(ishikura) seeds.
This patch has been sown with carrots, with
two stray potatoes (?) I’m not sure what to do with yet.
Here’s where the courgettes went.
There are buckets that have – no doubt planted much
too closely together – bean seeds in them, but they're too ugly to photograph.
And here – the coward’s option – are
seedlings even I ought not to be able to mangle.
***
My other
resolutions are the same as every other year: to try to contribute usefully
(more usefully) to the socialist movement in Aotearoa; to be a better and more
patient father; to write well; to get somewhere with my language studies.
All this
resolving, weeding and planting in the open air fills one with energy and
liveliness. But has anyone asked Summer how they feel? Thomas Nashe did:
Adieu,
farewell earth’s bliss,
This world
uncertain is;
Fond are
life’s lustful joys,
Death
proves them all but toys,
None from
his darts can fly.
I am sick,
I must die.
Lord have mercy on us!
Rich men,
trust not in wealth,
Gold cannot
buy you health;
Physic
himself must fade,
All things
to end are made.
The plague
full swift goes by;
I am sick,
I must die.
Lord have mercy on us!
Beauty is
but a flower
Which
wrinkles will devour;
Brightness
falls from the air,
Queens have
died young and fair,
Dust hath
closed Helen’s eye.
I am sick,
I must die.
Lord have mercy on us!
Strength
stoops unto the grave,
Worms feed
on Hector brave,
Swords may
not fight with fate.
Earth still
holds ope her gate;
Come! come!
the bells do cry.
I am sick,
I must die.
Lord have mercy on us!
Wit with
his wantonness
Tasteth
death’s bitterness;
Hell’s
executioner
Hath no
ears for to hear
What vain
art can reply.
I am sick,
I must die.
Lord have mercy on us!
Haste,
therefore, each degree,
To welcome
destiny.
Heaven is
our heritage,
Earth but a
player’s stage;
Mount we
unto the sky;
I am sick,
I must die.
Lord have mercy on us!
(This fellow was as uninterested in the English Renaissance as most of my bird friends seem to be).
明けましておめでとうございます！
