Cloud study 101

Clouds give crispness and definition to the sky according to Gavin Pinney. And as founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society he should know. He has looked at plenty of clouds. They predict weather – they can mass or burn back. They inspire both wonder and worry – they can spoil a wedding or a picnic. Sometimes they scroll across an otherwise empty atmosphere like teletype. Cloud fanciers have favourites.

Did you know that Nimbus is the Latin for rain cloud? Nimbus by their very definition bring rain, they are dark, close and classed as praecipitato – clouds which can no longer contain their precipitation. Throughout the ten or so years of recent drought we watched the sky somewhat wistfully for nimbus. Then, it seemed to me that the sky was often empty. The ground hardened under it and even tall trees suffered.

On Friday last we drove through an atlas of cloud types. The sky was already threatening at two in the afternoon. At first it was diverting, watching the clouds climb and assemble into impossible architectures. Later it gave an unwanted urgency to our adventure. I know only the ABC’s of cloud kinds. But Cumulonimbus is unmistakable. It is almost always trouble or troublesome - Nimbus but with attitude. It means a storm, a sudden swing on the barometer, thunder and lightning displays and possible hail. To us it meant a plummet in temperature and a sudden drop in visibility. 


Leaving town we skirted the Hume which was closed close to Melbourne by an overturned truck. And despite our cross country route progress through Yarra Glen slowed to a crawl - while a tow truck retrieved a youngster’s car that had taken a corner awry and skated on the wet road into a ditch. The kids, thankfully unharmed, watched from under one umbrella while the mud covered car was winched aboard its ride. There would be a deal of explaining to do at home and mothers on their knees somewhere thanking the heavens that it was only an injured car. Meanwhile the storm hit its stride. The next three hours or so we seemed to be driving through all of the elements at once. Trees came down, a semi trailer jack-knived across our path, lightning lit up the road in minute spaced exposures. I was gripping the wheel hard and craning to see. Mostly all I want in a storm is to be home – the gates fixed so as not to bang, the gutters clear. I like the heat to be on, a bowl of soup ready, the family on the sofa or at least busy in their rooms – the dogs at my feet and a book in my hand.I am not known to be brave or adventurous. I am not even that often out at night. But we were on a mission to fetch a rescue dog and that alone made it worth risking wet roads.


That night we crawled into town like sailors looking for safe harbour. Well, Albury is a good way from the ocean – but the river is close and as we crossed it looked a torrent. Perhaps we could have been sweet water sailors…

After dinner - surprisingly good, television - reception terrible and bed - bliss, we woke to a different kind of cloud. Stratus is the kind of cloud that likes to be on the ground. It is a dog at heel. Damp almost to the point of rain but falling somewhere short - it is our chance to experience the sky at sea level. Nosing north to Canberra we sped into a chalky quiet.Either everyone else was sleeping or sensible enough to stay home.

Could melancholia be good for you?

The melancholy of Autumn can be its glory too. Rain, wood smoke, bobble hats, jacket potatoes and gum boots. Then there is the excuse to stay in. It's Saturday, so why not stay in your pyjamas? There are books to read, things to eat in the pantry and the leaves are too wet to rake anyway. Washing won't dry, the dogs are rain shy - there are sofas, blankets, pillows, slippers and novels. Now I can't remember why Autumn is sad.

Grasshopper and the ant

Today when I am dusting I find a dead grasshopper on the windowsill. He is still perfectly green and even in death his face looks full of intellect and interest. He does not have that frowning fierceness that the praying mantis has – all hard angles and the eyes of a maniac. No this sweet fellow has the face of a country vicar - all humility and gentleness and through carelessness I have killed him. I wonder if the Buddha of household things sees this misadventure and I leave dusting him till later - still suddenly my karma seems too heavy to carry on with. I think on all the accidental deaths, on all the lives cut short through some failure of attention or care. Better the grasshopper had died in the beak of a bird, I think, more violent but a death with purpose. The thing is I had seen this small fellow come in a few days ago. The screen door was open, the afternoon sun was coming in at a slant and this perfectly jointed green creature came in too. He settled on the architrave beside the door and I got up from my desk to admire him. His sweet face looked somehow familiar and put me in mind of the grasshopper in Aesop’s fables. I’m not sure what edition I had as a child – it was a book that had belonged to my mother – a hardback, the pages roughly cut and the coloured plates interleaved with tissue. I remember that the grasshopper had spent the summer singing while the ants worked. I think in the illustration he carried a small violin while the ants shouldered a giant stalk of wheat…the text was spare, hardly a story really. Labour and frugality was rewarded and idleness condemned. How much more eloquent the picture was and how surprised I was that singing could be punished. I liked to sing.

A day later when I noticed the grasshopper again he was clinging to the cornice. I wondered at his ability to walk upside down and went back to work. I had spent the morning bottling quinces, now I was at the sewing machine stitching straight rows and unable stop – I admired his acrobat instincts in an abstract sort of way, not thinking he might be in peril – I was being an ant – I hadn't stopped to wonder that he was still in the house, did not even think to open a window for him. Perhaps he was drowning not waving. Perhaps he was not singing but calling for help. I looked without seeing the obvious, heard without listening something I am too often guilty of - and that is how I came to find him a week later, laid on his side as though in sleep, unmoving on the windowsill. 

the comfort of colour

The passing of the equinox means we cannot claim Summer anymore. Summer is on its last legs - has leaned into Autumn and from now the days get shorter. The tomato vines are straggling, the strawberries put out a last few berries and the apple tree is loaded. The quinces are heavy and going gold, the pear trees are feeding possums and cockatoos. In a way Autumn is more social than Summer. Everyone is back at school or work. Holidays already seem sketchy and only half remembered. Suddenly sleeves are rolled up. There is fruit to pick, jams and jellies to process, pie to roll pastry for... and after the haze of Summer heat the mornings are crisper, the sky clearer, the colours cleaner. The turning leaves, the cold starts and Wedgewood afternoon skies - this is the comfort of colour that Autumn offers.


With a bucket of homegrown Golden Delicious to hand and dinner guests tonight I pull down Jane Grigson's Good Things and thumb through. She has the authority of Elizabeth David with a less testy temperament. I feel friendlier towards her. She is smart, motherly and wistful in turns. My eye lights on Evreux apple tarts and I feel her at my elbow when she warns, "Do not be tempted to cook the tarts before the meal, or the juices will soak away into the pastry." How well she seems to know me. I would have cooked them early if only to admire them cooling on racks by the window.
Here is her recipe altered slightly to be baked as a galette.




Evreux apple tarts
At the Vieille Gabelle restaurant in Evreux, 55 miles to the west of Paris, they serve these tarts made with Golden Delicious apples. Do not be tempted to cook the tarts before the meal, or the juices will soak away into the pastry. Put them into a hot oven as you serve the first course, and baste once or twice with the apricot mixture.


shortcrust
8oz flour
5oz butter and lard mixed ( I used unsalted Danish butter only)
2 level tablespoons icing sugar
1 egg


creme patissiere
1 oz flour
2 egg yolks
1 egg
2 oz sugar
1/2 oz milk


apricot mixture
6 tablespoons apricot jam
2 tablespoons water


plus 
11/2 lbs Golden Delicious apples


Make the pastry and use it to line four straight sided patty pans, of about 4 1/2 inches diameter (from Woolworths). (I rolled 2 discs of pastry and lifted them into pie dishes leaving a generous overhang to be folded into on top of the fruit). Make the creme patissiere next: mix in a bowl the flour, egg yolks egg and sugar and stir in the milk which should have first be brought to just under boiling point. Cook over low heat until the custard is thick. Cool, then pour a 1/4 inch layer of it into the pastry cases.
Peel, core and cut the apples into1/8 inch slices. Halve the slices and arrange curved side up inthe creme patissiere, so that they resemble records gradely neatly in a rack.


Melt the apricot jam and water together, and sieve. Pour a little over the tarts. Cook in a hot oven, Mark 6-7, 400-427F, basting from time to time with the rest of the apricot mixture. The top edges of the apple should catch the heat and turn brown. Golden Delicious apples will not lose their shape, or disintegrate into white fluff as cookers do. When you cut into the tarts, a delicious aromatic juice bursts out. Serve plenty of cream with them.
from Jane Grigson Good Things illustrated by M J Mott, London, 1971, 2007

festival of broken needles

Hand sewing slows the heart it seems. Or it does mine. Perhaps like writing longhand it cannot be done at speed. Begs not to be. One stitch, one breath. The rhythmic dip and dive of the long nose, round eyed needle lets the thoughts lift loose. And the heart feels unburdened. Sometimes hand sewing is more a joy than a job.

A needle is a fine tool. Simple, portable, industrious. But what to do if it breaks? If it is bent and no longer able to sew true? Thank it. Lament it. Offer comfort. Japanese women do. For hundreds of years Japanese women have honoured their needles and pins on Hari-Kuyo. On February 8 women take their tired needles and worn out pins to Shinto or Buddhist shrines and lay them to rest in the Festival of Broken Needles. Bent pins and broken needles are made to lie down on a soft bed specially sewn or plunged into cakes of bean curd. Softness comforts the needles and pins who before have known only sharpness. Sutras are said to thank the needles for their hard work, for a year of straight stitches, for repairs, for their sorrows inherited direct from the seamstresses hand.

Last night I saw a fox step out of the darkness. Kitsune - the Shinto messenger - a good omen, I thought, for burying needles. I made my bent pins and one broken needle a bed stitched with sashiko, plumped with fleece - a button and spare thread for company. I thanked them and then I laid aside sewing for the day.

If the fox came for them he would be able to carry the soft parcel in his mouth with ease - no booby trapped tofu to choke on.

"Oh my needle, how sad! You were a special gift, beyond the ordinary, prominent among all ironware. Deft and swift like some knight errant, straight and true like a loyal subject, your sharp point seemed to talk, your round eye seemed to see."

from Lament for a Needle.  Anon Choson dynasty, Korea.

the ground beneath

After a few too hot days at home scratching away at my journal, sewing, mooching among the bookshelves, tidying up a little fretfully, not feeling hungry but still thinking about food - I realised that I had cabin fever and I had to get out. The past few weeks I had been sewing - mending, patching, darning - and somehow that led to stitching cloth in a sort of dream - an unthinking meditation. I had been reading too about zokin - Japanese dusters, or cleaning cloths - repurposed material from clothes cut down and quilted together with tiny running stitches - a humble sashiko. These days it seems zokin are made only by the elderly, by women old enough to have memory of hard times, young enough to still want to do something with their hands. That is me, I thought, neither old or young - some time on my hands. I made three - quilted in different patterns - my sewing both inexpert and somehow satisfying hand work. When cabin fever finally struck I took myself into the city to buy proper sashiko thread, a Japanese leather thimble - worn just above the joint on long man - the middle finger. In an arcade upstairs in a tiny shop I found all kinds of sewing treasures. Stowing my sweet purchases in my basket I took out my stitching and showed the shop's owner Leanne. Leanne lived in Japan for many years and studied all kinds of traditional arts including sashiko. She was not really impressed with my work but gave me some helpful advice. I had pulled my stitches too tight,(story of my life) and had begun by quilting several layers together,(running before I could walk) - not good for a beginner. I blushed and took my leave. 
Sometimes I forget that the whole is made of many fragments. I forget that the journey can be at once humble and grand. I forget for a moment that I am a snail and that slow is my natural speed. Why I try to shuck this perfect rhythm I'm not sure. The years fly - sometimes it's good to have days that are slow. 


Memorandum: If you are in Melbourne the shop mentioned is Kimono House on the second floor of the Nicholas Building. It is an Aladdin's Cave of beautiful textiles and sewing tools. Kimono House offers courses in a variety of disciplines including sashiko. I have signed up for one.

last to leave

Sometimes being a land lubber is more humbling than usual.
Just on twilight - the last light on the last day of the year dragonflies swarmed overhead. The hot weather, the windless, cloudless conditions might have brought on this frenzy. Maybe there was an inaudible - to us - hum of insect activity that alerted the dragonflies to a possible feast. The aerial spectacular - not unlike film of a World War I air battle - took less than half an hour.  Darkness came on fast then. 


Last one out switches off the light.