Tunable Silver on My Father's Birthday

". . . And shall we leap the trees as light as birds?" 

(from A Nest of Birds by Theodore Roethke)

Tui - Parson's bird. Photograph: Doug Beynon. 

Today is my father's seventy-ninth birthday. 79 is a grand number, I think.

Dad took this photograph of my resident tui sipping sugar water from the coconut chalice that hangs in my front garden. Not really someone wired to sit still for very long, Dad  demonstrates enormous patience out in nature, especially when it comes to birds. When he and Mum last came out to New Zealand, he would spend many happy hours (often with his camera at hand) sitting contentedly on the porch or out in the garden observing the antics of the native birds. 

According to the ornithologist, W. H. Oliver, the bellbird was undoubtedly the chief performer in the chorus described by Joseph Banks when Captain Cook entered Queen Charlotte Sound during the first voyage of discovery. “I was awakened by the singing of the birds ashore, from whence we are distant not a quarter of a mile. Their numbers were certainly very great. They seemed to strain their throats with emulation, and made, perhaps, the most melodious wild music I have ever heard, almost imitating small bells, but with the most tunable silver imaginable. . .”

How perfectly Banks described the song of the bellbird - korimako - a small, spirited, olive-green treasure with an unforgettable voice. Each morning, when I open up the front door and head outside to feed the birds, the same little creature launches ebulliently into song. I reply with my raspy-by-comparison greeting. We've been doing this for a couple of years now; it's become so much a part of our daily ritual that he has graciously copy/pasted my paltry two note offering into his personal repertoire. Imagine that. . .  These days (and Dad, this little anecdote is especially for you), when I head out on my walks around the neighbourhood or down to the jetty, I call to him and he answers from the treetops. Oh, my heart. What  sweetness there is in this daily 'call and answer' conversation with this dear, listening bird. A daily miracle, really.  

Mum and Dad loved waking to the bellbird's song while they were here; so I'm re-posting a short recording I made some time ago when the birds and I were still practicing our 'tunable silver' ritual. Dad, herewith your Happy Birthday anthem. . .  

One last little ditty. . . Back home in the UK, my parents live in a home surrounded by orchards, hops farms and woodlands, so yes, their garden is year-round home to a large population of birds. This pheasant and his wife are regular visitors. Considering their very great age (ha - just teasing), my parents are actually pretty savvy when it comes to computers (Mum even has a laptop and Skype!) so it was no surprise when Dad named this handsome and audacious fellow Broadband?! Broadband, you ask? Yes - Broadband. Don't you just love it?! It hadn't occurred to me till now that Bluetooth might suit the pheasant's wife nicely. . .  

Broadband - 'Dad's' pheasant - Raggleswood, Kent. 

Photograph: Doug Beynon

Dad crossing the Hooker River per suspension bridge, Mount Cook Reserve, NZ 2009

Ode to the artichoke - Pablo Neruda

I'm relieved to report that all is well with Dad. I've just this minute spoken to him in his room at London Bridge Hospital. He had a Double Chamber Pacemaker fitted this afternoon, was hungry as a herd of bulls (having had to fast pre-surgery, of course) and has been told he should be fine to go home to Kent by train (?!) on Sunday. What a remarkable world we live in... in days gone by, pacemakers didn't exist; neither did telephones or the internet with Skype and email and all the opportunities such technologies offer us for connecting up and being alongside those we love who live on the other side of the world.

One of Dad's favourite vegetables is the globe artichoke. If I could hop over to England right this minute, I'd take him a platter of steaming artichokes, a finger bowl of warm water with floating-boat wedges of bright yellow lemon and a starched white linen napkin to tuck under his chin.

Do you know this poem?

Ode To The Artichoke

The artichoke

With a tender heart

Dressed up like a warrior,

Standing at attention, it built

A small helmet

Under its scales

It remained

Unshakeable,

By its side

The crazy vegetables

Uncurled

Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,

Throbbing bulbs,

In the sub-soil

The carrot

With its red mustaches

Was sleeping,

The grapevine

Hung out to dry its branches

Through which the wine will rise,

The cabbage

Dedicated itself

To trying on skirts,

The oregano

To perfuming the world,

And the sweet

Artichoke

There in the garden,

Dressed like a warrior,

Burnished

Like a proud

Pomegrante.

And one day

Side by side

In big wicker baskets

Walking through the market

To realize their dream

The artichoke army

In formation.

Never was it so military

Like on parade.

The men

In their white shirts

Among the vegetables

Were

The Marshals

Of the artichokes

Lines in close order

Command voices,

And the bang

Of a falling box.

But

Then

Maria

Comes

With her basket

She chooses

An artichoke,

She's not afraid of it.

She examines it, she observes it

Up against the light like it was an egg,

She buys it,

She mixes it up

In her handbag

With a pair of shoes

With a cabbage head and a

Bottle

Of vinegar

Until

She enters the kitchen

And submerges it in a pot.

Thus ends

In peace

This career

Of the armed vegetable

Which is called an artichoke,

Then

Scale by scale,

We strip off

The delicacy

And eat

The peaceful mush

Of its green heart.

PABLO NERUDA

Artichoke hearts - Ink & Chinagraph pencil - CB

I've just spoken to Mum who's about to take herself off to bed (it's late in the UK and what a huge week she's had); my sister Pip's also just emailed from Cambridge to give far-flung family an update. At the end of her letter, she wrote... "PS. Jonny lost his first tooth and had a visit from the 'toosth mows' last night. He wrote the most precious letter to explain that he had swallowed the toosth my mistayk and was soree it wasn’t there for the mows’s castle. xoxox"

Thank you for your candlelight and concern - M & D said to say so, too. xxx