We all have to walk the lonely road of loss, grief and depression at some point, and perhaps, if we are lucky someone shines a torch along the route. Siboney Duff reviews Airdre Grant’s moving book Stumbling Stones.

‘In olden days, when maps were drawn and the cartographers didn’t know what was in the empty space, they would write ‘Here Be Dragons’ to signify unknown and possibly dangerous territory.’ So begins Chapter One of Airdre Grant’s Stumbling Stones, a poignant, tender and astutely written treatise on the nature of grief, the unexpected emotional depths – both incapacitating and bouying – that loss forces us to encounter, and the blessings – seemingly out of context – that can accompany the most painful of human emotions.

In a mercilessly short space of time, Airdre Grant, a writer and academic living just outside Lismore, experienced the deaths of both her father and twin brother, the deaths of her dog and cat, and the end of her relationship. In Stumbling Stones she documents, through short stories, insightful observations, and tender recollections, her journey through those losses, and the unexpected positives she encountered along the way. She also offers, in the most respectful of manners, advice for dealing with the avalanche of emotions that at first grip us and then, as time passes, ebb and flow through our lives once we’ve been touched by acute grief.

Feeling overwhelmed and in need of distraction, Grant sought respite and refuge through pilgrimage. She traveled to the northern hemisphere, to walk and to heal. Along the way, she met others whose tales of love and loss were to leave an indelible impression on Grant’s heart. Like Jemma, whose husband Steve left her for a woman decades her junior. Or Susie, whose despairing grief for the child that never was, heralded a chain of further losses. Each story, masterfully told, both engages and illuminates, and is enhanced by references to research and comments by Plato, Ghandi, Shakespeare and the like.

I must confess that I was somewhat wary about reviewing this book. Anything which can be cataloged under the broadest of literature categories – that of ‘self help’ – is likely to have me  raising a single eyebrow in wry amusement. Or at least it would if I were talented enough to manage such an expression – in truth, my wry amusement is denoted by the simultaneous raising of two eyebrows, a look that renders me bemused rather than derisive. But I digress. The fact is that I was initially hesitant to review Stumbling Stones for a number of reasons, not least of which is the tendency I find amongst too many in this genre to generalise, patronise and prescribe to its readership. So it was a genuine joy to discover in Grant’s text both an empathetic heart and a sharp intellect. The fact that Grant intersperses her stories, observations and musings with quotes from the likes of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Charles Dickens simply served to further warm the cockles of my literary heart.

Perhaps the aspect of this book that spoke most clearly to me was Grant’s position regarding not only the experience of loss but also the responsibility inherent within that experience, a point which resonated with me personally long after I had finished reading the book. Our ‘veneration of popular culture idols and personal heroes,’ she writes, ‘also speaks to a simplification of that grief and an unwillingness to accept the responsibility that comes with love, to let another, dead or alive, breathe and move from their amber vessel.’  This, like so many other comments made throughout the book, left me thoughtful and, perhaps surprisingly, at peace. Having approached Stumbling Stones with a wary albeit curious eye, I came away from it one of its most ardent fans.

Siboney Duff is a writer, editor, teacher, and mentor living in the Byron Bay hinterland in Northern New South Wales.  You can find out more about her on: siboneyduff

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Literary love stories tend to follow a raft of expected conventions. Heightened sexual tension (usually between young-ish protagonists) is one of them; an initially antagonistic charge between the eventual lovers is another, as is the pairing of a couple who will need to overcome considerable odds in order to be together. Indeed, such trajectories are so common that when a book comes along which contests some of these ideas, it raises more than a few eyebrows.

Such is the case with Victoria Thompson’s The Secret Seduction and the Enigma of Attraction, a love story with a difference. Opening in the 1930s, we witness through the eyes of a young boy, the sad and untimely death of his nanny. Fast forward forty years, and that same boy is now a renowned psychotherapist (Andreas Zill) attending a formal function at which he meets the beguiling young wife (Annabelle Eichler) of another doctor. The attraction is immediate and they each leave each other that night knowing a special connection has been made.

Soon after their first encounter, Annabelle begins to see Andreas as his patient. It is a deliberate strategy on her part to seduce him and yet the psychotherapeutic process will be one which unearths complex issues for both patient and therapist. And therein lays the main point of difference between this novel and others of the genre. The sanctity of the patient doctor relationship is one which many writers are loath to broach for the precise reason that it presents a moral minefield. And yet Victoria Thompson, once a psychotherapist herself, wanders directly into the vortex of that very minefield with confidence.

As the affair burgeons over time, and both Annabelle and Andreas are forced to confront difficult realities about themselves and each other, the novel takes an interesting turn, examining the nature of those elements that draw us to our lovers and the psychology of intimate relationships. And it was at this point that the story began to really hold my interest.

Author Victoria Thompson – wandering into the vortex.

I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly enamoured (pardon the pun) with the initial scenes encompassing the early days of their relationship; however, by the time (a few years into their affair) that the cracks were apparent and growing I began to enjoy the story more. I was also intrigued (and alarmed) by the justifications used by both characters to condone and continue a relationship that challenged the sanctity of both marriage and the therapist/patient relationship.

In all, I found this to be an intriguing novel, primarily for the issues it raised and the discussions it would no doubt inspire. Definitely one for the book club.

For more information on Victoria Thompson go to: victoriathompson

The Secret Seduction and the Enigma of Attraction

By Victoria Thompson

Arcadia, 242pp, $29.95

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The last few weeks have been spectacular in terms of weather in this neck of the woods. Daytime temperatures have averaged in the mid to late twenties and most evenings have seen the sort of nighttime rains that preempt exponential plant growth and – for the subtropical food gardener – harvests that are twice the size (if not more) than those of previous weeks. The net result, however, has been a glut of tomatoes, eggplants, peas, beans, late season broccoli, and the last of this season’s potatoes. The truth is that I’ve been unable to keep up with it all, and the rate of production is far from diminishing because in the wings are the strawberries, passionfruit, raspberries, subtropical apples, and guavas.
It’s not like I can plead ignorance to the verve of the season. I’ve been gardening since I was eight when I planted my first border of French marigolds; I’ve been growing food crops for the past twenty years. I know full well that summer yields are plentiful and that careful planning is required in order to make the most of the season’s bounty.  I even remembered to retrieve my stash of recipes in preparation for the pre-Christmas flurry of cooking and bottling that accompanies such abundance but it was such a busy December that I never quite made it as far as the actual harvesting and preserving.

But in the summer my garden fills with birds each afternoon and, as I sat there with my cup of tea, I watched them flit in and out of the lavender and roses, land on the rhubarb and fennel stalks  (both flowering, the latter towering well above my height at the moment), and feast on the trumpeted pentstemons. I noticed the bees too, and the butterflies, the dragon flies, the ladybirds. Even the ants. As my gaze settled and I became calm I noticed that my garden was a flurry of activity with every element – plant and animal – making the most of the weather and the bounty. And then it occurred to me that of all of the living creatures enjoying the afternoon, only I had chosen to write a list.
It struck me with force the realisation that much as I love lists they are a double-edged sword. There are some tasks we will never quite complete; some tasks which can never be truly ticked off the list. There are times when the best we can do is pick a single tomato and relish its sun-soaked goodness. Because if we don’t, if we choose instead to fret over the fact that we’ve left the rest of the bush to the birds and the caterpillars and the ants, then we’ve missed the point entirely.
And so the summer harvest will be incomplete and my preserving jars will no doubt remain empty this year. But it will be a glorious summer no matter what and that ultimately is all that matters.

Summer in the subtropical garden:
Eat, eat and eat some more. There will be plenty to pick and the rate of growth is staggering, so feel free to feast on strawberries while hanging out the washing and to let the kids ravage the passionfruit and eat their fill of the mulberries. And rest. The heat and humidity will take their toll so keep yourself and your plants well-watered and make the most of the summer weather.

Siboney Duff is a writer, editor, teacher, and mentor living in the Byron Bay hinterland in Northern New South Wales.  You can find out more about her on: siboneyduff

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The Beach: An Australian Passion by Robert Drewe; National Library of Australia, 244pp, rrp $39.99

Few things are as quintessentially Australian as our relationship with those strips of sandy shore that separate this great land from its oceanic surrounds. Whether of the golden and grainy variety or one so finely powdered it squeals underfoot, it is to the beach that we as a nation are invariably drawn, to frolic and laze, to fish and commune, to swim and stroll and simply be.

Robert Drewe, one of Australia’s most prominent and critically-acclaimed literary authors, knows this only too well. Growing up on Australia’s western coast, he fell prey to the lure of salt air and sun-kissed beaches as a child and young man. When he moved across the continent to settle at Australia’s most easterly point, the love affair continued. And a love affair it is, imbued with the adoration, seduction, and deep respect that marks all good and lasting love affairs. Read any one of the stories peppered throughout The Beach: An Australian Passion and you’ll get a sense of what I’m referring to. Read them all, and you’ll fall as deeply in love with our beaches as Drewe so clearly has – that’s if you’re not already a devotee.

I jumped at the chance to review this book. It contains everything I adore – astute and lyrical prose, brilliant photography, and a specific focus on our beaches. I knew I was in for a treat; what I didn’t expect was an education. From the opening pages, I was transported into an Australian landscape and context that was alien to me. I thought I knew our beaches and their significance in terms of our national psyche. But, like photographing a floating slab of Antarctica and thinking you’ve captured an iceberg, what I knew was but my own (distinctly limited) experience of our coast.

I wasn’t alive at the height of Australia’s whaling industry; nor was I around when Australia’s 17^th Prime Minister, Harold Holt, disappeared in 1967 off Cheviot Beach, Victoria. I’ve never fished for tuna in a boat barely large enough to carry one man and the only umbrellas I see on the beach these days are made of nylon and spring into shape like mass-produced neon igloos. I’ve never stepped inside the shed of an early 20^th century pearl diver, and – to my great regret – I’ve never seen men wearing one piece bathers. Yet as I poured through The Beach I was entranced. Each page contained a new story, a new perspective on our relationship with our watery border. And despite the dozens of stories that were new to me, many others were so replete with my own brand of nostalgia – the denim flares, the long boards, the string bikinis – that memories of my own sand-encrusted childhood came swimming back to me, smelling of the sea.

In writing the stories and collating the images for this book, Drewe’s love of the beach is apparent. Indeed, I cannot think of a man better placed to trace the trajectory of our cultural fascination with the coast, bringing to it as he does both a deep fascination with our beaches and an irreverent take on the Australian culture that dwells at our island fringe.

Picture Collection, National Library of Australia.

Our beaches have become as iconic a feature of our landscape as our flat and arid outback – perhaps even more so. It is to our beaches that residents and tourists alike flock, towels draped over shoulders, smiles already beaming, salt air wending its way through loose locks and across crimson shoulders.   Known even to those who have never stepped foot on our shores, our beaches are synonymous with our national identity and intricately woven into our social fabric. In The Beach: An Australian Passion, Robert Drewe manages to enrich this relationship, to pay homage to the rich tapestry that is our mottled history with the beach, and to reinvigorate a life-long love affair with sand and salt water.

Siboney Duff is a writer, editor, teacher, and mentor living in the Byron Bay hinterland in Northern New South Wales.  You can find out more about her on: siboneyduff

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The rains have started. Afternoons and evenings punctuated with thunder; skies darkened with marshmallow-thick clouds the colour of pewter. Water tanks have been filling again, and the dawns – sometimes still cool from the overnight falls – are deliciously scented with wet murraya. But by mid-morning the steam starts rising. The ground, soaked by the heavens during the wee small hours, starts to release what it’s not yet had time to absorb and the resulting blanket of humid steam, overlaid with a November subtropical sun, can take its toll on the human body.

It’s this combination of Spring/Summer rainfall, warm weather, and ancient volcanic soil that makes this part of the world so perfect for growing anything – flowers, food, trees, even people. That merging of elements makes this area more fertile, more pregnant with possibility, than many around the world, and certainly more than most parts around this nation. But, like many things, its positive aspects can easily bleed into its less desirable. Dandelions and farmers friends enjoy these conditions just as much as the eggplants and tomatoes and silverbeet. Bindii, telegraph weed, creeping oxalis, billy goat weed… they’re all thriving in my garden right now and almost every spare evening – after the sun has lost its bite and before the mossies start attacking and the heavens open up – has been spent trying to eradicate them. To little avail. Almost as quickly as I have cleared one square metre, another is riddled with plants that I didn’t choose. And therein lays the rub, the inherent tension with which all gardeners must contend… our clear but sometimes too easily dismissed powerlessness in the face of nature.

An eggplant ripe and ready to pluck off the vine.

This week, as I pulled out bindii and billy goat weed by the roots, and dug around miniature oxalis bulbs with all the care of a surgeon removing a tumour, I was suddenly struck by the absurdity of what I was doing. These plants, their seeds, the climate upon which they rely, the sun which nurtures them – these things were here long before I arrived and will endure long after I have stepped off this mortal coil. So why do I bother? I asked myself, the mound of withering weeds growing beside me. I mean, if gardening isn’t – to at least some extent – an exercise in futility then I don’t know what is. Much of what I tend will die; things I did not choose will prevail. And yet, as any gardener will tell you, getting your hands dirty can also be a profoundly connecting, enriching, productive past-time – nothing futile in that.

My garden is flourishing at the moment. It loves the warmth and the water. The kale is so bounteous I’m setting aside Saturday morning to make jars of sauerkraut. The first eggplants of the season are swelling and ready for harvest; the last of the fennel is flowering now on spikes taller than me. Even the fig is growing at a rate of knots and the raspberries have started to fruit. Everything feels wild and delicious and out of control…. and as I sat in the middle of my garden, surrounded by its rampant extravagance and focused on the scurvy weed threading its way through the young pumpkin vines, it suddenly dawned on me that I was missing the point. That in my human desire to control my environment I was overlooking nature’s most important lesson. She’s in charge. Not me. Aristotle said that in all things of nature there is something of the marvellous. I forget that sometimes; forget that everything that happens does so for a reason; that in all we experience, whether we can see it at the time or not, there is something of the marvellous.

The last of the flowering fennel…

Scurvy weed is like that. Rambunctious. Irritating. Like a new puppy, it makes its way into areas of the garden assigned to other purposes. And yet it is beautiful. Genuinely beautiful.

I’m not weeding as much anymore. I’ve struck cuttings instead, transplanted seedlings and sown seeds throughout the garden. My plan is to fill it to bursting; my cup runneth over. And then nature can decide what will survive. That can be her lesson to me this month.

November in the suburban permaculture garden: Harvest with care, early in the morning and late in the afternoon is best. Mulch well (though not too close to the stems) and stake the heavy-bearing fruits like tomato and eggplant to help them bear their load. I don’t prune my tomatoes – it’s hot enough here that the fruit can do with the extra shade cast by the leaves – but if you live further south and are keen for tomatoes pre-Christmas, you might like to expose the young flowers and fruits to the sun. Most importantly, take the time to sit back, observe, listen, learn; nature has much to teach us in Spring.

From top: Strawberries, lemon flowers and raspberries…

Siboney Duff is a writer, editor, teacher, and mentor living in the Byron Bay hinterland in Northern New South Wales.  You can find out more about her on: siboneyduff

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Weekend Creative Writing Workshop with Siboney Duff

From Concept to Edit: Book-ending the Creative Writing Process

October 31 – November 1, 2015

9.30am – 3.30pm, Saturday and Sunday

Learning the art of writing from concept to editing with Siboney Duff.

Have a writing project you’re keen to embark on? Or complete? Need some creative inspiration together with some practical advice? Then this weekend workshop could be just the thing you need.

Learn how to:

• commit to your writing process and project
• develop a narrative structure for your story
• create characters, settings, narrative arcs and sub-plots
• enhance dramatic tension
• distinguish between a structural edit and a copy edit, and make the most of a structural edit
• develop a synopsis
• find an audience for your work

Total cost: $265 per person (including morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea on each day, notes, a few pressies, and a discounted manuscript assessment rate for appraisals completed within 6 months of the workshop).

For further info and to register your interest, visit siboneyduff.com

BOOK NOW – places are strictly limited to 10 participants only. PLUS mention Verandah Magazine when register your place for the workshop and SAVE $45 on the workshop fee.

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At least an acre, if not five. That’s how much land I figured I’d need to make good on the waking dreams I’d revelled in for most of my life – dreams featuring the rich aroma of cow dung and rotted chicken manure; where vegetables were plucked daily from perfectly rectangular (and perfectly weeded) beds, and chickens (shimmering ebony-jade Australorps, Australia’s own tranquil, reliable layer) wandered through burgeoning orchards.

I was the only girl I knew who’d read – cover to cover – John Seymour’s Complete Book of Self Sufficiency (published in 1978) by the time I was twelve; the only girl I knew who wanted a Jersey cow instead of a pony. By fifteen I’d discovered Bill Mollison, David Holmgren and permaculture; I’ve spent countless hours since then planning my future acreage and devouring articles on everything from grain milling to citrus grafting.

As the years passed and fiscal realities bit deep into my life, I compromised. I didn’t need five acres; I didn’t even need a whole one. Just give me half, I bargained with a god in whom I didn’t believe. As luck would have it, I ended up with 540 square metres – less if you take away the patch occupied by the house.

Sib’s Bangalow house with its small but flourishing garden.

Located within the small village of Bangalow – twelve kilometres east of Byron Bay – the block on which I eventually settled would have no doubt profoundly disappointed my fifteen year old self. Almost flat, it boasts neither the flowing creek nor the wilderness pockets of my young imagination. It is angular, close to flat, and shares boundaries with three neighbours whose outdoor conversations require little more than a passing breeze to vault the paling fences that demarcate our boundaries.

But despite the fact that I have in arable land only two percent of what John Seymour had inspired me to envisage since puberty, I can hardly complain. My soil is dark, loamy, rich in nutrients and deeper than much of the soil throughout Australia. And at a latitude of 28 degrees, it is ‘bare bum warm’ at least eight months of the year. And then there’s the rain! Copious enough to at times annoy, it ensures steady plant growth and virtual independence from town water. In all, my little shoestring acre is as fertile as they come.

As Spring burgeons, I find myself scampering for time. The potatoes – Coliban and Kipfler – are waiting to be harvested. Bunches of broccoli have given way to random sprigs of broccolini which burst into flower faster than I can snip them from their towering stems. Snow peas are scrambling along wire trellises they will soon outgrow, behind which artichokes lean under the weight of their multi-crowned heads.

And the list of jobs requiring urgent attention continues…

The Australorp – a hardy, reliable and docile Australian hen, according to Wikipedia.

The strawberries need mulching (recent rains have seen an explosion in the local slug population) and netting (I forget to do this most summers and end up losing half my crop to all manner of ravenous, sharp-beaked birds). The chicken coop needs cleaning, there are asparagus crowns waiting to be planted, and my side garden abounds with dainty yellow flowers, constant reminders that I need to get cracking and collect seeds from the bok choys, brocollis and tat sois that are going to seed and will soon wither and die.

But this morning my focus is on dessert.

I often forget how many food plants I’ve managed to squeeze onto my little allotment, only to be reminded at the most inopportune time. Like when I’m dashing to hang out the washing before heading off to work and I spot the sprawling, blushing strawberries under the clothesline. Or when I’m chasing the chickens into their pen at dusk and spy the blueberries patiently waiting for me to notice them before the hens do – six blueberry bushes surround the rainwater tank, two each of early, mid and late-ripening varieties, but there’s little point in investing in the early-ripening varieties if I’m not going to harvest them when they’re ripe. Even now, as I type under the front verandah, a cup of tea on the bench beside me while a late morning mist slowly lifts off the rolling hills to the south, there’s a clump of rhubarb just a few metres away calling my name.

So dessert it shall be, even though the sun has barely breached the horizon. I’ll stew some rhubarb stems with a handful of stevia, let that cool before tossing through some strawberries and blueberries, and then I’ll sprinkle rose petals and heartsease blossoms over the lot, all grown and harvested within my own suburban corner of subtropical paradise.

TOP TIP

October in the suburban permaculture garden: The Spring weather is both a blessing and a curse for the suburban gardener. The warming sun and the higher rainfall (especially in the subtropics) mean that everything – weeds included – is growing at break-neck speed. Be sure to pace yourself (avoid any strenuous tasks during the hottest part of the day) and your plantings. Stagger the amount and timing of your sowings and seedling transplants, and use those calm weekend afternoons to read up on your favourite preserving recipes – the spoils of Summer (and there will be many!) are just around the corner.

Siboney Duff is a writer, editor, teacher, and mentor living in the Byron Bay hinterland in Northern New South Wales.  You can find out more about her on: siboneyduff

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