Marisa Girardi Presents

One Mint Julep

marisa — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:01:47 +0000

I’ve been wanting to make this for ages – because it sounds so refreshing, because it has fresh herbs in it, because there’s a Ray Charles song about it and because it makes me think of folks in Mississippi sitting on the porch and sipping something cool while they wave away the heat… I’ve always had a hankering to see those south-eastern American states. Who knows if I ever will, but I reckon I can at least taste what a steamy afternoon under a willow tree might taste like. So I made some Mint Julep for my birthday picnic, which turned out to be anything but steamy and much more like cold and drizzly… but the mint julep was gooooood!

For the authentic experience, you should use bourbon, but any ol’ whiskey will do for me. Use a handful or 2 of fresh mint leaves, pour over about 500ml boiling water and add around a half a cup of sugar (to taste). Let it cool and infuse and do it’s thing. Then drain, add the juice of 1 lemon and 250ml of the good stuff. You can throw in a few more fresh mint leaves when you’re done, pour over ice and enjoy. If it’s too strong for your liking, throw in a bit of sparkling water / soda. Mm! It’s got a lotta soul! Oh wait that was another Southern drink…

Poetry Appreciation

marisa — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:51:53 +0000

I’ve always been a bit of a pleb when it comes to poetry. I get nervous that it will be boring or contrived or (worst of all) that I won’t “get” it. But I’m sure I’m not alone in these fears – after all, isn’t poetry an unfathomable language that is only understood by mystics and lunatics? On the occasion that I do venture into that odd realm of half-filled pages, however, it does happen that I find myself reveling in those microcosms of words, mysterious and super-real, floating in magical formation and gliding through unused corridors of my psyche. The rest of the time I have to reach for my dunce cap and go and sit in the corner of my psyche.

I used to like to jot down a few tentative lines every now and then myself, and feel atrociously inadequate doing so, yet somehow satisfied that I had expressed something I didn’t really know I’d felt, or captured a moment in time or simply spent quality time with myself.

A friend of mine has recently had a book of her poetry published and I have enjoyed reading it so much that I have been inspired to allow more poetry into my life (writing of and reading of). She is Jenna Mervis and her anthology is named “Woman Unfolding” and plots a journey through a keenly observed life made up of sweet childhood memories, the exuberance and anguish of young womanhood and the contented restlessness of the life of a poet, wife and inhabitant of South Africa. Her poems are neither boring nor contrived nor obscure. Instead, they are warm, authentic and simpatico, with a real sense of place that extends to natural environments, physical forms and domestic landscapes.

This is one of my favourites:

Beached

Yesterday,

fifty five unfathomable ships washed ashore,

tidal helpers tugging and slipping,

watching whales die in weary waves

as a single bullet breached each bulkhead

Today,

a flotilla of houses moored on a mountainside

dogs anchored to the shade

we spill over into wildness here at deck’s edge

fynbos laps at our bare feet

Tomorrow,

I see us beached in old age

your calcite skin, your sea glass eyes

you are coral, crumbling to sand

I am driftwood, bleached and bent

We lie together on a percale shore

powerless to the inward press of time

I see a child, our grandchild, standing over us

small hands touching our slow death

You can see more samples from Jenna’s book here.

Amethystical

marisa — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:53:25 +0000

I’ve been playing around with my jewellery supplies and it was great to get my fingers fiddling with chain and wire and stone again. Unless I take up clay sculpting or wood carving (both of which seem quite tempting, now that I mention it), it stands as my most earthy form of creativity.

I love crystals (have a look at my Pinterest board dedicated to all things cystalline) and at one time, when I worked in an esoteric store, I was quite keen on finding out all about their sparkly magical abilities. I have since forgotten most of what I gleaned from all the floaty ladies and their shelves full of books, but I do know some good ways to cleanse a crystal’s energy (brown rice, running water, full moon) and I vaguely remember some associations, like which ones correspond to which chakras. For now though, I am content to just have them around to admire and let them do whatever magic they want to.

Amethyst is my birth stone (well, one of them, depending on which chart you are given) and I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for it; one of the most commonly available crystals but without doubt the most gloriously heavenly succulently purple of all the stones.

So here is a gorgeous chunk of the stuff that I used as the main focus of a new necklace. And it’s available for purchase in the shop.

And I just couldn’t stop taking photos of it, so captivated was I by it’s Purpleness and it’s general crystal loveliness.

Love today

marisa — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:48:26 +0000

Adriftwood

marisa — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:38:31 +0000

I’m slightly obsessed with driftwood (and with pretty much all beach treasures) so when I went to visit my sister in Wilderness recently and was confronted with a beach full of the stuff after a recent storm, it was a joyous couple of hours that was spent examining and selecting pieces for a bundle of beauties that could easily have become a wheelbarrowful if I wasn’t dragged away.

Back home I had to try to think of something useful to do with at least some of them so that they didn’t all just end up as mere additions to my growing heap. A boat would be the perfect thing.

I chose a crescent shaped piece, drilled a hole where I wanted the mast to be, and inserted a thinner stick in to be the mast. I didn’t have a completely straight one because I had particularly selected crooked, bendy ones in my reverie on the beach, but I used the straightest of the lot and it worked fine.

Next, I raided my pretty vintage tea towel collection and chose a nice stiff square linen one, which I cut diagonally and sewed up for the two sails.

I strung it all up, put a wee flag at the top and she was ready to sail.

She now drifts merrily upon the seven seas of the bathroom countertop and looks lovely against the afternoon light.

Where I live

marisa — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:35:58 +0000

The last time I blogged, I was living in Kalk Bay and loving it. After 3 years it was time to move on. So we hopped, skipped and jumped along to Simons Town, about 20km further along the coastline of the Cape Peninsula, and I love it so much here that I almost want to get a bumper sticker to proclaim it to everyone.

Yes it’s unreasonably far from everything and takes vast amounts of time to get anywhere, but it’s totally worth it. At night we hear only the sea and looking out of our windows, we see only the sea.

I’d never really considered the seaside as somewhere I particularly wanted to live, but the last 4 years have made a huge sea fan of me. I find it endlessly inspiring in so many ways; the sea and the creatures and plants it is home to, as well as the effect it has on the human activity alongside it. There is something about seaside villages that is so characterful. I think it has to do with the casual way they are constructed, the evidence of the human hand everywhere and the visible aging of all those components – the whitewashed walls, cobbled streets, rusty nails, frayed ropes, battered blue boats, sun-bleached jetties, … I just love it and am going to maybe do another couple of posts where I explore bits of the town where I live. I’m feeling especially attached to it as we might be moving on again soon.

One of my favourite things about Simons Town is the proliferation of old stone walls. If there’s one thing I don’t like a wall to be, it’s straight and flat and new (ok, three things) , which is why I love the sense of time passing that you get from a stone wall, the crumbling bits of cement, the opportunistic bits of green sprouting from cracks and gaps, the rough patterns, the uneven surfaces, the jumbled shades of brown, and the irregular sizes and shapes of stones that all somehow fit together. I’d love to build one or two myself some day.