“Aglow” describes the appearance of the plant in this post’s photograph.
The same adjective fits the emotional state/circumstance so vividly remembered/evoked in one of Patty Griffin’s finest songs.
I took the photo one glorious spring afternoon in October 2016, on a hill with a “politically incorrect” name.
Blackboy Ridge takes its name from its most prominent plants.
”Blackboys” is what European settlers called Australia’s grass trees.
The settlers thought that Xhanthorrea resembled the people whose ancestors had arrived many thousands of years before Europeans did.
So much for the notion that said settlers ever really saw Australia as a terra nullius!
Blackboy Ridge offers easy, very pleasant walking, a splendid array of wildflowers, and great views across the Chittering Valley.
It is an easy return day trip away from anywhere in the Perth metro area.
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Patty Griffin is one of the finer North American singer-songwriters.
Not a few of hers are “sad” songs.
Patty Griffin wrote Burgundy Shoes in response to a musician friend who challenged her to write a “happier” song.
I know that I am not alone in thinking that Burgundy Shoes is one of the all time great “shining moment” songs.
It draws on her early childhood – specifically, a day when Patty and her mother caught a bus to their “big city” – Bangor, Maine, which is around the same size as Launceston, Tasmania.
This is the song’s debut recording, from the 2007 album children running through.
In one 2007 interview Patty Griffin uttered these words:
When you’re little, everyone smiles at you because you’re cute, so you think the world’s great, Everything’s so vivid. You’re not clouded out by anxiety and you don’t miss things.You see the sun, and you see your mom’s lipstick and how beautiful she is.