Happy Hannukah!!! 

We are preparing both for Christmas and our first grandbaby. My father passed to his eternal reward on Wed. Please say a prayer for the repose of his soul and for his wife, who loved him best. I shared some pictures of our time together on my blog: https://vijayabodach.blogspot.com/2025/12/memories-of-my-father-from-india-to.html

Rejoice! It's almost Christmas!

Hello Everyone I'm Marcas Simons,

Australian writer working across poetry, prose, and performance. My work often explores identity, memory, and the unspoken within everyday lives. I'm a working poet and essayist. Track 9, Platform 2 marks my first foray into dramatic writing, part of a growing collection of one-act plays exploring contemporary relationships through quiet encounters. I also write science and philosophy in contemporary but approachable text and am currently developing work for the stage.

Contact Information:
 ? Marcas Simons 2025
[email protected]

Big photo post from our trip to DC with a surprise at the end: https://vijayabodach.blogspot.com/2025/11/fall-in-dc.html

We got into the habit of doing all the property cleanup in the winter so we wouldn't anger yellowjackets or encounter slithery pests. Not to mention spiders and other biting bugs. By now they should be in their winter quarters. Or dead; I don't care which.

I still have 400 small bulbs to plant. I've been delaying and delaying on that project. I finally did bring in my lantana--nipped by the frost a bit--and it's time to find the new bulbs a home where the voles and squirrels won't eat them all. We had to give up on all alliums for that reason. I do have a patch of really nasty dirt that has safely harbored some small iris for many years. Maybe there? It has been too windy to even venture outside that last couple of days. I had hopes the wind would obviate the necessity of removing a million leaves from the lawn. Maybe it did remove a million, but there are a million more to get off the grass over the drain field. The rest of the lawn is ageing nicely into moss, and the leaves blow right across. Self-cleaning lawn.

We have no laws against burning here and most of us do it, but last year I decided I would not do it again except for invasive plants like Japanese stilt grass. Then the summer was extremely dry and I was traveling constantly, so no burning happened at all. In future I'll gather all the medium-sized branches for when I have the local tree cleanup service in to handle the fallen trees; they chip everything instead of burning. Of course it takes fuel--fossil fuel!--to run a chipper, so there's really no way of winning except to let everything lie where it falls. Then our woods becomes unwalkable at every time of year, and what's the point of having our own woods if we can't safely walk in it? There are no good choices.

A recap of my trip to Chicago to say goodbye to my father who is in the twilight of his time here on earth: https://vijayabodach.blogspot.com/2025/10/chicagofarewell-to-my-father.html