Week Four
More Gardening, more heat and getting up close and personal with some local native animals
Week Four
Last night’s storm still replaying in my mind.
Thunder bellowing its call above and around our house. Lightning illuminating the valley. Spectacular. Intimidating. Reinforcing our tiny existence.
Massive gumtrees swaying like grass.
And us, gathered around the dinner table. Laughter. Counting out the miles between thunder and lightning. Excited by the crackle of electricity in the air.
Watching, amazed by the power of the downpour of rain. 38mm overnight.
Me, wondering if my garden toiling would be washed over the confines and down the road.
Later lying in bed. The constant noise of rain on a tin roof.
Childhood memories. Growing up in a similar house. Where the crack of thunder, rainfall and lightning were amplified through fibro walls.
Morning and the valley is still. Carpeted in a magical hush.
Rain already turning burnt Kikuyu grass a tinge of green.
My garden, still in situ, looks refreshed. More alive.
There’s nothing quite like rain. No amount of irrigation has the same effect.
Our car, last night encased in a blanket of dust, transformed back to white.
The newly graded road, settled.
Quite visibly, the garden is becoming. Tiny specks of green, now recognisable as distinct plants.
Lines of basil, interspersed with chillies, capsicum, spinach.
Shoots of rosemary peeking through long stems of garlic.
An unidentified splash of purple mingles between beans, peas and orderly onion rows. The visible result of my tipping the remnants of a seed packet on to the soil.
Do you garden?
Is it just me, or is it an addiction?
A calling?
Something that draws you in.
An unavoidable diversion between house and car?
A quick trip to the clothes line, becomes an hour.
Knees bent, inspecting foliage.
Touching leaves.
Thinning and moving.
Mindfulness.
Wonder and hope.
A simple form of therapy. Intrigue at the tomato-ness of the tomato.
My gardening style wouldn’t suit commercial growing. A multitude of plants growing along side each other.
Making care and harvest harder. Knowing which is a weed and which is a misplaced seed, growing where it fell.
But it fits my understanding of regenerative agriculture.
Diversity. In all aspects.
Different plants, each bringing their own benefits to the garden.
Through their roots, communicating.
Sending nutrients to each other.
Requests, deliveries, transported by a tiny network in the soil.
No disturbance. No chemicals.
Pests, confused by the diversity. Plants grown to repel predators.
Morning walks physically relocating slugs to the compost heap.
Speaking of which - the compost pile continues to grow.
We have a 20 litre bucket in the kitchen. Into it goes food scraps, vegetable peelings, cardboard, paper, waste water. Once a day, out it goes to the heap.
Grass clippings, bark. It’s not fussy and it’s not rocket science.
Compost making is both simple and useful.
Someday in the future, all that material, saved from landfill, will end up nourishing our soil, our plants and us!
Like a mini circular bio-economy right in our own backyard.
(You can see the storm in action by clicking on the YouTube link below)
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