cherry time

Cherries are an early Christmas present in the antipodes - their colour is a cheer - their sweetness something between a fruit and a perfume. Our Stella is only five years old - we have had it in the ground for three. Even the first year after a dry Spring we had cherries. Just a handful. Mark harvested that first fruit on his knees.

This year the rains have come after an absence of ten or more years. Some children have be born into this testy climate, never knowing until now a Spring downpour or Summer storm. And Winter rain? Winter what? No-one has carried umbrellas for years. No-one owns a raincoat anymore. We had a collie dog who looked a her first rain with utter amazement. Good rains have meant plump, rosy fruit and plenty. We netted the trees and still the birds got some. It is their due and hey, we are happy to share. My friend Jan looked at our little orchard - the trees each neatly under nets and called them ghost trees. To me they are upside-down skirts. To the dogs they are curious and require peeing on. 


In this corner of the country cherries are the season's first stone fruit. They flag the early days of advent and the end of exams. Nothing says Summer quite like sitting on the verandah, spitting cherry pits and idling away an afternoon.

birds eye view

British sports journo Simon Barnes also writes about birds. From his "How to be a Bad Birdwatcher", I learnt two cardinal (no pun intended)rules. Firstly, any small, brown, mystery sighting can be recorded as an LBJ - (little brown job. Most of my bird list could be described thus. Seeing birds on the wing means seeing them backlit. And seeing them this way means recognising a siloquette rather than colour or markings. So LBJ is a neat classification for all those thrilling but perplexing sightings. But seeing birds is more than identification don't you think? For me it's about the witness of wildness.It's proof that the world even in the cities is more than just humdrum people business.

Secondly, says Barnes, buy small bins - the rider being that they be good ones. He suggests a pair of Leicas. I noted the model, hunted them down, raised them to my eyes and felt that I was really seeing for the first time in my life. It was as though everything I had laid eyes on up to that moment had been witnessed through a fog - a pea soup, a fug, a smoke, an opacity. I trained them on the spire of a church, middle distance and picked out with exquisite clarity a clutch of sparrows - their markings, face masks, scaly legs sharp and true. Walking back to the counter I asked the price as casually as I could. The answer left a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.

Today most of my sightings are still LBJs.

our bird is back

Well, it could be that our dead bird was not our bird.

A day after finding the body I notice that there is still bird activity in the olive tree. There are comings and goings and all the zen-like business of egg sitting.

A month later there is a chick. Just one - not two as I had expected. He is a mess of a bird to begin with. The feathers are spindly, rudimentary affairs of fluff and spines that do not lie flat. He looks surprised to be alive.

His mother is fattening him. He is calling and trying his stunted chicken wings.

Spring tips into Summer and he tries to fly. I will be watching him almost as closely as his mother - heart in my mouth.

He is all uncertainty and adventure.

goodbye bird

Ten years of drought stunted our trees. But since the rains came the garden has put on growth and green. The fruit trees in particular have almost doubled in size. The kalamata by the back fence - always hardly is now stout - prinked out with grey green leaves and abundant blossom. Thick as a hedge it has provided near perfect cover for a nesting thrush. She built a deep grass and mud daub affair almost at eye level. I climbed a ladder and looked into it before she was done. The mud was still wet - the inside as smooth as a hand thrown pot. She sits diligently and I speak to her when I pass. Our eyes meet and I try to appear as unthreatening as is possible for a giant two legged thing to be. Sometimes I see her fly direct into the tree like an arrow shot into a thicket - her powers of navigation so finely tuned. Yet yesterday we found a speckled brown birdy corpse on the verandah. There was not a mark on the body. It was likely she had hit the window and fallen dazed to the ground. Did she fly at her reflection? Did she not see the glass? How is it that she could fly at full tilt into the olive yet fail to navigate a familiar landmark like the house? 


Goodbye bird. 
You will be missed.

mind food

  

If you are like me...you read everywhere. 

You like to have a book to hand, in fact you like to have a book in your hand. 

You pack books even to run an errand. The idea of waiting in line or at the dentist without a book is some kind of Zen test you don't want to take. You pack books for a trip where others might pack clothes or food.

You don't want to be starved of words.  

Or food either - so sometimes I pack lunch too.

last night the rain came

Three days in a row the mercury edged toward 30 and we turned the ceiling fans on for the first time this season. We drank iced coffee. Pulled the blinds down. Shuttered the light out.

Then it rained.

Rain turns everything around. One minute it can be so hot I want to do nothing but throw myself on the couch and then the sky darkens, the wind swings around. Bad mood changes to good mood and I feel like a thirsty plant revived.

Outside the garden is rain washed. New mown only a week ago the grass comes over my boot tops today. I look around for small jobs. I want to be doing. I want to grub around in the dirt. I want to kneel – to tend seedlings tenderly – to have the damp sod soak through my trews at knees.

starting seeds

Something besides good soil and seed is living in the mini greenhouse. 


My seed starter is a common piece of garden equipment available at any hardware or nursery but it is also as precious as a church. It is a humble relation of the fern cases beloved by the Edwardians. An even earlier incarnation was used by Cook to travel exotics from the New World to the Old. I love its venerable pedigree although mine is three plastic parts shipped in quantity from China. Every season I clean it and fill it and sow seed with a renewed mix of respect, hope and impatience. I write out labels with a waterproof pen. I check the whole business daily. 

Once a seed shucks its hard coat and shows the first tender shoot there are adjustments to be made. Sometimes I open one vent and leave the other be. Sometimes I travel the whole box into the sun. Fussing over it today I notice a deal of damage. Something has breached the security of the closely fitted lid. It is something that likes the young leaves of several sorts of bean. I dismantle the whole thing. There are three snails and a millipede in the water reservoir. They are well fed and slothful looking when uncovered. They are evicted. My hopes for an early crop are dashed but at this stage of spring I am willing to start over.

I clean out the seed tray – fill it with fresh soil. I poke a finger into each compartment and drop in purple podded peas and ying yang beans – the broad beans have survived albeit with slug-cropped leaves but they will do. The miniature cucumbers never showed up. M has rattlesnake, soy and scarlets runners in his hot house and is ready to set them out. It’s not officially a race between us but we are fierce about our babies. So far I have French breakfast radishes to thin and a good supply of table greens. Like I say it is not a contest….