Every day I try to make time for a small stroll around the garden. I always go back inside for my camera, because everyday there is something new happening.
Our little suburban block provides surprise at every corner. Sometimes things go well, and sometimes there is a problem to solve. Sometimes things are out of our hands. Sometimes I find a spider or two. I love their excellent work in the ecosystem but boy, do they provide me with a cortisol punch!
I try not to take any of it too seriously. There are grander plans than mine afoot, and although we “own” this little space of Earth, it really doesn’t belong to us, but to the creatures and the plants and the microbes, working away tirelessly and happily in harmony. Well, most of the time.
There is so much to love in our garden.
Bees buzzing around the borage – honeybees, native bees working together. Magpie larks who wander around me, waiting for a meal as I pull up the weeds and provide an easy tunnel to the underground bugs. The colourful rainbow lorikeets and rosellas who impress us with their colours as they come to feed on plants we specifically hope will attract them. The occasional pretty butterfly that’s here to impress rather than the whites that come only to lay their caterpillars in my cabbages.
Then there’s finding space for yet another fruit tree. Attempting to grow one from seed from a friend’s wonderful tree. Experimenting with grafting. Picking cherry tomatoes and lettuce fresh from the garden. Laughing at the products of yet another failed carrot attempt.
And the seeds! Plants coming back without any work from me. Some are weeds of course, but some are glorious cornflowers, marigolds, nasturtiums, salvia, alyssum, tricolours, swan river daisies, snapdragons. The joy of seeing an old annual friend reseeding itself is exquisite. Then there are the jolly massive towers created by parsley and spinach gone to seed, the pretty yellows of bok choy and lettuce flowers.
A suburban garden is quite little, but it is an elegant touch of paradise.
Joni Page 