28 June 2014

It rained last Sunday morning, huge bowling balls of thunder from the west rolling through the valley just after dawn. At the height of the storm little balls of hail bounced across the pavers. This morning the clouds were merely decorative, arranging themselves Magritte-like to intersperse with blue sky, then racing away, spreading out as they chased down the valley.

Swallows careered in the wind, darting in to inspect the fatal nest – too close to the eaves for teetering babies to balance – then swooping out again. One red feather flutters on its edge. Below the swallows’ nest a tomato has lodged in a crack in the paving. It soaks up the winter sun in its protected corner, producing little red tomatoes that delight visiting children.

This afternoon the sky grew dark in the west, dark-blue, then purple, then black. When I walked around the house I could see the sky falling away towards the east, felted in every shade of grey. The storm whipped in with cracks of thunder, flashes of lightning. Wind-blown rain covered the deck, gusting, evading capture for the tank.     

June 19 2014

It seems more likely to me that we like diamonds because they remind us of the sparkle of waterdrops as the morning sun hits the leaves of trees across the valley, than the other way around.

Winter is here now, and the early morning sun slants in through the double doors when we open the curtains to let it in. It exposes every smear and cobweb across the doors, creating a film across the view beyond. I have to go outside into crisp air, cooler than the bright sun would suggest, to see the chicken wire around the kale transformed into a piece of magnificent, extravagant jewellery, glinting droplets suspended from every filament.

I arrived late yesterday afternoon, driving past mist that lay close to the river flats. As the evening lengthened, it filled every creek and riverbed with slow-rising swirls. The last light through the trees was swallowed by mist; branches that used to be covered by leaves ended in dark unfamiliar bunches of dripping black. Mist spread thick across the paddocks, covering cows, submerging houses. I drove through wisps of sliding cloud.

June 14 2014

The chooks are our unexpected allies in the battle against the kikuyu. They peck at its ends, grazing on it as their preferred food when they’re let out in the mornings. There’s a noticeable difference between the grass inside and outside their run.

Their run is 50 metres of electric mesh held up by pronged stakes. It took five of us about an hour to put it up, but that involved complex arrangements with tent pegs and ropes that I doubt the original developers had ever foreseen. It’s connected to a solar powered energizer with a dead battery that only works when the sun is shining fully onto it. That seems to be enough, and the chooks mainly stay inside, running in a six-legged pack whenever they see a person (or a car, or a dog), anticipating food. They’re generally rewarded.

We’ve had the chooks for about six weeks now. They’re still growing, their wattles developing slowly, their red combs edging out of the tops of their heads. Their pecking has become fiercer and I no longer let them eat out of my hand unless I have gloves on. I let them out when I’m gardening nearby so they can scratch and hunt, picking grubs delicately out of the leafy greens, or to have any snails or grubs that I find. They have a particular cry, a startled expression of joy, that greets these treats. The first one to reach me grabs whatever she can and runs, away from the others, her rump waggling. The other two follow, and I have to call them back to show them what else I have found. At dusk I catch them and put them back in the run. They file up the ramp into their penthouse suite, wobbling on their perch for a while in a show of maturity then, I suspect, going back to the comfort of the nesting box to sleep.