22 March 2014

The land is bursting with ridiculous fecundity, as if we’re entering a season of growth. The forest in front of us is filled again with sounds of birds, competing songs patterning the air. A low underlying mumble of satin bower bird, a deep incessant throb of wonga pigeon, the steady beat of the bellbirds, the punctuation of the whip bird. Higher in the forest a chorus of excited parrots quarrels from tree to tree. Magpies sing arias from the back of the valley.

The garden is overflowing with energy. Seeds that have sat dormant through the drought are now emerging, to an uncertain future. A group of some sort of cucumber or zucchini (what did we plant there six months ago?) is sprouting in the top bed, where a late crop of tomatoes is flowering and fruiting. There is one fully-grown watermelon and more on the way. The watermelon vine is spreading down the bed, sending burgeoning green tennis balls poking through the tomato leaves. The rosemary, covered in purple blue flowers, buzzes with bees, both big (black and yellow) and small (blue and black). The kale has revived from its infestation of invisible bugs and has a new crown of crinkly grey leaves. Perversely, the silverbeet that fed us through the months without rain is now wilting, covered in rust. Rampant mizuna, mustard and parsley spring up in every spare spot around it. Heads of parsley droop with the weight of their seeds.

The cows are knee-deep in grass. Three Fernandos (white belt on small stocky black bodies) poke their curly-fringed faces over the fence and contemplate us. Tamed by full bellies, they no longer turn their heads eagerly when we open the gate. They don’t care about us and our green growth on this side of the fence any more. As they munch their way down the hill I wonder, should that be black heads and tails on white bodies?

8 March 2014

There’s a moth banging against the big windows, bashing itself against the glass. We hear it before we see it, bang bang bang. I turn to look and something flies in from the dark side of the door. It’s a brown frog, looking small and silly on the paving, having missed the moth and stunned itself in the process. The moth, bigger than the frog, has also taken a blow, and bashes itself with more ferocity against the doors, flying more crazily and haphazardly when I put the outside light on. It bumps blindly around, clutching me for a mistaken moment as it searches for whatever it seeks.

It’s getting too cool to eat outside, and the moths add another reason to eat in. The days are still too hot to work all day, so we cram our gardening into the late afternoon and eat late when it’s dark. At last the grass is growing enough to need mowing, the weeds are sprouting in their opportunistic way, and the vegetables that have sat stunted in the ground for all these months are buoyant and producing – zucchinis, bok choy, all manner of greens. A particularly robust Thai basil with a strong anise flavour has spread seeds all around and little basils are coming up through the garden. Our own mutant capsicum / chilli has doubled in size over the past two weeks and is covered in its crinkled red fruit – not too hot, just right for me, a chilli-heat wimp.

The small birds have vanished, as if the rain has washed them away. There is less evidence of the wallabies in the garden, the kale and the parsley safe again, small chosen patches of juicy grass nibbled down instead. We do see an immature male forest kingfisher on the bottom fence, its blue plumage not as bright or distinct, its actions not as swift or precise as its older relative who graced the fences near the road for a few weeks. An eagle perches on the dying tree above our house, chased away by two game galahs. The eagle stretches its shaggy-edged wings and flaps lazily away.

The bare hill has a sheen of green, and its curves take on the beauty of simplicity, its bones of eroded rock covered again. White clouds in a blue sky cluster and clump, the clean line of the hill’s swell standing out against their puffery.