29 December 2015

There’s been a lot of indignation in the chook run. We bought four new little chickens on Sunday, two New Hampshires (chestnut brown, with a few black feathers in the tail) and two Andalusians (one black, one blue ie silvery-grey). They spent the first night in the old chook house – the little, pre-fab cutesy house that’s never been the same since the pig escaped from next door and headed for the chook food. The front door doesn’t really shut properly and the grass has taken over completely since the chooks moved to their new industrial-strength run. Nevertheless, with a bit of urgent weeding and displacing of spiders we made it liveable and the chickens quickly made it their home, snuggling down together in the nesting box in a delightful huddle of chestnut and black feathers.

Yesterday we fenced off a portion of the chook run and put the chickens in, along with their food bowl and water. The two old chooks were horrified. Even, terrified. They cackled loudly, crankily, for the rest of the day. It was the same noise they had made the day there was a brown snake in the run. The noise only stopped when the chickens all nestled together under the pomegranate tree for a siesta and were no longer visible. In the evening we caught the chickens and put them back in the pre-fab house.

This morning we put them in their section of the run again. The cackling started at once, but didn’t persevere for long. The older chooks even allowed themselves a peek at the enemy, and moved around their run more normally rather than running past any area where they could see the upstarts. But when we went to check on progress this afternoon we found the two New Hampshires had made their way into the main run, their quiet cheeping giving away their position. They were tucked into the long grass at one end while the old chooks remained firmly at the other end, with a very determined refusal to look in THAT direction. Later, at dusk, it was again the New Hampshires who appeared, striding across the lawn, having escaped the run but not having any real destination. We put down our dinner and ushered them back through the gate. They were as keen to be reunited with their Andalusian friends as we were.

The two old chooks will, according to the chicken lady, be ‘spent’ by the end of summer. For her this means they’ll be disposed of. For us, I suspect it means that they will no longer reliably lay eggs, but that they’ll fuss around the run until the grim reaper catches up with them, naturally.

20/12/15

When I was a very little girl, one of the jobs I enjoyed doing was helping my mother to hang out the washing. I would hand her the pegs as she put the washing on the line. We had our own measure of the heat of the day. If it was a cool day, two hankies would be pegged together. (It was never cool enough for each hankie to have its own peg.) If it was a warm day, three hankies would be pegged together, and if it was very hot, four. I would ask, ‘Is it a three-hankie day or a four-hankie day?’ as I felt the sun beating down on my hatless head, and my mother would tell me. I would then pick out the right number of hankies, and a peg, and hand it to her. Sometimes, if she wasn’t in a hurry, I would be allowed to pair the socks, and hand them to her with a peg as well.

Today is a four or even five hankie day. I hang out the washing and the line spins around, catching the wind. It will be dry before I get to the bottom of the basket. The thyme plants have shut down for the day, their leaves compressed. The birds have already headed down to the creek after spending the very early morning in the garden, looking for seeds and bathing in the birdbath. The sky is that far-away blue colour.

Even after I’ve come inside, and despite wearing my hat, I can feel the burn of the heat pressing down on the top of my head.

12/12/15

Since we got the bees, our minds have turned to flowers. Not a huge imperative in the garden beforehand, but now an ex-vegetable patch has become a patch of native plants – grevilleas, a low-growing banksia, melaleucas, an eremophila, a midyin berry, all being linked up by a creeping myoporum. They’ve done well, and most of them, even the tiny ones, have flowered. The melaleucas with puffs of lilac and white, the eremophila with a startlingly pink pendulous flower. One of the grevilleas has powered ahead, thickening up quickly and taking a greater share of the garden, threatening to dominate with its thrusting stems covered in fleshy grey-green leaves and spidery red flowers.

This morning a blue-banded bee had found the melaleuca lilac puffs and was unmissable with its distinctive buzz – loud and persistent – around the flowers, darting in impulsively then backing off to hover and buzz. We noticed that the large grevillea was being badly eaten by something. I had thought that the bare tips of the stems were new growth, but in fact the leaves had been munched off. I saw one caterpillar, thin and camouflaged, the same width as the stem, similar yellowy colour, with a slight red stripe along its length. I picked it off and put it on a brick where I squashed it. Then I saw another one, then a much larger one, with its colours more pronounced in side bands of red and greeny-brown. It reared up when I reached down for it, curling back and threatening me with its tiny rounded head, but it too was consigned to the killing brick. Soon the brick was covered in squelch, and I was so inured to the killing that I was just squashing them with my gloves.

When the plant seemed free of its invaders I noticed that a couple had fallen on the ground. Squash. Next to them was a sort of small white leathery sac, like an egg but malleable. I squashed that too – it was clearly associated with the caterpillars – and a green substance oozed out of it. It was the colour of a baby rug, cute and pastel. Then I saw some brown segmented creatures wriggling around the base of the grevillea. Their shells were hard and crunchy, pointed at both ends, and they could have been cocoons except that they were very active. They wriggled menacingly, like extras in Alien, pointing their blind tips at me. They too had pastel-green insides when squashed, the astonishingly benign colour oozing out between the ugly brown segments. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.

I had nearly the whole life cycle in front of me, from eggs in a sac, to needle-thin caterpillars, to large rearing-up caterpillars, to cocooned transition creatures. I was killing them all, knowing nothing of the caterpillar or its butterfly or their place in the ecosystem. All I knew was that they were stripping my grevillea, and I was fighting back.