The Barb’s oft stated question “To be, or not to be …”, was so sharp, so breathtakingly precise. Adaptable too; enabling ‘to do or not to do’, ‘to have…’ and a hundred other equally useful challenges to my daily uncertainties. I sat and pondered. Should I do it; tackle it, ignore it: my head spun.
The imponderables. How could the odds against an unknown, potentially disastrous outcome, be shortened? I considered the efficacy of legal or other professional advice; maybe input from friends or family; a dabble into Mrs Google’s limitless world; even tossing a coin or consulting a mystic. All had been tried, but history suggested there were no guaranteed certainties!
In a moment of retrospective zealotry, I poisoned the front lawn, and the nature strip. The Barb’s advice fell, forgotten, as I enthusiastically ignored his suggested cautious M.O.
I attended a seminar focussing on endemic native plantings of footpaths, verges, lawns and the like. I was inspired, imagining the flocks of birds fluttering down to enjoy my nectarial offerings, bees buzzing boisterously, insects visiting to enjoy the spoils. I would be joining a throng of enthusiastic green thumbs, a collective surge to reestablish our endangered landscapes.
As the grass died, I was at the local nurseries. So many choices! Grevillea, Eremophila, Correa, Banksia, grasses, ground covers and yellow buttons threatened my composure. I wanted seasonal colour, some privacy screening and the potential for that all important nectar for the birds, bees and insects waiting, somewhere off-screen, for this show to commence.
I was rummaging in the potting shed when I was suddenly brought up short. A long-distant gift from friends, an old dusty potato sack, partially obscured, in a corner. It was a residual from two houses ago, carried forward, house to house and now, finally opened. It revealed several hundred, old squishy tulip bulbs.
What the…, but then I remembered Bernard and Joan’s prized spring garden just behind Mount Dandenong, a garden always included on the Springtime self-drive itineraries. Somehow, I had never managed to engage with the bulb’s colourful cornucopia – always so foreign, so much out of synch with my preferred endemic plantings.
I remembered the confusion on the afternoon they’d arrived with the sack! We had just moved into our new house, and Bernard was in the garden within minutes, pacing out a suitable, sunny plot, coincidentally on the site I’d already selected for several Wicking beds!
I left the suggested bulb-site go unchallenged during the afternoon’s pleasantries, but that evening I tossed the sack into the deep recesses of the shed. Why it had followed us through two more houses remained a mystery, but those tulips never got any closer to planting!
The native, endemic plantings achieved local notoriety and were eventually included in our town’s seasonal fly-ins. Lorikeets, New Holland and Yellow-faced Honey eaters, wattlebirds, parrots, several finches, even the Glossy black cockatoo gave the garden their imprimatur!
An endemic native garden, or not, to be! The question had been resolved!