Category: Gardens

“Those bloody rosellas!” The trees are awash with splashes of red, blue and yellow feathers, each gobbling greedily, screeching loudly, confirming to the multitude that the fruit is ripe. I have the broom, waving it manically as I run into the orchard.

Frustrated tears fall as I race around, ineffectually shoo-shooing, flapping the broom, yelling and dancing around like a banshee. Individuals begrudgingly lift off from a tree, circle lazily overhead, unapologetic, obviously annoyed at my intrusion into an otherwise tasty meal. They remain airborne momentarily, before drifting downwind and settling into another, more distant cherry tree.

We have been arguing, acknowledging that the birds will be circling soon. We agree that netting the trees is now urgent. The fruit is starting to blush beautifully; provocatively. “Yer yer. I’ll be onto it directly.”

His mobile rings. I watch, and see his eyes take on a misty, hypnotic sort of glaze. “Yep. Yer. Wow. You bet. That’s great. I’ll see you down at the shed in an hour.” He grabs his gear, advising “Macca is meeting me down at the boatshed – the Snapper are biting something fierce!” He and the Ute are gone!

“Bloody thanks, Barry.” It is a two-person job to get the nets up and the birds are having a field day. Bugger him: the prick! I’ll do it myself!

I climb the stepladder, the netting tentatively secured over my shoulder. They’re awkward and weigh a tonne, but I get several lengths over the framework. ‘He and his bloody snapper can go to bloody hell’ I fume, as I climb down to reposition the ladder. The netting falls back to the ground. “Shit!”

I replace Barry with the broom, quite satisfactorily. I get an effective rhythm going. The netting stays in position and I move on to the next crossbar. “Take that, you bugger” as I stab the broom into a fisherman. He sploshes into the water and I gain extra netting over the frame.

Beady eyes watch my progress, the cackling suggests scornful appraisal, but by late afternoon, what remains of the crop is under netting. I grab the broom and race around underneath, yelling obscenities, loudly. I get the last of the rosellas out and tie down the sides. I laugh defiantly at the screeching protest from the nearby gums.

“Look at this beauty – I reckon it will go 3 kilos.” I grab the fish and walk to the kitchen door. I toss it out onto the back lawn. I yell “come and get it” into the approaching dusk, inviting any stray cats or fish-eating rosellas to a feast. “Hey, that’s our dinner!”

I throw a scornful look over my shoulder as I make my way to the bathroom. “I am ordering a small pizza, with extra anchovies, olives and a serve of garlic bread: for one! Enjoy the fish!”

Steamy suds sting several superficial scratches. Sipped sparkling shiraz starts soothing strained, stiff muscles, as I review and confirm what has been a long, defining day!

I was up early, wanting to maximise time in the promised warm, dry weather; to catch up on the weeding around the aubergine, bok choy and kale: she had always loved her Kale! I had been paying the blackbirds with bread, to scrape the weeds, but they were on a ‘go-slow’. I alerted them to a pending showdown.

Something was missing from my daily routine, but I couldn’t put a finger on it. No matter, it would come to me eventually. I was in the garden by 10.

An hour in, I saw but ignored the flashing lamp that alerted me to the front doorbell activation. Piss off, whoever you are.

It was Doug whatsit, he had my drill, the one he’d borrowed last month, “just for an hour or so!” We had met at a Men’s Shed shindig, me the newbie and him, as I was to learn, the Club’s dullard!

He was now striding purposefully down the driveway, waving my drill and what could have been a couple of meat pies. “Morning tea and ya drill” he proffered, as he put them on the potting table.

Lip reading had become a recent proficiency, so I obligingly read about his trip across town earlier in the day, and the terrible traffic. Apparently, a dog had run across the road in front of him, and he only narrowly avoided hitting it. He told me about his neighbour, who had a fall last week and had seven stitches inserted. I learnt about his meal last night!

I allow the glazing to descend as I set my auto-nodding and grunting routine into gear. Thirty minutes later, and I’m sure he hasn’t twigged to my hearing impairment. I have learnt about NATO’s latest Ukrainian counter-offensive; seen that Albo has found a rationale for exiting the AUKUS fiasco, and that the government had found and recruited fifteen thousand RNs for the Aged Care sector and extended the budget surplus by five years!

The Bok choy was weeded, and I was just turning my attention towards the Kale as Doug backed into the wheelbarrow and went arse-up. It was like Chernobyl: the barrow went into the potting table, which fell over, tossing the seedling tray, drill and pies high into the sky. It scared the bejesus out of Rover, but only for the time it took for him to smell and realise food was potentially in the offing. He scored both pies.

My chuckle was taken the wrong way. I helped Doug to his feet, but a testy “humph” was thrown at me as he stated his need for the loo. He stomped, unbidden, in through the kitchen.

He was emerging as I was putting the kettle on. We both saw the hearing aids at the same moment: on the table, charging, their green lights winking. The penny dropped as he asked “Are ya deaf, or sumpin?” I parried against his querulous look, “Ah yes, deaf as a post actually, without these little beauties!”

Every year, as the bleak Ballarat winter started to falter, and with the appearance of the occasional warm, sunny day, my sister and I would start to get a bit antsy with each other. We would avoid gardening talk, and actually, in recent years it got to the stage that we would avoid visiting each other’s gardens. We still talked on the phone every week or so, but we didn’t mention our vegetable-gardening exploits, AT ALL!

Talk of dinner menus was on the cards. She told me about a recent triumph with a pork belly – “… the skin was about half an inch high, golden, salty and beautifully crackly…” she crowed! I countered with my recent cumquat marmalade success. I went into great detail – the nifty way I had developed to de-pip the fruit, the decision to spend the extra effort slicing the fruit into 2mm strips, instead of just halving them; steeping the fruit overnight before boiling, sugaring and bottling. I mentioned that I was having great success holding back on the quantities of sugar, without affecting the Set!

Of course, we both knew the elephant in the room, but neither was going to acknowledge it, or give it any air! The stand-off would continue for months – a dinner invitation might be tendered, but countered “Oh, bugger, we have Emily’s birthday party on that weekend, and we promised to fly up and share the occasion!”

I had put a lot of effort into bed preparation. The composting had been a labour of love, many hours encouraging the worms, nurturing and ensuring the green and brown quantities of the mix were balanced, and a little regular watering. To raise the temperature, I had thrown a tarp over the mix, and I had sweetened the pile with a couple of handfuls of blood and bone! I didn’t think that was cheating.

I had heard that Tibetan monks took a planting queue from the heavens, only ever planting two days after the first full moon in July. I had that day circled in my diary and was ready. The seeds were sitting in the warmth of the kitchen window sill for a couple of weeks. On the auspicious day, I was up early. It was bloody cold, a slight frost but with beany, and longjohns on, I was ready.

The seeds went into drills along my string-straight rows, each planted 10mm deep, about 25mm apart, and with the same distance between the rows. I mulched the bed heavily, believing that this early planting and the blanket of mulch would give me a useful head start. As I sat back with my cuppa, I acknowledged Tibetan expertise with a salute of my raised mug.

The winner would be declared in October, and I deliciously contemplated that dinner invitation. I would serve lamb loin chops with the first of my new broad beans in a light minty sauce, maybe sauced cauliflower, on the side. Surely, this year my broad beans would beat hers, hands down!

Have you ever seen those computer-controlled fountain displays? Jets of water, sometimes illuminated at night, sometimes with a musical accompaniment, erupting and dissipating, children running, squealing, laughing through those summer jets, colour, and form, constantly changing. That’s the effect that we want to create in our new garden – a riotous, seasonally-changing palette of colours.

We have moved south from Darwin, via a side trip to France, and after the unending greenery of our old tropical garden, we’re itching to create a colourful floral wonderland. We moved into a new housing estate in early winter – a bare, cold landscape, with the prospect of recreating Claude Monet’s inspirational Giverny garden, in Ballarat, our challenge.

Our soil is terrible – heavy clay with a thin veneer of ‘dirt’, overlaid by the developers to enthuse the lawn growers! We will bring in a rotary hoe and lots of gypsum. The local garden centre confirms they can deliver several truckloads of premium topsoil.

We will scallop a series of low, mounded soil embankments to form a front boundary.  There will be a modest lily pond, with a little solar pump moving the water, providing an aural tinkle, near the front door.

The dining table is heaving with butcher’s paper, covered in detailed notes on form, colour and ideas for achieving our displays. We explore all the nurseries, recording planting-lists against colour, height, and seasonal highlights. Our dreams are being collated.

It is agreed that the front garden needs to achieve continuous, and riotous colour, while still providing a modest providore. The mounds are to be planted out with winter-flowering daffodils, to be followed in Spring with blond-yellow Japanese, and blue Dutch Iris, spiking upwards through the spent daffs. An understory of deep orange Californian Poppy seeds will provide a contrasting colour burst, leaving just enough room for a dozen pink poppies. To complete the mounds, native Kangaroo and Wallaby grass seeds will be scattered along the tops, to germinate, where they will, to provide height and movement in the breezes.

We agree to sacrifice a section in the front for three, small grassy spaces. These pockets will have an edging of red, orange, and mauve Osteospernum – South African daisies, providing an abundance of colourful splodges throughout spring and early summer. They will eventually move up and over the mounds.

Espaliered quince, cherry and apricot trees will occupy the spaces between the mounds. These will provide a tall, dense screen between us and our neighbours across the road. Spring blossoms moving to a late summer fruiting, the quince a late autumn arrival. There will be orangey gravel pathways, connecting the whole.

Trellises along the eastern side of the house will provide support for screens of white and blue Hardenbergia, while a two-metre-wide frame on the western side of the house will support a Wisteria vine. It will provide mid spring, massed blue flower clusters, forming a dense green awning against the summer’s hot afternoon sun. Autumn pruning will enable valuable winter sunshine to penetrate the house.

The backyard is going to be mostly dedicated to food production, albeit space is being set aside for a cubbyhouse and secret passages planned for small, future adventurers. Miniature varieties of European and Japanese plums, a single rootstock, grafted and supporting several apple and pear varieties, a Tahitian lime, Meyer lemon, a cumquat, and two matching cold-climate avocados will provide delicious rewards and pantry fodder.

It remains for vegetable beds, and we decide that the self-watering wicking beds will probably be the most practical. There is space for four beds, and a three-bin composting system.

A little garden shed will be partially screened by the installation of three large water tanks, one reticulated back into the kitchen, two to supplement our generally sparse, gardening needs. All beds will be mulched seasonally.

Marigold announces her pregnancy as we start to plant out the garden.  Our Earth Mother – Gaia bestows her imprimatur!

It had taken Hyacinth decades to feel confident in her gardening skills. Sitting back now, a fresh cuppa’ on the bench beside her, she let the gentle pulse of her surrounds take her back to that first, tiny, Carlton balcony.

The flat was almost totally in shade, south-facing and the pot of petunias only lasted a couple of weeks! She thought it might have been her plant selection, so her next foray saw a small red rose. It also failed to thrive!

But a lover led to a wedding, in turn leading to a bigger flat: a light-filled, ground floor unit that accessed a small patch of ‘dirt’. A tentative trial of roses, planted in the sunlight and, with Spring, big blousy blossoms! The nursery had suggested hellebores and aquilegia for the shaded parts of the garden, and, as Autumn softened the heat, they too flourished. Bulbs and a selection of herbs went into pots. She acknowledged her own, small triumphs with quiet satisfaction.

Children, a move out to suburban Nunawading, a small house with a tiny garden, followed. The kids helped dig the vegetable plot, and with the planting of apple, pear, apricot and plum trees. She smiled as she remembered the day that the small helpers weeded out the carrot, lettuce and zucchini seedlings!

A Vacola preserving kit arrived one birthday, and with Margaret Fulton’s benchtop guidance, she stewed apples and pears. She made pots of jam, chutney, sauces and pickles. Her pantry became quite a family ‘conversation-piece’, brought up in dispatches as a new, labelled preserve found its way onto the shelves.

The children sometimes complained about the ‘home-made’ garnishes, and overheard remarks between school-friends, in the backyard, confirmed a need to cut back the production line. There was also a none too subtle hint that her birthday and Christmas presents needed to change, too!

The children started to leave the nest. Where had the years gone? Grandchildren were playing under the large, overgrown fruit trees. More space might be helpful for the kids to play, more sunlight, particularly as the winter days were getting bleaker, nowadays.

There seemed to be not as many birds visiting the garden, except when the summer fruits were on offer! The exception were the blackbirds! People complained of their mulch-scraping habit, but she secretly thought it a small price to pay for their beautiful warbling.

Cancer took her partner prematurely; unexpectedly. A diagnosis, a few short months, and she was alone. She knew it was time to move.

She worked at a Kondo-declutter, restocking both the Salvos and Vinnies. She packed a few treasures, a shoebox of photos and moved to a delightful, two-bedroom cottage in Gippsland. A new start was on offer!

She had become a Peter Cundall devotee, forced latterly to follow that horribly-bearded Costa. She had lots of ideas and birds were going to be her gardening ‘thingy’. She drew up plans for lots of insect and bird-attracting natives. Swathes of Poa, Wallaby and Kangaroo grasses would combine with plantings of ground-hugging grevillea, callistemon, buddleia, leptospermum, echium, banksia and acacia. They would provide protective canopies for small wrens, finches, even the parrots. There would be shallow ponds for the frogs and lizards; maybe even a trickling fountain to provide an aural dimension. Each morning kookaburras were perching on the limbs of an old gum, and a family of currawongs were seen, busily fluttering through.

It took a few years, but the garden plantings worked. The birds had appreciatively taken up residence; nests were built, families raised.

Visiting grandchildren and the background chatter of the wildlife collectively endorsed Hyacinth’s gardening expertise!