The Earthrise Diary (July 2011)

THE EARTHRISE DIARY (July 2011)

© text Don Diespecker 2011

Don Diespecker

Hospital emergency rooms are large, cold and sterile places. Rows of broken people with dazed expressions lie on metal beds covered in white sheets that have been branded with the hospital logo, just in case they have forgotten where they are. Wires and tubes hang off bleeping machines, and sharp needles are inserted into soft, aching flesh. Grey-blue curtains suspended from steel semi-circular wall protrusions give the illusion of privacy. There is no privacy in hospital. Charts with every detail of your life hang naked at the end of each bed, and every interaction and decision, every rise and fall of fluid intake and out-put, and every heartbeat is meticulously documented from the moment you become ‘the patient’.

I saw Lily the minute I walked through the heavy double doors. She looked like she had just done four rounds with Muhammad Ali. Her right eye smeared with violent streaks of turquoise and purple. Someone appeared to have gone berserk with the latest eye shadows. The colour rose up and over her eye right brow where it deepened into a dark, indigo-violet, that lifted off her face into a golf ball size swelling.

She smiled. “Mama! Did you fall?” “Yes, I think so,” she mumbled, and then tried to get out of bed. Lionel was sitting next to her. As her bed was so high he could only see a few inches above the mattress as he stretched his arm across the cotton blanket to reach Lily’s hand.

His lined face was a sickly pale grey, and his red-rimmed eyes revealed his concern. Lily tried to move closer to him but she fell back as a lightning bolt of pain shot through her body. She screamed out and my blood temperature suddenly fell to sub-zero and stung my veins.

Sharon Snir: Looking for Lionel- How I Lost and Found My Mother Through Dementia.

Somehow, knowing a place deeply transcends its description and nothing seems as encompassing as the experiencing itself.

Thursday morning: July 7. Three large ADF “ducks” steamed into the marina this morning. We heard them before we saw them, their engines vibrating sound through the hull of our boat and into our consciousness. Each vessel is dressed in khaki, as are their all too-young inhabitants: a reminder of a world outside this haven, still fighting.

Later... I've walked up the steep path to my hideout far above the sea (a place where once I saw Loggerhead Turtles diving for food in a rough swell dangerously close to the rocky breakers). My plan is to meditate out here on this point after resting and watching the sea. In this moment the water is calm and placid and deceivingly inviting… I could almost swim there...just floating and letting the current move me to wherever it will.

The ocean stretches out before me all olive green and turning a deep sapphire closer to the horizon. The many small islands become markers of distance for me with those closer to shore still holding the green hues of foliage and those further away turning to blue-grey and merging slowly with the sky. All are landmarks I once knew so well. Now though, I am barely able to recall just a few of their names: Cape Capricorn, Hummocky Island and Humpy Island... Those now forgotten places have become melded with the images in photographs and the memories of our travels along this coastline in what feels like an age ago. Turtles would know these places altogether differently, intimately, bodily. Turtles today might find their watery olive-green world strangely still...

A Turtle! And another! I’m staring down at them in disbelief. Two Loggerheads are swimming lazily around in the gentle swell and doing just as I had wished to do! One of the pair raises her head and a glint of sunshine catches the water on her face and then she dives. They both dive. They are below now in another world swimming in slow motion. A fishing-dinghy races past; the pair must have heard it’s engines much sooner than I (as we did this morning on the boat with those ADF “ducks”). The water is cloudy and affords them much needed protection from less sensitive souls. There are long graceful strands of kelp moving with the ebb and flow of the sea and her tides. This is my meditation today.

Petra Meer, from her “Sailing Journal.”

I’ll do my best to put a photo or two or three into this Diary. One may show a detailed photo of flood debris that has settled on the top of the uncompleted River-wall. Another may show post flood debris in the house area on June 17, now half cleared.

Elsewhere I’ve been writing about detail and in this Diary I’ll try to address the same notion.

As always, I’ve been thinking on too many things in short periods of time: last month’s flood and its leftover debris, construction of the Concourse wall and the hard-standing area, working on an essay about reading in the garden, slowly drafting a novel, polishing short pieces on the river, and muttering about wet weather depriving me of my lunchtime reading in the garden. The result of too much thinking and too much trying to do some of everything is that not much of anything is completed. Also, priorities continually change: the hard-standing area is crucially important because the car, as my only means of transport in all situations, has to have reliable access and a guaranteed escape path against flash flooding. Everything else on my List of Jobs has needed rearranging. This isn’t too hard to do but it adds to the already burdened Thinking Program. A rearranging of schedules is suddenly essential and something has to give and the now infrequent ‘lunchtime read’ is dramatically curtailed.

I’m being tedious about this (sorry) because regular reading is important to me: garden reading particularly is a great opportunity for insights. Reading and writing accompany one another so well that I regard them as an essential pairing. The garden is for me a state of consciousness for varied reasons, one of which is an awareness of detail in Nature. From within the house I can see some of that at a distance, but being inside is also being behind a barrier. Outside is different because I’m within or I’m contained by the natural world—which is why I can be in the world when outside, but being inside the house is not the same as the experience of being in the world (even though I’m merely in my garden).

Despite the detail I wrote about in the June Diary (largely about the flood aftermath and debris clearing), I’ll detail a little more about recent Outdoors Stuff: making the Concourse wall and the hard-standing area; removing the old citrus trees; recovering a sunken lomandra plant.

Detail. I find eleven ‘meanings’ of detail in my Random House College Dictionary: each has some appeal, but the surprise is that detail comes to us from the OF word, detaill(er), to cut in pieces.

When I re-read the extract from Sharon Snir’s book, I comprehend well-observed descriptions of the hospital ER, of Sharon’s mother as patient and of her father’s reactions, as well as Sharon’s directly reported feelings and I also have received a comprehensive understanding of the situation. All of that is made clear in 298 words, or within four consecutive paragraphs of diminishing length. That good and clear writing makes puzzled questions redundant.

Petra Meer’s Journal writing describes a small part of the great outdoors, viz, the outlook from an island off the Queensland coast in the area of the Capricorn Channel, the Barrier Reef and its islands, i.e., some south parts of the Coral Sea. The reader is enabled to ‘see’ what the journal writer can see and to focus on what compels her attention while momentarily she is the sailor ashore. Economy of language and the beauty of images allow the reader detailed access to that world. We each will visualize or ‘make’ our own imagery and I suspect that however many readers may do that, our images will be similar to those of the writer.

Making the hard-standing area and the Concourse wall

The hard-standing area and it’s adjoining Concourse wall. Concourse, from late ME < MF. Six explanations reveal attractive words such as assemblage, throng, promenade (esp. in a park), boulevard, and an open space for accommodating crowds, confluence. These appeal to me because when I’m not having a very big party I can promenade solo while also looking thoughtfully at the Cedar Grove a few metres away. And, hopefully, I will never get the car stuck in the mud there again.

My neighbour, Leif, has kindly dropped off several loads of gravel. This well graded material is perfect for an area bedeviled by spongy soil, some grass and lots of ground cover: it is an area that is also ‘the ancient riverbank’. This old bank (I have no idea how old it is) represents a once-wide bend in the river that the house is also founded on (or in). The old bank continues across the road (Darkwood Road cuts through it) and in the Deerpark it has large eucalypts growing on it. Storm water from the West End of Earthrise runs as a small (and dangerous creek) through Cedar Grove and it has cut deeply enough into this old bank to deliver torrents of water into the lower garden in heavy local rain (it floods Big Lawn and produces Lake Eartha and then flows to the flooding river. Years ago I stabilized a track that also cuts through the old bank an this enables vehicles to drive down to the lower gardens. The track, under its cover of tradescantia has been reinforced with river stones. Where the carport now is there once was The Campsite. Briefly, Jannelle and I arrived here in June 1984 where we had already set up an old caravan and a new ‘campsite’ shelter (star pickets supported a corrugated iron roof and gutter that delivered rainwater to an adjacent steel tank: it enabled us to cook outside under shelter). June 1984 was a preparatory time. When we arrived at what is now the entrance the First Honda promptly got stuck there in the mud. I got out and pushed; my back immediately failed and left me helpless with pain in the mud. I duly recovered, but was no help at all for days. Our first night in the caravan was on the crest of the old riverbank (where we also had a campfire for years).

Memories, memories: now the Old Campsite is being covered over by the new hard-standing area and the new Concourse wall.

I start with my wicker baker’s basket, a sturdy open basket that I use to carry a load of kindling or a set of small garden tool, or this time, secateurs, string, my Best Rake, The Claw (a Chinese hand cultivator), the machete and a plastic bucket. I take them down to the tools storage area under the house where I add the mattock and my Gestalt Going Away Retirement Present from the Gestalt Training Centre of Wollongong (in some distant time during the past century), the sharp spade and put everything in the wheelbarrow with the ½ inflated tire and trundle down to Belvedere Central where I leave my jacket to sun on a garden chair and switch on my mobile phone to keep track of the time. (I generally don’t bother too much about the time because I can estimate it to within 5 minutes—this isn’t a boast, but a fact that goes with the territory, as I can’t estimate time as well in a city). Timing these jobs allows me to catch the news or the Book Show or to take a break. I start raking out and away from the old round wall that I plan to demolish. The stones in this old build are not distinguished by shape or form and they have combined with soil and flood loam to make a sturdy redoubt against floods and to provide me with ‘extra’ stones when I need them (as I now do). Some of the base stones are so large and heavy that they were collected with the help of an unwary visitor, years ago: two can roll a big stone on to a hessian sack and easily lift it into a trailer or the tray of a Ute). With the rake I uncover collections of stone ‘nails’ that I use for filling small gaps in stonewalls: most are cigar-sized and shaped river stones. I cut down and set aside more than a dozen new sturdy ferns that have colonized this 25-years old wall. The ferns aren’t quite tree ferns, but seem closely related. Behind me newly sprouted bracken pushes up through the remaining flood debris in the area (all debris clearing is postponed). I toss aside into a growing pile any debris or old branches that may dry and serve as fuel for the sc heater and begin to loosen and to pull down the best-looking stones on the flattened top of the wall using the mattock and spade then set some of the stones in the barrow for founding the new wall. Then I push the loaded barrow plus a few tools up the old track to the top of the ancient riverbank, through the carport and out on to the open area I want to change. I use an ornamental tree as anchor for my first string line. Two strings here will designate the intended dimensions of the wall: it will be 12-m long. I unload and hammer in some stakes, then dig down against the slope of the bank and set, angled slightly downward on the slope), the first foundation stones on old newspaper. These will be the outside foundation stones of the wall. Then I distribute some of the river gravel that Leif has kindly dropped off from the tractor: the inside wall foundation stones will be a little higher and also supported by well-graded gravel. Then I put the bucket in the barrow and the spade across the handles and trundle down the access track to Big Lawn and cross to an access point next to the road where I quickly fill the bucket with road remnants that have been washed down the concrete storm water drains (and which now are blocking the drains) and lug the granular fragments to the barrow and empty them and complete the circuit back to the wall I am demolishing at Belvedere Central. The job has begun.

Following this routine for two hours is more than enough to alert every muscle and sinew, tendon and bone because a barrow loaded with a bucket of ‘gravel’ or road remnants plus some select stones plus some small wall filler stones weighs heavy. The barrower, in order to leave the low plain of the lawn must lean forward while pushing uphill—rather like an athlete wearing spikes and pushing off from the blocks. If you’re not fit and well and well motivated you will break something. After two hours I stop for water.

The small ‘unwanted’ stones, as filler materials, are the wall: these bits and pieces, useless as building stones, form the inside of the wall (whatever its width) and are locked in place by quite small other bits and pieces that are preferably hard river stone fragments (cobbles, a little coarse gravel). (For the unwary: never ever fill a wall interior with well graded gravel because water pressure during floods will bring down the wall). The outside building stones represent what the viewer will see on the outsides of the wall and, eventually, on the top of the wall: the wall builder therefore will use the most attractive good-looking stones for their esthetic appearance and appeal (even stonewalls have egos…).

The stones being recovered from the old wall are all covered or caked with flood loam or mud and guarded by sundry creepy crawlies including bad tempered centipedes. They clean off nicely when rained upon. The big ones are easily put into the barrow by kneeling next to the barrow resting on its side and rolled in then lifting the nearest edge until the barrow is again vertical (but don’t try this standing up unless you regard your lower back as expendable).

I have a yen for better-looking stones and casually sneak away (without alarming potential building stones at the wall being demolished) to the fallen cheese tree in the corner bend and looking over the severely damaged stone revetment. Many stones have been ripped out but those that remain are partly covered by logs; some of the best stones are now back in the river, and possibly salvageable (but not right now: the water is cold and turgid here). I recover some good builders from here and gingerly take them up the wrecked revetment, falling only once on the unstable slope. Falling on big hard stones hurts like hell. If you have any as yet unbroken bones this is a good place to fracture them (not recommended except to old fools who ought to know better). A river stone builder is acceptable, if not prized, if it has good building faces: flat and perhaps parallel ‘top’ and ‘base’ and compatible in overall size and shape with other stones in the build.

The build is not necessarily non-stop: it helps to stand and stare from time to time. I spot a second unusual fern that I decide to transplant to the far end of the wall and next to a decaying bloodwood log. First I must clear the area with The Rake to remove tradescantia plus Queensland wide-bladed BIG grass that must be hacked out by the roots with a mattock and then destroyed: this stuff grows to 2-m plus and seeds every March). I also bring up five of the almost but not quite ‘tree fern-y looking ferns and, one at a time, some of the biggest of stones to make a little garden. I add some mondo grass. I surround a local native tree (the one with my first string line attached) that has almost the appearance of a big birch tree. This hitherto rubbishy overgrown area little garden will complement the wall and the hard-standing concourse. I add some loam. It looks good. I resume setting stones.

In small breaks I explore the ravaged riverbank beyond the revetment: the minor flood has damaged even the bedrock 4-m above normal water level by ramming big logs from the fast river into the bedrock. I pick up the very dense pieces for use in the wall: they appear to be slate of shale.

Although end of the day comforts such as coffee or wine are tempting, caffeine flattens arteries and alcohol will put undue pressure on umpteen of your systems: lots of water helps. At the end of the work session the builder needs to stroll about casually (if he can) just to wind down and if he be silly enough to later lie in bed with knees up will surely cause his twanging tendons and mashed muscles to lock painfully into situations of cramp that will produce shrieking and yelling such that he will have to eject from bed in a crumpled heap on the floor then attempt to stand and walk casually again prior to returning to the comfort of lying relaxed in bed.

The reader will appreciate that something like the Concourse project is not going to be completed by 16:00 hours on Friday afternoon. It will be interrupted by rain, either magpies (collectors like me) or currawongs shedding an excess of ripe broad-leafed privet berries on you from 40-m heights or by overhead cockatoos tearing into big branches in search of grubs. The weakened branches break and fall, dangerously. The repetitive nature of the job requires that you give it a high priority so that you don’t lose your senses: get it done, asap. This particular job is about half done.

End of an era: farewell the citrus trees.

Saturday, July 23 2011. Leif is to visit with his chainsaws, one short and sturdy, the other saw is somewhat longer. My task is to access each of the remaining four trees (Washington navel orange, Algerian mandarin, tangelo, grapefruit) to get beneath the low branches (secateurs, saw, machete) and to dig access pits around what will be the stumps, then to widen appropriately so that the chainsaw can be laid horizontal and low enough to separate the timber well below ground level. I have previously axed and Des has chain-sawed an orange tree. There remains only the callamundin/cumquat (the small fruits make excellent marmalade) in this area and a lemon tree in a poor location next to the carport. The 2001 flood has dumped a few tonnes of rich loam here and raised the ground levels around the trees. The trees no longer bear much fruit and the bower birds very efficiently make raiding sorties to remove the best fruit in endless attacks every winter. And, last but not least, I expect to see again the views that diminished and disappeared in those bygone days when the citrus trees thrived and grew up and vanquished the upstream views of the river and progressively cut the light on this north-east section of Big Lawn so that there are now groundcovers (tradescantia) and tropical chickweed thriving where grass would be much more acceptable.

I dig for about two hours. Leif saws. I am joined by a cautions grey shrike thrush search among the destroyed trees. He sings cheerily as he bounces around the battlefield. The astute reader will quickly see that all of the hitherto Unused Muscles, as moderately healthy if stringy leftovers from other jobs will now be in play. Gardeners, young or old, cannot succeed in digging even half-m deep pits from the vertical position without their having also to get down into the pits and to kneel in them to clean the stumps or trunks of trees to be cut below ground level (silty or sandy soil damages chainsaws). Picture yourself, crammed into a kneeling fetal-like position with hand trowel, wire brush and an old dry hand brush, cleaning away loam and cranky centipedes: then reversing this cramped posture so as to stand once again without screaming. Standing up straight again is a great difficulty unless you’re a teenager bursting with rude health.

I also make another attempt to recover a BIG lomandra plant from the bottom of the river where it has lain underwater since the last flood. It takes a lot to remove a lomandra from a growing position on the riverbank: they have fibrous root systems and cling like limpets. A grapple utilizing my claw cultivator has failed to budge the big plant. I change into shorts and old tennis shoes and enter the cold river and succeed in getting the plant up onto the bedrock. Then I offer to share it with the neighbours. Pleased with myself I return to the area of the now vanished citrus trees. Leif has removed four or five trailer loads of dismembered trunks and branches. The area is open again. The views from the house, downstairs and upstairs are of the upstream river: I can see, again, two further bends! The shrike thrush is still picking over the site and warbling now and then.

Sunday, July 24 2011. I get up early again on a cold morning, have breakfast and start the cold car and head for the Coast: Coffs Harbour and Park Beach Plaza to do my shopping. I seldom go out on Sundays but I’m in the middle of everything and short of time.

I get home in time to have a sit in the sun and start to read the book I have just purchased: Cormack McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, having put aside for a while, The Catcher in the Rye. At 14:00 hours Doug and Mandy arrive with their tools. We dismember the poor old lomandra (it may be considerably old; we can only guess its age) and remove all the large portions from the riverbank to high ground where the barrow awaits. The revetment fails to claim any further casualties.

Monday, July 25 2011. I get up early again and disconnect the computer, pack it carefully into position with a car seatbelt and travel to Moonee Beach beyond Coffs. The landscape has been devastated to make way for highway extensions. The countryside is so changed that I’m disorientated and I almost miss the turnoff. I meet my friends Kerry and Sue. Kerry checks the Mac. All is well. I return home in brilliant sunshine and sneak a little sunshiny read at lunchtime. Blood Meridian is un-put-down-able, not because of the unsettling violence in the narrative, but because of the majestic prose. The book describes the Indian Wars and travels in Texas in the 1850s. As much as I want to quote some of the writing I’d best not because I don’t have permission. The author uses unusual prose that some readers may have some difficulties with. A Spanish dictionary is useful. I have a copy of Home Ground. Language for an American Landscape (Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney (Eds) which helps—but no other book is essential. Blood Meridian is a masterpiece.

As I walk around looking at my improved upriver views (accompanied by the shrike thrush) I appreciate the light that now shines there. In ten minutes I rake loam back into the tree pits. The stumps were poisoned and won’t grow again. I’ve put aside the lomandra sections. In a day or so when I have more time, I’ll separate and then plant them.

I remember, more or less, an old Eastern saying from long ago: Since my house has burned down I now have a better view of the rising moon.

Everything changes.

DDD July 27 2011.

EARTHRISE DIARY (April 2011)

EARTHRISE DIARY (APRIL 2011)

One of the beauties of the forests, I always thought but never wrote about nor have I read about, was the complete little gardens springing out of fallen trees that have been lying in the forest for years and have rotted sufficiently to be covered with moss and forest flowers, ferns and young trees which will, no doubt as the years pass by, replace the fallen giant on which they started their life, the fir or pine cones having probably been blown there by the winds or carried there by squirrels, mice or other forest dwellers.

Durbyn Diespecker: Durban, Natal, writing in the 1960s of Cowichan, BC between 1908 and 1914 and between 1925 and 1937.

This has been quite a weekend. The gathering yesterday was a huge success. There were 7 children, 2 babies and 10 adults! The weather was sunny and cool; perfect for the Easter egg hunt we held out on the trail leading into the woods at the back of our complex. Natalie got all the eggs organized: inside plastic eggs with each child's name. There were 2 per child. Signe and I went out a little earlier and hid them under leaves, branches etc. The children had a wonderful hunt! We have a good- sized pool and jacuzzi downstairs so swimming was a big attraction also. We all fit in the apartment too (under 1000sq.ft.), for food, present-opening and birthday cake time and we were definitely cozy! The hours I suggested were 3-7. Everyone was still here at 8:30! Brian and I were still cleaning up at 10pm but it was well worth every dirty plate!

Jill Alexander: Vancouver, BC, April 26 2011

The days are steadily growing cooler. Most evenings see the valley fill with a blanket of smoke: a mix of chimney and autumn backyard burn-offs. There has also been some burning off of the forest logging coups in the state forests that lie to the southeast of Warburton. Symon and I went exploring in an old four-wheel drive that we have into the hills where the Mountain Correa grows, and where there are also large stands of re-growth timber. We also happened upon a recently clear-felled area of forest, which wasn't re-growth. This had us lamenting for the Correa's that once were living there, as well as the many Mountain Ash that had been felled. Some of these giants (although burnt and dead) remained standing, many metres high, their straight trunks were black and atop they still held a mass of foliage that had turned from green to brown. I collected some charcoal from the ground and plan to make some drawings of the trees and plants of that area with it.

Petra Meer: Warburton, VIC, April 26 2011

I begin with a few words by my late father (1896-1977) who traveled to Canada with his family in 1908 when he was 12-years old and I also tend to think of flowers at Easter because now it’s springtime in British Columbia where I was born and where we lived until 1937 when I was eight years old. Also, I remember childhood Easters with pleasure and affection: there were Easter bunnies and chocolates of course and one year the rabbits were real: I had to follow a string that led me to them; one was light brown and we named it Sandy. While it’s in my mind I recall another of Durbyn’s descriptions in his unpublished memoir: a mention of clear-felled forest long ago on Vancouver Island before I was born. Forests all over the world are still being destroyed.

There isn’t much colour in the garden at Earthrise this month because of the all too frequent rain—but there is some. This part of the world is green and gold most of the year, but there are native white cedars that now are grey and mossy in the wet air after losing their leaves and there are other non-native deciduous trees like liquidambar that change their colours.

Although Easter here is also school vacation time, the neighbourhood where I am has been surprisingly quiet this year, possibly because of the variable weather and the disasters this past summer in Queensland and the rising cost(s) of living. At this time of year the sun dips westward quite early in the day and my big trees cast long shadows across the river and the stone beaches on that Left Bank, but the sunny parts still attract locals and visitors to sit in family groups to chat, or to swim or fish or kayak and also to swish through the rapids in front of the house in the embrace of big truck tire inner tubes. Old memories of the tubes we used in the 1930s on the Cowichan (Vancouver Island) are still clear and when I see the kids here on the Bellinger I also visualize myself being encouraged by my father and my late sister, Deirdre, to enjoy the experience. The Cowichan is a river much like the Bellinger, but although the Canadian river was shallow near the rapids I was wary of the fast water. There was a clean white rocky beach, but with some green algae or weed on those stones that were in the water: to me the algae had a sinister look.

April 25. My overheated mind would benefit from cooling a little because some of the wet weather has been interrupted by bursts of dry sunny weather (perfect for musing and reading outside). There has been a mind-spinning and tiring search for hard to find and misplaced papers in my crowded archives; I’ve completed reading Anna Karenina and have started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; some garden work has been rewarding (clearing re-growth trees behind the house); and the email traffic from all parts has further diverted my mind on variable and wobbly courses. How simple it is to write notes to oneself and to prioritize tasks and objectives and how maddeningly difficult to follow directions and how easy it is to fall out of calm meditative processes and into frantic adventures between summery and stormy weather: I’m nowadays in the middle of everything, as my teacher, Erving Polster, used to say. And my retirement is always busy and crowded.

April 24. Earlier in the month I made false starts to this Diary with further copious notes about the January ‘near flood’ and had even noted a quotation that reminded me of difficult times with the local Council here. I’ll write about something more acceptable: the garden here; my views from the garden; the garden as a place of simple beauty. –And, how easily the natural world may compel thinking (mine, anyway).

As one of my rituals I often walk down to the Lawn each morning, sometimes with a mug of tea, just to have a general look round: today the river is still uncomfortably narrow and big having been pinched in January’s high rise of the river, the water rushing by rather than casually flowing and looking like pale green molten metal.

Walking down to the belvedere recently I was reminded of a near meeting a few days ago. I had almost walked into a big fat red-bellied black snake because I’d been mowing and was strolling toward the downstream view of the river when I was distracted by swimmers coming upstream: the plump snake flowed easily away from me, over the edge and through the riverbank’s undergrowth like shining liquorice.

Sometimes the ritual walk takes me as far as the remains of an old gate set against the ancient riverbank (where Darkwood Road cuts through the bank and where high floods sometimes enter here from across the Deer Park opposite) and return with one of the half buried stones I’d used there about 25 years ago to make a small wall and carry it all the way to the new Riverside Lawn where stone by stone a new anti-flood wall rises. Everything changes.

When I walk down to the Lawn on a dry morning these days there are occasional flurries of small yellow leaves falling although there’s no breeze. I used to think this odd until I heard a reasoned explanation on ABC Radio National: some leaves (like the white cedar leaves here) are consciously, if you like, let go by the tree when the tree is ready to let them go: simultaneously releasing those that have completed their purpose is an efficiency.

Dry vs Wet Gardening. On the one hand dry gardening is always hot work, even in autumn and winter and it’s autumn here now so that the temptation is to sit appreciatively, enjoying the ambience and merely thinking of gardening. It’s too late to cull the rampant Queensland grass because these plants are all seeding—again. I look reflectively at the luxuriant swells of tradescantia on all sides and smile thinly. If I could somehow turn this colonizing monstrosity into something positive I would celebrate. I’m reminded of Kew Gardens in the UK: visitors would be attracted from all quarters; at Earthrise world travellers would see tradescantia at its utmost best and realize how generously it combines with other groundcovers to influence anything that looks like a garden. The legendary Earthrise tradescantia would become thematic in stories (The Tradescantia Diaries; The Tradescantia Cipher; L’Affaire Tradescantia) and I would make serendipitous discoveries about its health-promoting qualities: Tradescantia au gratin… Perhaps not: if you could see what damage groundcovers may do when they set their mass green minds to it you would be appalled.

And as for Wet Gardening: forget it. Boots will be muddied and the devoted gardener will be too wet and tired to clean his boots well enough to stagger around the house so the house will be muddied, the gardener irate and the time outside will be undervalued and wasted.

There are two protected mini-gardens two metres from where I sit, each filled with Lime Glow and Mrs Rees dahlias and in recent days the bigger than usual bright flowers of Lime Glow have attracted butterflies, but I don’t know why. One of the butterflies is a drab grey-brown and has enlivening bars of yellow, like the yellow of the dahlia, one on each wing. This flier is attracted either by a pheromone that I can’t detect or by something visual (nectar gleaming?) though not visible to me (surely mating isn’t in either the butterfly’s mind or that of the flower?). It makes repeated visits to the same flower, circling, settling then again resuming circuits. It sometimes inspects but does not explore Mrs Rees’s scarlet blooms, a distraction that interrupts my reading. I have also seen smaller variants of this butterfly that sport not yellow bars but blobby roundels on the wings—and one of them settled on my arm so I could get a good look at it. I would like to understand the significance of this butterfly and its likely metaphorical meaning, but I may need a lepidopterist.

I see that the rich mix of lawn grasses (mostly delivered here as gifts of the flooding river) and groundcovers is dry enough to mow and I soon bring the mower down to lawn level, clean the spark plug, tighten the connections, adjust everything, and—away we go again: summer mowing on autumn days, the exhaust fumes getting up my nose to further wear down my brain and lulling me into repetitive circuits so that I cut in ever-widening circles until Big Lawn begins to emerge in all its bumptious glory. When I stop to empty the cuttings or to refuel, I can smell the fragrance of cut grasses and groundcovers and am reminded of my father cutting grass at 1129 Oxford Street (Victoria, BC, Canada) in the 1930s with a maddening barrel-bladed push mower, and so remember the time I slaughtered a mob of harmless garter snakes on that old Canadian lawn… Dad was displeased. And how had I, aged about four, come to understand serpents as threatening and deserving of death by a Big Stick?

On Easter Monday afternoon, there are long sunny periods and the weather is blissfully dry. On the lawn at this low level the house away to my right (south) is metres higher than I am but the distance allows me to see the tops of more distant trees; the trees nearby are too big and too high for me to see adequately. Imagine being a baby photographer sitting on the floor with a good camera and taking a picture: the picture might show only the legs of the people around you. With big trees (40-, 50-m and even higher) you absolutely cannot see all of any one tree without damaging your neck: a case of being too close to the wood, ha ha, to see the trees. There is a consolation on sunny days, however: the smooth creamy white trunks of the big flooded gums will display shadowgraphs of more distant trees to the west: a shadow show for one’s mind, and late in the afternoon you may watch these lightly moving shadow pictures while listening to the trilling of honeyeaters (they perhaps watch the picture show, too).

I settle again to see what I can. Close encounters with the mighty midges, gnats and mozzies increase in frequency. An impressively beautiful tiny midge (and only midges) will sometimes settle on a page while I read: they have marvellous aerodynamic shapes; each always appears to be examining a page. Why do they visit and inspect printed pages? There are butterflies: white ones, black and white ones, ones multicoloured…but those at the lowest altitudes are nowhere near me down here on the grass: they’re all Up There, at least 3-m above the lawn. Most of the butterflies dash about at higher altitudes in a realm10-m to about 35-m up. I don’t know why, although I can see some very rapid butterfly flying by a vigorous pair dodging and weaving at high speed, bobbing and zooming in human terms, so I assume some of that may be courting behaviour and if it is: the little fliers have been smart enough these past few days to become well-hatched, able aeronauts, primed to fly for their short lives in as zesty a fashion as they possibly can. These short periods of relatively dry weather in what has been a monstrously wet summer and early autumn are clearly perfect for all of this unexpected butterfly activity.

In order to see the aeronautics I must get my head up, well up, and so I start to think about how strangely we limit our seeing to the lower levels, and so miss almost everything that transpires well above us. To see up I need better physiology: a neck and spine having a universal joint or two, and while I think of it, a neck that would enable me to also see backwards over the top of my head, or better still, one allowing me to swivel maybe 300˚ or more. Humans have big brains but we maintain our visual fields low down, so we miss a lot. Were we less downcast we would see a lot more life above our heads when entering forests. Further up, where the nonlocal trees struggle upward for light, the West African tulip tree is shedding its orange cup-sized flowers on the grass about 40-m below. Directly ahead of me an old white cedar threatens to shed some of its big branches on me, but I’ve been lucky so far. Clumps of stag horn and elk-horn are growing about 20-m up on those remarkably strong branches. Below this big tree there’s my one and only calamondin (or cumquat, if you use the popular name, and from the Philippines rather than from China). I remember that I regularly would pick the little orange fruits and make some marmalade each May, but it seems too time-consuming these days. I planted the tree, now much pruned and well past its productive best, about 25 years ago: it’s fruiting again now. Between where I sit and these trees the grass is drying after morning showers. Some native violets are a pale blue and white in the grass, together with pink clover flowers and some tiny white three-petal flowers that seem to grow only among the varied grasses. Behind me on the mowed lawn and in the Dog’s Garden the last of the dahlia flowers are soggy and drooping and on the far side of that garden there is the surprising emerald green of an enlarging area of bright moss that doesn’t like being mowed but which is presently growing and spreading prolifically because of the wet. Remarkably, when the winter turns to spring, this yearly green moss will begin diminishing and then disappear completely as the lawn starts to dry out. Although I don’t remember green carpets in Iran my mind enables a flickering little image for me of newly-made carpets laid out in the streets in Iranian towns so that the passing traffic would impress on them a more used look, a look of experience perhaps, and so allow dustiness and wear to be more marketable. And as I dreamily keep my eyes on the grass circles I’ve mown around the Dog’s Garden I start to recall some of the descriptions of scything meadows in Anna Karenina. I learned from Tolstoy (and his translators) how a big filed or meadow is cut by muzhiks. (I have several times in the past considered buying a Big Reaper scythe to use here, but I’m told that learning to handle one efficiently isn’t all that easy). When I walked to school (Sir James Douglas School) from Oxford Street (Victoria, BC) in the 1930s there was a vacant corner lot that I passed and in the warmer months an old man used to cut the grass there with a big scythe; I can never forget him. Now I remember that along that same route I sometimes would walk home from school with Louise Dale or possibly Dayle (sp?) and used to carry her satchel…once I went all the way home with her and met her mother…Louise was a member of that family who owned the Dales Chickens business. We were about 6 or 7 years old, then.

I’ll mention a couple of other Close Encounters: one was with a very small water dragon, sunning himself on the warm stones that support the belvedere one afternoon: he or she played dead when I offered a gentle stroking of the head and spine. These tiny dinosaurs have the most elegant feet (or hands, if you like): they put me in mind of Rachmaninoff who had great hands.

There are associations everywhere in the garden.

And on several recent occasions while musing and dozing in bed late at night an inquisitive bat has manifested inside the house to make low-level passes, his or her wings politely brushing my cheek, reminding me of those old vampire movies. S-he has excellent avionics so it may be some time before I can defeat the invader.

Although it’s a little late in the month now I wish you all a Happy and safe Easter. DDD. April 28 2011.

The Earthrise Diary October 2010

© text Don Diespecker 2010

The Earthrise Diary (Oct 2010)

Don Diespecker

October 5 2010. Now it’s between 14:45 and 15:00 hours and although I don’t enjoy saying this, even to myself, the rain has started again; well, showers, perhaps: showers seem not quite so dangerous. At this time yesterday I could still see daylight under the adjacent bridge between the undersides of the stringers (the main horizontal beams between the piers) and the surface of the torrent (such stringers are actually {most of} whole trees trimmed to fit by Council workers using adzes and large-blade axes when the bridge was largely destroyed and rebuilt in 3 weeks by Bellingen Shire Council). Not so now. The water level has indeed fallen a little since 09:00 this morning and the sun even came out briefly before midday, but despite my wonder and amazement staring at the sky and seeing patches of blue, there’s a lot more water up there, a lot more.

I was going to tough it out and leave the car here but it was difficult to relax, yesterday arvo; it was raining or showering, but lightly. Perhaps, I thought, I could get away with it: get away with leaving the car in its carport hoping the rain wouldn’t become heavy. Finally, I was concerned enough to get out of bed, get dressed again, don the bright yellow wet gear, grab my torch, jump into my wellies and drive up to the old house at Dreamtime (I’d checked earlier with Leif). It was dark and I had a wet walk down to the Dangerous Lower Levels where my house is, trying to save on the torch batteries while walking, by turning the torch off and on but not being so concerned with thrift that I would carelessly walk into a Gigantic Snake (I abhor most snakes although I occasionally say hello! and then only when I feel secure enough after having startled the snake with my Annoying Human Vibrations). Snakes move so fast that by their awesome speed they have the power to reduce us to jaw-dropping awesomeness (or perhaps you, dear reader, remain Unperturbed at All Times when snakes are On Deck)? Anyway, there were no visible snakes and I arrived home in one piece, yet could not sleep except when I dozed off annoyingly and precisely when I had not wished to.

It rained through the night and I was not at all surprised to see that the river was well up—almost as though there had been flood rain—and wonderfully noisy. When I eventually tottered out of bed (having listened to lots of hourly ABC news and not wanting to miss anything after a day of being Updated by friends and neighbours as to where the best websites were—the ones with whirling radar pictures that also included storm fronts and rainfall and synoptic data—so that I knew, really knew that there was a very good chance of there being a flood. There was a time when I didn’t mind floods at all but that was when Jannelle and I and the dogs used to sit and watch floods as though they were entertainments (only because we had never experienced a really BIG one). Thinking about that now, in retrospect, the dogs always seemed very impressed by rising floods and had little or no compunction about joining J and me when we adventurously (maybe even recklessly, sometimes) would swim across or through descending floods (by which time the water would be lime green and a frothy white as distinct from dark brown and threatening). We occasionally had to encourage the dogs to pause where we paused, centre-stream where the water seemed still or ‘dead’ long enough for us to rest briefly, take renewed breath and then plunge on to the far shore. Dogs learn fast; ours did, anyway, and J and I seemed not far behind in learning River Stuff except on the occasion when we unwisely, (code for foolishly), decided to ride a descending flood while together in the canoe. The dogs were smart enough to Keep Out of the Canoe Altogether and ran barking along the bank instead. I have a memory of them bounding above and below the line of lomandra along the right bank, barking, barking and probably advising us as mere Human Fools to Have a Care, but we swept on, oblivious in the canoe and so sank with it, miraculously saving it and ourselves at approximately the mouth of the gushing downstream creek. We got ashore, wet and cold (it was a winter flood) and the dogs sat happily panting as if to say, You see, Foolish Fools, the canoe doesn’t work at all well when you attempt to move, even slightly, across strong flows. How right they were.

I was describing this flood, not the old one in the ‘80s (and the downstream creek is again gushing white water after having run a banker a couple of times). During the night and while I was dozing and vaguely aware of seeing only bits and pieces of Q and A on ABC1 I heard a tree coming down, which, partly masked by the roar of the flood sounded like a relatively thin green SWISH (it was the twin member of a very old and very big cheese tree growing in the corner where the boundary line runs up the hillside). Today, when I examined the Great Limb, I noted all of the epiphytes, the little plants that attach themselves to living trees, parasitically (they thriftily manage to live on air, mostly). This mass of trunk and great foliage is sprawled across the boundary line in such a way that I think it could possibly be of benefit because in high floods the mainstream pounds into the hillside (and where floods have made a tight corner in the right bank), then rebounds whirling and becomes a very BIG eddy or, if you prefer, whirlpool of logs and tonnes of debris, then pushes ashore into and all over my much battered riverside “lawn” where it sits, immovable, until either the next bigger flood arrives or a kind neighbour arrives with a tractor to cheerfully push the debris back to where it came from (and send the mass bobbing downstream to invade elsewhere). But now I’m not so sure. There is so much foliage that it would certainly partly trap incoming rafts of debris, but then there may be the risk of the tree also coming ashore accompanied by Much Else and it would take months to reduce and clear it all with only an axe.

I’ll also mention the colours of the river flooding. The rising flood soon becomes, first, a rich brown, and as the flood progresses and also when it later begins falling, the brown changes impressively from chocolate to slightly muddy to a very milky coffee colour and days later with the torrent much lowered will become a pale and beautiful clean green (eau-de-Nil, perhaps) colour. And have I mentioned the river ‘noise’? The noise is tremendous and quite raw, especially where the rolling water gets chopped up in the rapids as the almost-flooding river climbs higher. When, for example, I began to appreciate that I had, after all, managed a couple of hours of Fitful Sleep, I became aware of the Sounds of the Flood. I have to say, that the sound of the flood is exquisitely beautiful. One should probably be Scared Stiff at the Sounding Flood, yet, should you be relatively safe and more or less dry inside a house (as I was) you would no doubt enjoy that sound as one of Nature’s best, a Powerful Singing of Dynamic Water, water in motion: there is nothing quite like it. Flood Roar is quite something; it dominates as an overwhelming storm of sound. Imagine the energy generated by one person diving into or two hands splashing and moving the water in a relatively still river and then marvel at the power of a length of the torrent surging and noising. Think of a high storm wind or the sound of jet engines.

Also, the riverside casuarinas that lean so precariously over the water have, when you peer closely through the (near-flood) river mist, displays (what else can I call them?) of orchids… There, the secret is out. Don’t tell. Please. These are very tiny orchids; they are not those great big things that orchid growers claim to have grown (like proud parents), but the very small and even fragile-looking little air plants that cling to the riverside trees. There are at least three species that flower at this time of the year: the delicate-looking white spider orchids that stand upright on branches in very early spring, the slightly bigger yellowish plants that produce small yellow flowers on tough stalks, and the several-cluster white (almost fluffy-looking) miniature ‘trees’ of orchids that seem delicate and which for some reason hang down from the undersides of branches.

When Nick was here we raised and re-set some of the top-most timbers (cut by a bush sawmill and sold as ‘sleepers’) in the old retaining wall behind the house (in 1984/5 J and I explored possibilities of placing the back of the house some 2-m higher than it now is and so I had a small bulldozer get up on the slope and cut a house-long level foundation ‘platform’ for us to use if we wished. We decided against that design and twice built a long timber retaining wall (our first attempt wasn’t the best) against the steep slope between the house and a false summit that includes very big trees and a weathered stone cliff decorated by an old fig tree that attracts fruit bats in summer). The extra height would have given us greater protection against high floods (because we’d have used longer poles to raise the front of the house accordingly). Subsequent explorations of the slope indicated large amounts of loose scree beneath the lantana and although we knew the slope was then unstable we ought to have avoided making that platform). The retaining wall has served well to protect the back of the house, but after 25 years the timbers have deteriorated and the loading on the wall from the saturated scree has now breached the wall (we used lengths of 200-250-mm dia. hardwood poles, dug in, and then stacked the ‘sleepers’ behind the line of poles allowing appropriate gaps between each horizontal timber to function as weep-holes. The wall has worked well—until now.

October 6 2010. Overnight pressure on the wall has almost pushed one pole down and through about 45% and although the wall is more or less still functional it’s clear that the mass of soil, stone and dense lantana on the slope will eventually cause the retaining wall to fail along the greater length.

The timbers that Nick and I re-set, in the way they have now collapsed, suggests that when the slide occurs, there is a moderate probability that the direction of the slip may be deflected and so carry much of the slide at an angle that will take it down toward the Theatre Garden and the river. I don’t deceive myself about the danger of the house being wrecked: there is a very high probability that the house will be severely damaged if not destroyed if the slide comes down directly and at right angles to the wall. I’m hoping that I won’t be entirely present in the house if that occurs.

Chilling? Yes.

The river and its potential flooding got as far as popping through the gaps of the concrete deck (Plains Crossing Bridge) then the river must have peaked because the level began falling (not much, but enough). By Wednesday morning (Oct 6) and after an almost no-rain night, the river level was still falling and I was able to change my chelation appointment to suit this window of opportunity and drove to Bellingen (both Richardson’s Bridge and Hobart’s Bridge had had a near flood over their decks), completed chelation and then went on to Coffs Harbour and Park Beach Plaza and completed the most urgent chores and then returned home (brilliantly sunny and humid in Coffs; intermittent showers on the way home, and the river level continuing to fall). Tired, I started to write this, then went early to bed, dozed and otherwise slept with one eye open…

October 7 2010. Today there was the sound of the descending near-flood, prior to a misty sunrise. The Pre-Sunrise Morning Inspection revealed a beautiful high river, white-capped through the rapids, birds flying along the stream, the river pale green, the torrent rolling and splashing loudly. Storms have been predicted—and obligatory showers, of course, but not yet. I’m now moodily sipping a medicinal glass of Shiraz because rain of any quantity will further load the saturated hillside, further reducing my chances of living long enough to win the Nobel Prize for Literature—but that’s life. Suddenly I’m reminded of something I managed to see on TV last night and actually remember: David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz discussing Francoise Sagan and the film of the book, Bonjour Tristesse. As did the critics, I remembered the book well, but was startled to see the actor portraying the writer not as the young woman (teenager) she was when she wrote her famous story, but as a middle-aged woman! What that reminded me of was a story I wrote recently, one, suggested or even perhaps adapted from, I think (one becomes hazy when self-medicating), the ill-fated and unpublished “Earthrise”, this story called, “One morning in May” (ah, Meliza Korjus, I shall take to my grave that 1938 I think it was, image of MK (The Berlin Nightingale), that exciting singer singing ‘One day when we were young’ in the film The Great Waltz. I saw it, I think, in about 1939 when I was living with my family in Pilgrims Rest (the family had returned to South Africa in 1937, my Cabin Boy Year). Yes, 1938. Anyway, forgive me, I was reminded of All That because in my long story in which Col Harvey Rigaud—I loved writing that story—the character of an ADF guy who deployed (if that’s the word) a remarkable young woman, the character, Lt Col Sarah Hart, for Special Ops during that unfortunate time in the future when Australia was invaded by “Militias” from neighbouring countries…and Harvey Rigaud was, alas, sitting in his Brussels office (sorry, that’s a long story) attempting to learn French by reading Bonjour Tristesse in French. Francoise Sagan, born in Lot, was only 18 in 1954 when she published her novel. As I recall, I was only 25 then.

When I went down to the belvedere at 13:00 there were five blue and white irises open and there were many of the five-petal pink clovers flowering too and not forgetting the myriad native violets—all flowering in or possibly on the lawn. Consider how surprising it is to see violets chopped off by mowing in one week, then up and blooming again, the next with a near-flood in between. I’m fortunate to have such a lawn, a self-organizing lawn: one that is a gift of the floods (not this near-flood, though). Further, the tradescantia is flowering (white, like tiny orchids), there are (also white) small jasmine flowers, a few surviving impatiens (balsam, when I was younger) and although I saw no dahlia tubers sprouting during the Morning Inspection I counted four popping up under the chicken wire in the Dog’s Garden at 13:00 hours. They were not, of course, flowering. And, how could I almost forget: the European privet has begun flowering, too. Jannelle used to suffer awful hay fever in October because of the European privet flowering. Once, I remember, I saw a carpet snake (python) hanging out, literally, on a flowering Euro privet. My point is that the mingled scent of these little flowers is heady and, well, strange. While being chelated yesterday I surreptitiously leaned forward to sniff at a vase of flowers: the sweet pea had very little fragrance (I well remember how overpowering, almost, sweet pea seemed when I was a child; similarly so with the dark red Joyce carnation—ah, those lost scents). Missing, here and now, is the sweet and sour smell of a rising flood cleaning decomposing debris from the banks; instead, the strangely mingled scents of privet and jasmine.

Two more remembered events and then I’ll stop. The first was seeing, on Monday, Oct 4, I think, a line of 13 big brown cormorants, bedraggled somewhat, standing in the rain on the opposite riverbank, just upstream of the bridge. They looked unhappy, annoyed and a little tense (not unlike myself these past few days). As I stepped on to the bridge deck the cormorants decided to leave and took off upstream in the mist and rain, climbing at first, as they generally do, before dropping lower quite quickly so as to fly along the line of the river but scarcely a metre or so above the water. I guess they go hungry when the river becomes a near flood.

The other sight was also a surprise: yesterday (Thursday, Oct 7) afternoon there was part of a rainbow to be seen about 50 or 60-m downstream. It spanned both sides of the river. I wondered if anyone else saw it, or had I been the only human to be privileged? Oct 8 2010.

October 26 2010. Some sun this morning and some bigger patches of blue. There have been intermittent showers (and rain periods) for days; consequently the river has come up the best part of 1-m—which is considerable.

By chance I recently saw James May’s interesting TV program on, of all things, his plasticine garden exhibit (Royal Horticultural Society: Chelsea Flower Show). The exhibit was certainly unusual and indicated just how hard one has sometimes to think when planning such unique tasks: details, details, and the exhibit was a great success if only because the Public liked it so much.

I’ve been editing—never my favourite occupation except when the writing is old enough to be interesting (‘did I write that?’) or when part of the subject or topic being re-thinged is also the subject of a television program (this one about Greece). I strained to see every detail because this particular program was brilliantly filmed from a helicopter. I’ve been re-editing a story about Rhodes and Mykonos and was so intrigued that I realised I was moving and peering at odd angles (‘I well remember that street!’ ‘That was where the café was, the one where they danced!’). I was seeing, for the first time, familiar places filmed from above and almost simultaneously visualizing some of those long ago times—a compelling and nostalgic experience. When I thought afterwards of my enthusiasm I knew that it had a lot to do with the unusual way of presenting the material: I need a helicopter if I’m ever going to see Earthrise properly.

–Then I sat down and had a good look at the canopy over the riverside lawns here.

The canopy, when looked at, seems omnipresent and unless I make a point of straining to see up and into it, I’ll miss most of the action. I’ve been thinking about this a great deal: most of what I look for and look at is habitually low-level, on or near the ground, or at or close to eye-level; I seldom walk about here while looking up. It simply is not safe to walk looking up: there are snakes, e.g., that never welcome being disturbed; multiple objects to trip over, nettles itching to sting me, branches and shrubs supporting thirsty leeches ready to leap on me (yesterday I went outside to plant some seedlings, the rain having miraculously stopped, yet I was unable to avoid a leech in the ear (this is much less fun than you might think). When I stopped and looked up I saw high above me a complex network of branches alive and dead, great amounts of greenery, the canopy a moving, gleaming show of lights and colours, birds moving and feeding, orchids and other epiphytes. Significantly, I saw the extent to which some trees like several of the old and high white cedars have spread their enormous limbs such that together, they cover or overlook very large areas. So what, do I hear you murmur? So this: imagine that you’re pushing a noisy motor mower and wearing earmuffs. See? You would be, as I often am, greatly at risk of being driven into the earth by a falling limb or an entire tree that noisily breaks (though we hear it not), hurtles destructively down by smashing everything that impedes it and arrives with all the carelessness of gravity to destroy gardeners. If I’m sitting quietly, reading or writing in the garden I have a small chance (on hearing a limb or whole tree breaking overhead) of Making A Dash For It, but it’s scarcely half a chance: you would probably bet on gravity bringing branch and victim to a dramatic and deadly finish on the lawn or ground rather than the gardener (however young, sprightly or otherwise inspired) struggling out of the chair, books and papers and medicinal glass of wine flying in ultra slow motion as if glimpsed magically in the mind, viz, seeing oneself fleeing during the action immediately before being crushed like a cockroach, terminally). It’s almost enough to make a chap give up mowing. Gardeners must necessarily live and move &c &c down on the ground contained within The Understorey. (Unless, of course, we have the means to establish Aerial Gardens along the big boughs. One possibility might be to construct walkways enabling access to these Elevated Places: stoutly made and supported, they would rise gracefully in easily walked spirals and inclines and be so well camouflaged that hardly anyone would notice them unless they looked UP). As I look out the window I realise I’m seeing a forest of trees here and that despite their great heights, most of those trees—the major portions and parts of them—are Up There Out of Sight, Almost. I feel so grounded down here (where so little light penetrates) that I must use my imagination to see those timber inclines, neatly hand-railed, built by Aerial Specialists, paths above ground that will allow me (and my friends) to stroll for hours INSIDE the canopies so wonderfully joined that they’re as profound as the ceilings and insides of domes of cathedrals. Only those ants that enjoy living high up in the stumps of eucalypt branches can enjoy what the birds enjoy: elevated views. Perhaps I could become a Photography Instructor: students to bring their own ladders and then practice picture-taking from on high.

Speaking of which: on my occasional walks recently, I’ve been (very carefully) walking and also looking up and into the roadside trees, most of which grow on that side of the road adjacent to the high ground. Down by Richardson’s Bridge there are very high riverside casuarinas (river oaks perhaps) that are so well dressed with stag and elk horn ferns, birds-nest ferns and sundry other ‘parasitic’ air plants that they look as decorative as some of the supporting pillars and other structures in Gaudi’s great cathedral in Barcelona. And along the way there is a splendid old tree (a species I’m not familiar with) that not only contains a BIG ecosystem of its own (all kinds of plants) but it allows crossover vines from the other side of the road to use it and that made me look out for crossovers along the road (there are a few). And that made me wonder why certain plants and trees grow mostly on one side of the road and not much on the opposite side. Vegetation on the high ground side is as thick as jungle (too crowded for a dog to bark in) and so much of it so densely packed that a number of once big and high trees are now as dead as dinosaurs having been strangled by vines and creepers; they appear as inelegant skeletal remains that poke their decaying trunks above the profuse growth below; nothing grows on them and they’re as bare as driftwood on a beach.

Which reminds me that the jacarandas have begun flowering (they started much earlier this month in Bellingen’s streets and along the trunk road and now trees in flower can be seen along Darkwood Road: the spring blooming hasn’t quite reached the Earthrise jacarandas, but it’s almost here.

The strong green stalks of Christmas orchids are now well up; some of the grasses, having grown themselves rapturously during all these wet days (and probably all of the nights, too) are now seeding. These oddities are green, with wheat-like seeds straw-coloured. Indeed, everything that can grow is doing so. The new dahlia tubers are leaping out of the wet earth; most are now safe (I hope) within the Dog’s Garden which now is dramatically surrounded by chicken wire (enough wire to cause the toughest of infantrymen to think twice before going over it and to my pleasure, discouraging all manner of Creatures from entering (like bandicoots). There are new roses, transplanted impatiens that the feral deer haven’t yet found, some nursery seedlings like petunia and marigold and red salvia to make some colour there).

Which reminds me: the lawns are looking suspiciously fecund, not only from the rains and showers, but I suspect, from the high floods in the last couple of years, for there is a number of relatively new-looking grasses not previously seen here. One of these mystery growths appears among the usual grasses as emerald green and looking oddly like young kikuyu prior to its pushing out long stalks that have as many as 12 flower-like ‘petals’ at the ends of which are small buds or blossoms (if cut by the mower, and I haven’t been able to mow for weeks, they instantly respond by regenerating the cut stems. Can they be alien growths, I wonder, from Out There?

The sub tropical chickweed of winter has ’disappeared’ and been ‘replaced’ by native violets (you’d never suppose there had ever been chickweed in the lawn, at all), so much so that if you’re a looker-downer like me (when respectfully walking on grasses) that you have to be so aware of each flower as to step carefully over or around hundreds of them. Big Lawn looks so floral now (the pink flowers of clovers are blooming, too) that I feel guilty at the prospect of mowing should the days become hot and dry enough. And there are also new-looking ferns appearing in those areas of Big Lawn where in winter there are impressive great forests of mosses. Perhaps I could advertise Lawn Tours and become the principal Guide?

Along Darkwood Road I’ve seen King Parrots feeding on the roadside dock; the dock is luxuriant now, some of the plants about 2-m high, bent over, heavy with many leaves and the tiny seeds. October has also been busy with butterflies bobbing through the gardens; most of them white, and often flying in two’s or three’s. Also, along Darkwood Road and the Trunk Road, the pecan orchards, now brightly leafed, and even more beautiful when seen through Polaroids.

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

WH Davies (1871-1940).