Drought as a learning experience (or they also learn, who only stand and water)

Our friends at the Bureau of Meteorology say that this is the dryest spring on record for most of New South Wales, and it is beginning to feel and look like it in my garden.  The cold weather had been mitigating the moisture deficit, until a sudden, record heatwave pounced and, in only a few days, turned dull green grass to summer sere.

When spring is as dry as this one is, I spend more time than normal standing in or wandering about various parts of the garden, trying to keep the more sensitive plants alive long enough for one of those rainy day forecasts to come true.

In September, extra water is needed for the trees and vines that are trying to set fruit.  The cherries, grapes, and apples only get that chance once a year, and it seems wrong to let a lack of moisture over a crucial fortnight deprive my grandkids and neighbours of their Christmas Cherries and April Apples - the currawongs and satin birds would be peeved, too, if there were no grapes or cherries, and the rosellas and king parrots would complain if the apples were absent.

It is then, when I am standing next to a tree, counting out its allocation of water, that I have time to listen to and observe all the birds and insects that are getting their living from the myriad types of blossom, or from those that feed on the blossom. No matter how well I think I know my garden and the surrounding forest, time spent standing quietly will almost always result in a new discovery.

The bees are out early, making the flowering trees hum.  Lurking between petals are smaller native bees, beetles, tiny spiders, weevils, moths and butterflies.

Not every bee or butterfly gets to enjoy its breakfast for too long. Hunting the insects through the shrinking shadows are scrub wrens and fairy wrens, eastern spinebills, flame breasted robins and eastern yellow robins, red browed finches, and others to quick and small to identify - all snatching their share of the morning bounty, while constantly watching for the bigger birds that would snack on them in turn.  The smaller birds are a constantly shifting carillon, weaving patterns of sound through the undergrowth, and occasionally showing a flickering wing between the leaves.

Soon enough the sun climbs high above the eastern trees, the shadows tuck in around the trunks to wait for the afternoon, and the song of the little birds fades away as the hunters move in.  The magpies and currawongs and kookaburras take over the clearings, and the butcher birds hunt along the dripline, while looking over their own shoulders for the hawks and kites that patrol much larger territories.

And then, in the balmy sunshine of a spring morning, standing still affords me the answer to another puzzle.  I have been seeing cabbage butterflies around the vegie patch for weeks, lurching from one cabbage or broccoli to the next, sowing the eggs of future destruction for my brassicas - and yet almost no damage has been done.  A tiny black and yellow flash cruises through the blue-green leaves  - a European wasp (or yellow jacket, as some know them) is snapping up the tiny cabbage caterpillars for its brood.

As much as they can be a nuisance for picnickers and a terror for spring bee hives, I am grateful for their help.  A flash of red and black darts down among the cabbages as a flame breasted robin pounces, and I discover I was not the only one standing and watching.

Volunteer Editors (and Worse)

Who are these people who take to library books with pen or pencil, correcting, underlining, or crossing out perceived errors?

What is the point?  Do they think that they are the only reader whose eyes and mind will detect the mistake?  Really!  Anyone who chooses to read the book they have seen the need to correct will either consciously notice the mistake, or auto-correct it as their eyes race across the paragraphs.  What monstrous ego compels an otherwise well mannered library patron to so needlessly deface a book? 

What if the "error" is not a mistake, but a deliberate choice of word by the author that was intended to convey some special meaning in a poetic way?  What if it is poetry, and has confounded the literal minded volunteer editor.  What would such an editor have done with the works of Shakespeare?  Would any copy of the works of Lewis Carroll remained unmarked by such enthusiasts?

As library staff and patrons know, these pen wielding pedants make more murk than clarity.  They should annotate and sign for every correction, on a flyleaf or insert, so the rest of us can gloat if their correction turns out be incorrect. They should allow for the likelyhood that other readers who pick up this book after their pen has made its mark will share (or even surpass) the volunteer editor's facility with words, and refrain from such petty, pedantic scratchings.

Sure, if it is an "early reader" that is meant to teach a small child the correct spelling, use, and meaning of words, by all means show the book to the librarian at the circulation desk when returning it.  Perhaps you can write a letter to the publisher or author setting out the mistake, but for those books aimed at literate, experienced readers, please stay your hand and set down your pen.  If knowing the "error" is there is keeping you awake at night, please show it (un-annotated) to the librarian.

But as annoying as the volunteer editor can be to librarians and patrons, there is someone who will be consigned to a deeper circle of library hell, and that is the self appointed censor.

When all the books on a sensitive topic suddenly vanish, are defaced, or are found kicked under the bottom shelf, the librarian knows someone's cherished beliefs or opinions have been wounded.  The librarians care, they really do, and it is possible that the books in question may offend the librarians, too - but modern public libraries commit to free and open circulation of books and information, and to not censoring publicly available information - despite the fact that more than a few of the books that are officially catalogued as non fiction really deserve to be put on the paperback fiction shelves, with a "Fantasy" genre sticker on the spine.

To those few who feel they have the right to censor our public libraries collection, please have a polite chat with the librarian - there is a policy they must follow to determine if the book should in fact be on the shelf.  If the policy does not give you the result you seek, please take it up with the author and publisher - perhaps a word from you could set the author on the right path after all.  Just don't take it out on your public library.

Public libraries are, after all, one of the pillars of a free and democratic society - if you doubt that, then ask the librarian to direct you to the shelves containing books on politics, society, and history. 

Spend a few weeks or months reading deeply on the subject and you will soon find out what sort of society results when the censors move in and the books are destroyed or burned.

Unwary Travellers and Desperate Scroungers

The green that blessed the hills along the Castlereagh Highway is almost gone, and the smaller streams to the north of Cherry Tree Hill are bereft of moisture, or reduced to muddy puddles - though the Cox's river is still churning through its reedy banks where it meets the Highway, but that's mostly salty water from the nearby coal mine.  If you are reading this from the comfort of a home in Sydney, that's heading for your water supply, by the way.

The surest sign of the recent lack of rain is the growing toll that traffic is taking on the wildlife.  The Kangaroos and wombats have had to overcome their fear of mankind's machinery and graze the greenest pastures - that long, narrow strip of a paddock either side of the road, that they have avoided until all other grazing is gone.

Their fear is justified, as the un-buried dead pile up along the edge of the tarmac. Their reflex leaps may save them from the lunge of a dingo, or the vanished thylacine, and might even have saved them from a well aimed spear, in times gone by, but are as likely as not to land them right in the path of a semi trailer doing 120 kph (or more - I have pulled off the highway more than once to concede the way to such high speed monsters of the night.  They need not slow down for mere animals).

No instinct or ancestral memory can inform the decisions of a Wombat or Kangaroo caught in the long tunnel of blazing light that precedes the roaring, hundred and ten kilometre per hour or more passage of forty or fifty tonnes of truck and cargo.  Even the Wedge Tail Eagle doesn't stoop so quickly upon its prey.

Though the big truck will safely charge through the collision, smaller vehicles will not.  On several occassions I have been at accidents where the animal struck ended its journey inside the cabin of the vehicle with the driver and passengers.  Once, I thought I was looking at a family on the brink of death, but it turned out that none of the blood was theirs, and their immobility was just frozen fear.

Heading east across the range, soon after sunset, there were more carcasses along the road than had been there when we had driven west only that morning.  Shadows flitted across the path of oncoming headlights and vanished into the greater shadows of forest and scrub along the fence lines.

Somewhere near Cudgegong Waters, brilliant headlights showed a vehicle closing in rapidly from behind me.  I estimated that its headlights would be at my rear bumper within a couple of minutes, but, on the next long straight, it was just as far behind.  There had been Roos on the flats beside the road - had one of them startled that other driver and brought a sense of caution to what had seemed a headlong rush?  It must have - I stayed under the speed limit all the way to the next town, and those lights stayed well back.  I hope he finished his journey as safely and unscathed as I did.

Driving along the western side of the range is lovely as the sun drops behind the far ridges.  The evening light is remarkably clear, picking out the subtly brilliant shades and colours of forest and field as the first long fingers of shadow stretch eastwards.

That's the catch, when driving the bush highways; the road is built for speed, and many drivers only think of that. But the bush is only a leap and a bound from its edge, and those reaching shadows conceal the wildlife that is creeping closer to the road's edge, looking for those succulent shoots that lurk in the water tables along each side.  In a drying bush, they are just doing the best they can to survive - it's up to us, the "intelligent" ones, the beings who can imagine possibilities and chart alternative futures, to understand what might happen, and do our best to keep both them and ourselves in one piece.  A little bit slower can be an awful lot safer - and slower travel offers more views, even under moonlight and starlight.  Keep safe, and keep them safe, as well.

Over the veranda rail

Ice wind breaking on

Moon silvered plateau

tearing branches

from tree top surf

that breaks wildly over

pale sandstone heights

Sheoaks singing and 

pale Gums twisting

wild wind clutching at

weatherboards creaking and

roof iron rattling

White Cockatoos sleeping

deep in darkness at

waterfalls bottom

dreaming of sunrise

while Possums play

Today the icy, wintry winds are gone, having failed to stop the burgeoning green haze of spring

Alder, Apple, Oak, and Cherry are all streching leaves into the sun's warmth

Waratah brightens the creek-side shadows, while Grevillea and Rosemary bask in the sun

giving nectar to the honey-makers

Spring is coming at last to the Blue Mountains, and while we bask in the milder days twixt Winter's ice and Summer's fires, our thoughts go out to all those on the northern side of the equator who are suffering the floods and hurricanes and fires of Autumn - stay safe, and watch out for your neighbour.

Pindraig

Flowers of Memory - the Travelling Rose

My wife and a colleague were discussing a practice at some childcare centres where a child is given a seedling of a tree or bush to care for - when they are old enough to leave for school they can either take the growing tree home to plant or to the school if permission is given for it to be  planted there.

It made me recall the plants that have travelled with me as I have moved from place to place - there is the thornless, yellow, banksia rose that has come to each new place as a cutting from the place I had just left.

It is here at Wentworth falls as both a hedging plant and as a bonsai, cuttings of which I brought with me from a bush at our last house in Quakers Hill, which was struck from the rose that climbed over the outside dunny at the farm at Glyn Marchog, which was struck from the one I grew at the Old Northern Trading Post.

That, in turn, was cut from the yellow rose that climbed with the black muscat grapes across the north and west sides of the veranda at the farm at Murray's Run (about 8 or 9 kms from the village), which in turn came from the one near the house at Toongabbie, which was struck from the one my grandfather had by his aviary at Killarney Vale, which he grew from cuttings of the big one that climbed about the barn and cottage at North Parramatta, which, finally, was struck from the one next to the house at the family dairy at Wentworth Falls, around the end of World War 2.

What a journey, over the course of generations, in the form of carefully nurtured cuttings carried from old homes to new homes, that rose has made.  I wonder if the yellow banksia rose that I found growing among the weeds on a fence line here at Gwenmere shared a common parent with the ones that were growing on the dairy that once stood only three kilometres or so from where I now type?

This house stands on the same side of Jamieson Creek, though a bit further upstream, as did the dairy that fed and employed a great-grandfather, grandfather and grandmother, great-aunt, father, uncles and aunt, and assorted cousins, fosterlings, and boys from other properties about the village.  The yellow banksia rose is often seen climbing over fences in the village, especially in the older parts - sometimes in company with a beautiful white flowering sibling.  Gandpa had some of the white rose, too, but it seemed less robust than the yellow, and did not complete the long, roundabout journey with its sister and I.

Of course, there are other plants that have travelled with me too - in pots, or as cuttings or seeds or seedlings.  The bonsais are easy to move, the great lumping orchid pots less so - but they too have a long history.  Some of the orchids were handed on from grandpa, some from an old man across a long ago fence, whose  departed wife had nurtured them and won ribbons for their beautiful blooms, back in the forties, fifties, and sixties - probably in the same orchid society grandpa attended.

All of them have stories longer than my memory, and many parts of those stories are now forgotten.

How sad that is.  Here in Australia there are folk from the First Peoples who are trying to save the language and stories of their ancestors - just as other people in other lands are also doing for their own stories.  It must be terribly difficult for them when they have so often been pushed far away from the lands in which their stories grew and flourished.

My heritage is, from what I can find in the records, mostly Anglo-Celtic.  Those peoples, too, had a time in their past when the stories and genealogies were passed on from old to young through song and poetry.  The Celtic Bards were famous for the vast storehouse of information that they carried in the memory.

But was it just "in their heads"?  Or, was it, like so many of the Australian Aboriginal songs and stories, intimately linked to the landscape - the rocks, hills, streams, lakes, trees and plants, animals and insects?  Was that a part of the terrible shock so many of the early European arrivals seemed to suffer?  That their stories were adrift, unmoored, and unattached to the landscape they now walked through?

We define ourselves and our world with our stories.  The plants I have carried with me for so many decades are linked to stories and characters now long past - but not forgotten, thanks to those gorgeous blossoms that remind me each year of the other people and places in that long story of my family.

If I travel through those places where, in past years, I settled for a while, I can still find signs of my presence - flowers and trees I planted - houses, fences, barns and stockyards I built.  I can see them and straight away be pulled back into the memories of the people and happenings that made up my life in that place.  Though one place I find it hard to drive past, knowing that house I had built there, and the trees and gardens I planted and cared for, have all vanished beneath carpark paving and a double line of townhouses.

How awful it must be to be cast out of the landscape - by war or migration - in which your story was formed, or to have the landscape torn up and replaced with something alien - as so often happens now in The City on The Plain - Sydney - as the developers and politicians tear down the landmarks of so many stories in pursuit of dollars and power.

Frozen Fire

Another offering from a prompt based writing session - we had ten minutes to work off the two words and this, with a little tidying, is what resulted.

"Frozen Fire"

Harry Porter was missing again.  When his darts team lost the final they cursed him.  Clint wished upon him the grandfather of all hangovers as retribution for his dereliction.  When Harry wasn't at the Thursday night all-you-can-eat-for-ten-dollars buffet at the bowling club, his mates began to worry.

On Friday morning, tired, cranky, and almost sober, Clint, Joe, and Martin walked across the runway of the airstrip to the cluster of old claims on the south side of the ridge.  When they reached Harry's claim they found Snapper, his dog, chained to the front of the caravan.  Clint filled his empty water bowl and food dish while the others checked inside, and around the back.

"Not in the dunny, either" Joe called as he walked back from the outhouse, zipping up his fly.  It was Clint who spotted the open shaft, its rusty grating lying to one side of the dark hole.  Leaving a shaft open and unattended was a serious sin around the fields, as well as being a criminal offence.

The generator by the hole was cold, its fuel tank empty.  A heavy power cord ran from it into the darkness.  They found a neighbour with a car that worked, and sent for the rescue crew.  No one had bought a torch with them and none of them felt steady enough to be clambering down into the darkness.  They had called Harry's name a few times, but only Snapper answered.

Two hours later, the last of the fallen rock was lifted from Harry Porter's shoulders and back.  His hands were still clutching the largest piece of black opal that any of them had ever seen – a huge swirl of red and black fire, frozen in stone.  Harry had at last found what he'd searched for most of his adult life.