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.