by Tamsin Kerr

Created on: July 18, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

The mist lies across the valley, breaking the more normal skin between land and air, Magic becomes possible in its blurred boundaries. The forest spirits move freely in its damp blanket. The sun rises above such low lying beauty; together they promise a jewel of a day blue skies and warm sunshine in the midst of a crisp autumn.

And then, another weather event': four days of waterfall rain. Almost half a meter fills up our tanks, dams, and soil. After three months of no rain at all, even our constantly fed gardens are so cracked that you can slide a palm of the hand into their depths. Now they are reprieved; plants are given new life. The rain drizzles on for another week. Amidst carpets of baby weed seedlings, we have planted food in the shape of bok choy, pak choy, grosse lisse tomatoes, strawberries, green and brown mignonettes, and voted most likely to succeed, rainbow chard. Perhaps this winter will be a wet winter after the driest autumn we've ever experienced. Nothing seems predictable anymore.

Except, perhaps the brush turkey who cannot resist the purple roots and tubers in our garden and digs out their sweetness with no regard for human labour or desires. While we eat the pumpkins it has pecked, there are no remaining signs of the sweet potatoes (except the vast holes) and the yakon does not survive the turkey's scratching. There are obvious ways to minimise its impacts: don't put down hay as mulch (too threatening to its nest building dignity), put wired protection over that which you most love, and a new surprising rule emerges don't plant purple food. Turkeys' two most favourite foods apparently are mulberries and sweet potatoes, to the point that is cannot wait for quietness, dodging fences, chooks, dogs, people, and, it must be said, thrown missiles, in its desperation for their succulence.

We spend more time walking amidst the damp landscape, admiring the flow of water. After the initial water event', its presence is everywhere. I love the sound of the water rushing down under the earth to the very steep valley below. I love the emergent streams on this place I inhabit and the many (I can only assume celebratory) calls of its frog communities. Although, we are also forced to notice just how many weeds and chaos lies around our property a common form of evidence for human inhabitation! It invokes a Manley Hopkins' poem (from Inversmaid):
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Living amidst an almost tropical country garden has its compensations. The weeds grow too fast' also translates as we get more frequent crops'. The garden has more pests' also means we have great diversity and life. And instead of cherry trees, we grow grumachamas that are sweeter and more delicious. Warm climate gardening on the edge of weather, in the space between city and country, is never dull. And, gradually, we are learning to understand the sweet lessons in life: life, afterall, is a bowl of grumachamas!

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