From my bedroom window
Our garden nourishes contrasts. Light and shade. Colour and muted earth. A mass of green waste discarded amid the verdant life of the weeds and natives that have serendipitously found home on our patch.
Pine needles and broad-leaved beauties shiver in the breeze and everything is alive with movement. A bird cries out, sounding as if it belongs more in the jungle than amid the lawnmower hum of suburbia.
Shadows dance on the black lid of the compost bin as the spring sunshine warms its surface. My mum’s voice rings out: “Lila! Be careful!” and I imagine her cheeky, rotund personage pottering amid grass and earth.
Next door’s lawnmower ramps up a notch and I imagine the smell of fresh cut grass – life’s most satisfying and universal suburban cliche. I can see snatches of white and blue mottled sky between the branches and I hear the swish of the occasional car as it takes the curve in the street below.
I notice the dry patch of brown grass on the neighbour’s slope, the odd, hopeful daisy breaking up the russet with violet edged, cream fronds. They have escaped the neighbour’s landscaping machinations. The camellias are finally starting to recover after last year’s machete spree which left a gaping view to her house that was once filled with blossom.
Mick the pee-wee, or his brethren, chirps questioningly (my mum thinks her dad was reincarnated as a magpie lark). The bromeliads are starting to look a little jaundiced and off kilter, their spiky harshness contrasting with the bright splash of the merry clivias.
It’s autumn here, in Paradise, and our garden is a haven that welcomes all. Birds, insects, roving toddlers and invasive species alike.
