I started a new job in the last month. Also we swapped over and redecorated the girls’ room with the study, so that the girls would have their own space: their old room only just had room for their beds, whereas the study, which was rarely used, had acres of space. The switch was a very satisfactory exercise, and the new job was a good move too, but all in all it has been very busy and rather exhausting.
This weekend we had some time out. My weekly ‘time out’ always involves watching Gardening Australia, which I love for its creative garden designs, enthusiastic presenters and gardeners, gardening tips and beautiful plants. I also like the passionate joy for plants and nature it has given us for decades now, going back to the indefatigable Peter Cundall’s ‘look at this soil! So good you could eat it!’ and ‘It breaks my heart to say it but it’s your bloomin’ lot for the week.’ Costa Georgiadis is just as delightfully positive. The other feel-good element is the way the show inevitably shows how communities can come together around gardens and gardening, and how insects and birds rely on our gardens too.
This week we met an older gardener who cleared a large expanse of overrun land by hand to create a terraced oasis, which he shared with the community at open days; saw how you can label your plants discreetly by painting a smooth stone white and writing on it in pencil – the stone can be flipped over as required; visited a garden design competition in Melbourne that almost had me drooling; and enjoyed the immaculate and varied grounds of Brisbane’s Government House, which include a bush garden as well as tall, old trees shading expanses of lawn and flower beds. Last week they showed how a landscape gardener had designed a much more inviting space for an animal shelter, with colourful, individual rabbit hutches and meandering paths which increased the adoption rate of the rabbits by 40%, as well no doubt as being a much more stimulating environment for the animals.
I also like gardening in our own garden, and do that most weekends. Yesterday I weeded for an hour and a half and today my legs were aching from it: the sort of ache that reminds you that you have achieved something. Gardening gives you contemplative time too, and there is always something to be done, even in our mostly native, low-maintenance garden. The girls help sometimes, which is good for them to experience too.
Today we extended our time out in nature by driving an hour out of town to a nature reserve. There is a lovely walk around some large ponds, reed-fringed, with brolgas and wrens enjoying the water too. No platypus sightings this time, but it was restorative just walking along the boardwalks, listening to the trickling water, looking up at the trees and exploring the nooks and crannies like a ‘children’s bridge’ of stepping stones, and some hanging-rock-sized rocks. The sculpture along the walk was brilliant too: rusty iron gates decorated with birds and platypi reliefs; an inviting picnic area on boardwalk overlooking the pond; and a wide wooden bridge and seating area bridging a stream, with a hole cut into the bridge’s boardwalk so you could see the rushing water below. The hole was made safe and intriguing by sticks of iron shaped like an open fire across them, entwined by a couple of stones.
After tripping over and grazing her knee within the first five minutes of arriving, which made her cry and I didn’t have any bandaids, Rhea enjoyed the novelty of the walk and she and Lara both loved the rock-climbing. We spent an hour at the nearby adventure playground before going home, which was a bonus which the girls loved.
These are some of the things that ground and restore me: gardening, watching Gardening Australia, and bushwalking. It’s been a good weekend.
