My Spring Garden - late December 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring - busy-ness, joy, and perfume

Phew, I've made it back again. Health has been up and down and then over the last week Herself has been ill. A day at the Angliss yesterday and she is on the mend again.

But it's not only health issues. Spring is here and it hasn't been spring cleaning - but spring planting. Going potty - quite literally.

The oregano and marjoram had not been broken up for two years...

...so there are pots and pots of the stuff now...

...along with the break up of the parsley...

...and addition of coriander.

I have had these hanging pots stacked away for the last two years.

They came from the hard rubbish...

...the stuff people put on the footpath

This, along with mowing the lawn, prowling the hard rubbish now winter is gone, and organising our out door area for summer has kept me rather busy. So that is the work that Spring brings. But it is a joyful time. The blossom, both native and exotic, is wonderful.

I wish I could include the wonderful scents I experience as I walk around my neighbourhood.

Instead, here is some of the blossom on our huge potted jasmine perfuming The Trad Pad.

Australian Spring

To read "Australian Spring" click on the picture for an enlarged version.

You should then see an enlarged version with on it a little square with arrows.

Click this little square and you will find the picture is now readable.

It is only July, but - after some clear Melbourne weather this week and seeing wattles and jonquils and fruit trees in blossom - Miss Eagle feels as though Spring is in the air. We Eurocentric people of the Southern Hemisphere still rely on the distinction of the Northern Hemisphere seasons turned upside down. So officially, Spring does not arrive here until September 1. Miss Eagle believes that we should pay more attention to our own environment not just in the Southern Hemisphere or in our own nation but in our own locality.

Miss Eagle thinks that if we were sufficiently in tune with our environment there would be a name for what is happening now. And for lots of other seasonal changes as well, seasonal changes that may not happen for a period of three months but may only last for three weeks or six weeks.

What would this present season be called? The Harbinger? Newness? Please let Miss Eagle know what you think.

The poem, Australian Spring, by Australia's leading suffragette and face-on-the-five-dollar note, Catherine Helen Spence, is from the State Library of South Australia and reminds us of the attitude of transplanted Europeans. Things have changed a century later - but not enough. Generally speaking, we Australians have not come to terms with our land. We have not paid sufficient attention to what it can tell us. In fact, let's ask ourselves if we are listening at all.

We are still seeing things through the eyes of elsewhere, not the eyes of the native born.