Reconnecting with nature and community in the inner city.
On Saturday Uncle Bevan and beautiful Aunty Anna celebrated their engagement. It was a riotous night which ended abruptly for me with a phone call from my parents with Emby sobbing mama mama mama in the background. No doubt she was distraught at being torn away from the party an hour earlier just as she had warmed up her smiles.
So the dancing continued on at the bowl’s club two streets over, while a sweaty little Ember Wren was snuggled to sleep by her mama.
While extreme temperatures cooked the garden and the power grid we chilled in front of the fan. Despite the heat Ember had one of her best 24 hours of sleeping in a long time, perhaps cosying up to her cot on our futons to catch some fan time made the difference.
We spent a lazy morning with Bub playing in her birthday suit and tasting her first stewed pear. Sweetly sticky we had to wash both Bub and the sheets post pear, but both dried in an instant as the air hummed with heat.
When the cool change hit, we took our first walk for the day. The cool air like silk on our skin after the searing 46C.
I hope you all stayed cool today.
I’m taking the time while I have Dylan around to shake off the thick layer of digital dust my photo archive has been gathering. I have so many moments to share it’s hard to pick what to tick off first.
Baby is in a feather light sleep next to me which involves a lot of dummy sucking and arm flailing, but let’s see if I can finally post these photos of what was happening in the food forest as spring turned to summer. Today a scorching hot day, so I imagine it will look a lot different when we next visit. So glad we have a watering system!
Things were too hectic with the new baby to capture the apple blossom in all its powder pink glory, but we were organised enough this year to net the apricot and peach against fruit fly and the red apple against the birds. The billowing white nets are actually quite beautiful in a way, they float above the thick carpet of yarrow like a mist of benign ghosts.
Last year the feijoa had its first two, maybe three flowers. Now it is covered in red Christmas bauble blossoms. The jar of parsley seeds I saved from home and lazily broadcast months ago has also come good. The umbels are beautiful under the trees and promise we will have parsley this coming year too without having to resow. The nasturtiums and pepinos had withered in the late frosts, but their massive amount of regrowth following has smothered all competitors.
The food forest was looking a bit grim in November and I thought it just couldn’t cope without my attention, which had been elsewhere while I was pregnant. Turns out all it needed was a good water after a dry winter and a broken timer on the watering system. Drip irrigation operational and some heavy downpours saw the food forest lush and green in a matter of weeks. The weeds also awakened though and we had to do quite a lot of grass pulling.
The silvanberry fruit are ripening and unlike the thornless bramble we have at home birds seem less willing to grasp their stems to feast.
This year there is an immense sense of achievement in the community garden. The transformation over winter was stunning and now the raised gardens are overflowing with verdant growth. After the long winter the joys of rummaging through the prickly leaves of zucchini to find succulent fingers of fruit evoke a chorus of memories of happy summer’s days both lived and locked away in our genetic memory. It’s pure ecstacy of spirit. A feeling I hope Ember will enjoy one day.
We celebrated with a morning tea and it really showcased the cooking talents of the group. Sarah impressed with homemade lavosh created with a pasta machine, which I can’t wait to try making myself.
Ember sported the turmeric and marigold dyed cardigan that I started before she was born and almost didn’t finish in time to fit her. It paired nicely with the pink cosmos which I think have become the unofficial emblematic flower of summer in the community garden.
After all the hard work we put in we can now look forward to leisurely years of planting and harvesting, grass free and water secure.
Wishing you all the same in the New Year!
