18. Angela Costi's 'The Apricot and the Lemon Tree' - inviting Lizz Murphy

 

The Apricot & The Lemon Tree

 

at the edge of the village

come to an oak much older than me

that’s where I’ll seek advice

–      Kit Kelen 

 

tenant 1 planted the couple while tenant 2 and 3

nurtured their growth and here I stand, tenant 4

before their arthritic leaves & brittle branches

 

unlike the owl and the pussycat they are stuck

too close and deep rooted with a stubborn sense 

of belonging to a land they’ve failed to interpret 

 

once gardens were ballrooms of sweet & bitter

fruit throughout Melbourne’s Northern yards 

expecting Mediterranean weather to migrate  

 

now these replica orchards are starving for genteel

seasons, expecting to be washed with lukewarm 

hose each night, even when sky drizzles or sprays

 

with no strength to stretch their arms to the sky

no plump, sun-kissed balls with juice for birds 

& jam, no smell for fresh salads of crisp crunch 

 

they offer a time-warp of cravings & nostalgia

in the back yard, encircled by concrete and brick 

ignorant of the tall bottlebrush on the nature strip   

 

 

by Angela Costi 

17. harmony with nature - josh stenberg - invitation to liang luo into the garden

  

this is a tree

it is a fruit tree

it is a fruiting tree

with its flowers

it hopes to make more

of itself

i eat its delicious progeny

i consume it like fire

 

this is a man

his flesh creeps tasty into my roots

he makes children to feed my fruit

his bones flower me

Shanghai guji illustration of Peony Pavilion

16. Coral Carter's Ruined Garden inviting Rose van Son into the conversation

Ruined Garden

 

It’s ruined, it’s ruined—I think as I water what’s left, small oases of green in a garden of sand and straw-coloured weeds. An unsuspecting ankle could be turned in trenches dug for pipes as they slowly fill with leaves. Bricks, off-cuts, left-over tiles, all lie hidden in the dead grass.

 

For the renovation we chopped down the wisteria. It refused to die as if it still dreams of hanging purple against the blue. Now it competes in the greenness stakes against the fig we couldn’t kill.

 

The mango is going gangbusters flowering and fruiting. Gone a little crazed with the weird seasons. Mother’s Love, the rose with minimal thorns is chonking out blooms, despite neglect and no pruning for three years.

 

The stag horn has suicided, split itself in half, it hates its new home. Had to be shifted before the old place was torn down but the elk horn goes on and on reproducing and being splendid.

 

A blossom and bee party is happening in the cork tree. It has finished the annual leaf drop. I can hear the buzz from half way up the yard, standing underneath the honeyed perfume gives my olfactory system a complete work out. Ahhhh!

 

Most of the nasturtiums have run riot worn themselves out gone yellow, but some still flash orange and red a small clan survives in the solid shade of the oak. In most corners I find the dry capers ready for next spring. Thistles are going to seed sending their feathered fairies into the air to find new homes—goodbye, goodbye!

 

Despite the print of builder’s boot tread, the bromeliads flowered, after planks were left on top of them for days and they had been used as a wheelbarrow park. Roots have escaped through the bottom of the bay tree’s pot. It celebrates with new growth, shiny leaves, bright branches. Hurrah!

 

Rye grass bends, there is a haiku in the curve of the stem or a watercolour on a sympathy card. Bamboo is stoic and casts shadows on an upturned wheelbarrow which is not red.

 

Hacked and amputated to make way for a new roof, the lacebark is about to drop everything and flower. Pink bell after pink bell will shower down. A native of tropical rainforests it still thinks in terms of dry, build-up, wet.

 

The pond lives. Tadpoles throng, dragonflies do their twice-born thing, water boatmen row frantically from here to there, while water striders balanced on the meniscus are still.

 

A prawn-sized grass-hopper that looks edible and are, some say, has laid eggs on a post on the patio. I saw it mating. Lost one large hopping leg, it was climbing a post as a small male clung on. Later, there will be many nymphs, they shred my only pot of basil. Some are caught in a nearby web.

 

In the corner there is a corrugated iron lean-to. It seems to fit with the overgrown plants and weeds, home to the unwanted becoming the forgotten. The old duck yard is collapsing. The fence leans in on itself. Duck Mahal no more.

 

A dove has decayed, its fine bones sink into sand. I saw a mouse dart through the uncut grass and toes-up, a rat at the edge of the pond exposing two rows of nipples.

 

It’s my ruined garden—I think as I water what’s left, oases of green, sand and straw-coloured weeds.

 

15. Kit Kelen's 'in someone's reverie' - inviting Coral Carter into the conversation

 

in someone’s reverie

 

dark woods

 

chorded as these colours are

 

there’s weather in the head

 

its own world spinning

 

where I am furled

 

and bells ring there

 

a sapling springs

 

some say

like a heart

pumped round

 

then the pinking

to unfold

 

a path in the garden

where day is home

 

a firstness edged

all wings attend

 

up flutter, find

and say

 

must be our spark

 

there’s no one here in charge

no one to thank or blame

14. Carol Archer' s 'Gore Cove Track #2' - inviting Josh Stenberg into the garden

 

Carol Archer, 'Gore Cove Track #2', 2022. Hand-tinted drypoint, 22 x15cm.







Australian visual artist Carol Archer lives on Worimi land near Bulahdelah in the Myall Lakes region of N.S.W. Spanning drawing, painting and printmaking, her practice explores her relationship with trees and forests. Such places are especially precious for an artist who spent many years based in the hyper-urban city of Hong Kong.

To see more of Archer's work, visit www.carolarcher.com.

13. Magdalena Ball - Glass Snails - Inviting Sophia Wilson into the garden

Glass snails

i.

Soon we will all learn to live with less

whorls, shell, house, car. 

This might have occurred over 

generations, a slow transition

natural selection, natural replacement

homo erectus to homo sapiens

homo sapiens to intelligentia artificialis

strepsodiscus to oxychilidae. 

Given the situation we find 

ourselves in, it’s faster

a problem we can’t solve, only mitigate. 

retraction, reduction, inequities

trying to slow the pace, leaving

the slightest silver trail.

ii. 

The mollusc is a calcium barometer. 

Holds the weight of our world

in pockets, glorious colours flashing 

over a transparent body.

Palm fronds, leaf litter, fungi, easy 

to crush, eyes on the future.

We didn’t know, didn’t see

what was happening

tragedy of the horizon, perhaps

we can bring them back

frankensnails, shells glued 

kintsugi-style.

What mad doctor will bring us back? 

Nothing, no-thing, creature or stone

exists in isolation. The link that makes 

the difference is not so easy to spot.

12. Kerri Shying -- Where the bees rest where the butterflies play

 

Where the bees rest where the butterflies play

                                                                  “What we most need to do is to hear within us 

                                                                     the sounds of the earth crying…”

                                                                                     – Thich Nhat Hanh

from October the trees are all betrothed        each

to the gardener                        in nets  white gauze    

figs      peaches sequestered from the busy beaks

and teeth          of bats and birds

the day            sultry as a girl in her slip swimming     

waiting on the Southerly Buster

cicadas  heat from the city      a brown bubble popped

by flat-iron cloud-banks                      

high and sharp as the beaked head of a kookaburra

tall sky and 

gratefully I’m small

 

up the hill 

march the white

agapanthus                  forcing genetic breaks

onto our purple beauties          scrambling the misty blues

to hybrids        there is no 

            one garden       in my street

 

I see     the Ice flower

nipped out on a beach walk    mini red-fringed suns

succulents  rescued from places where old age gave way

to builders’ aspirations            pieces of old friends

the Mentone red geranium that Gaagang saw from his pram

Hoya from the balcony           back at the flat           the boys had

in Drummoyne            your tree

  a pencil planted just before

you died

 

begonias like Mum’s   pelargonium from The Redemptorists 

a fine piece of Menken’s building   lotus out of farm dams

mingle a floral beer garden    with tin peacocks

and galahs                   turmeric  galangal  Vietnamese mint 

vanilla orchid                         mustard greens

are you hungry            thinking how to mow around 

the condiments                        and if you’ve ever seen a chicory flower

mauve and  delicate as tissue 

 

 

I see a garden built by birds by bats   

 bullrushes

flown in  yonder          from Ash Island 

White Cedar    loquat  air mail

in a sweep of feathers

    the odd drop of oyster shells           

beside the Jizo statue

bark     depends from gum tree           piling around roots

mandarin and finger lime        lemons            parsley

all engrossed with weed         with blue tongues

pushing up in pots       in tubs in cisterns

 

anywhere

these tiny         hair-drawn feet

can tread