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.
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