Last week, the boyfriend puff my daughter followed me into the garden. I was embarrassed because it looked so wild and yet unplanted. A broken peach tree, heavily laden with fruit, two limbs snapped and laying on the earth, took pride of place. Luckily the outer layer of bark, still intact, was keeping those limbs alive.
"What's that?", he asks. "Silverbeet. You can put it on stir fries and with scrambled eggs".
"Is that tomato?"
"This one? No it's potato. They just chine up from throwing peelings out. This is amaranth, you can eat the young leaves in salad and make floor from the seeds... that's spinach. Its a native type. Its a bit tough and bitter, but a little butter and garlic and is nice". I looked around realising there was more going on in the garden than i gave credit for. Cans lily, grape, sweet potato, beyond, the colors odd a young macadamia and sprawling white mulberry tree.
"It looks busy but once got that old cupboard onthe verandah full of seedlings to go in".
He looked dazed. I suspect he'd seen the Farmers Friends and Milk Thistle and thought it was a weedy mess. I did a bit, but I'd left the weeds there on purpose, for the bees, other bugs, diversity and, well just because it's nature doing it's thing. He looked overwhelmed. In his New Housing Estate World where residents worked long hours in tedious positions, the gardens were low maintenance from necessity; agapanthus, yukkas, box hedges. And vast lawns where people slumped over ride-on mowers on Sundays with a chilled bottle of beer or wine in the cup holder.
May be my garden is not so bags after all.
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