Remember that stuff I wrote about Adam in the Garden of Eden, and how in his pre-Eve bachelorhood he spent his time wandering about giving things names? It was also pre the serpent and banishment into the harsh world, so very much a state of grace.
It’s an attractive idea – apart from the nudity, which, let’s be honest, isn’t practical and doesn’t work well on chill, windy spring days like today. But having this fertile, unspoilt garden to hang out in (so to speak), with all the bounty of nature, sounds pretty good: much better than waking up every morning in a high-rise apartment and spending most days in an artificially lit, climate-controlled open-plan office, where the windows exist to mock you with limited views of the world outside.
But it’s not all sylvan picnics and strolling around naming things: every benefit that comes from owning (for want of a better word) a piece of this earth brings with it a small package of responsibilities – or should do; although given the state we’ve thrust upon this earth, it’s clear this hasn’t been central to mankind’s thinking over the last few centuries.
Now that half the globe is permanently on fire and species great and small are marching to extinction, and all manner of smaller problems conspire to render the future of human life decidedly dodgy, surely this idea of stewardship rather than dominion over the earth needs to take hold.
Without wanting to get too priggish and moralistic, it’s amply clear that the old ways of dealing with natural resources didn’t take into account the small fact that these resources are finite – and that time may well be planning to hang around for many, many aeons to come. Using everything up or screwing it up doesn’t leave much for those who’ll arrive in the decades, centuries and millennia after us.
So while we can, taking an approach that seeks to preserve what we have and regenerate what we’ve spoilt seems quite sensible. Which is a long way of getting around to that package of responsibilities mentioned above. It’s not an original thought – in fact, the word ‘sustainability’ has become very popular with everyone from politicians to bankers to marketing men and women.
It’s all too easy to shrug and say, “I’m just one person – what difference can I make?” And the answer is also a cliché – many hands make light work; a stitch in time saves nine; and every journey starts with one small step. More to the point, in a world where so many things are beyond our control, starting with what we can control makes a lot of sense. It may be naïve, but living what your ideals could be the best way of showing what can be achieved.
So, stewardship of the land. I wish it was more, but Corner Cottage’s quarter-acre is just roomy enough to provide a constant stream of natural phenomena that require managing, nurturing, researching, pruning, fixing and (of course) photographing. As previously mentioned, the to-do list never gets shorter – if anything, with the onset of spring, it’s lengthening by the day as aphids invade the roses, weeds spring through the interstices of the deck, and the damage wrought by the recent drought starts to heal.
Yes, things are growing – including our small and perfectly-formed vegetable garden – but so much for the flora: what’s getting all the love right now is the fauna which are showing up with greater energy and variety with every passing day.
You’ve met our blue-tongued skink. The good news is that he/she is making daily appearances to bask in the sunshine, exhibiting what appears to be reckless abandon as she/he lies comatose on the deck, oblivious to us stomping about and using power tools nearby. Last week he/she was joined by a simply huge cousin – and let’s be frank, despite high-flown notions of stewardship, this species still sets off some warning bells in the reptile part of the brain. But perhaps she/he heard Daniela remark that she/he would make a lovely handbag, because there’s been no sign since.
Birds have also featured herein, but the larger, louder, more obvious ones are looking a little passé with the coming of the tiny, fleet and elusive, for which the photographer’s only answers are persistence, lumbering stealth, and more persistence. By applying this cunning strategy, some of the local feathered fauna have managed to pose for the probing lens. I give you a Superb Fairy Wren, a Fairy Gerygone (once known as a Fairy Warbler), and a lesser-spotted LBB (that’s Little Brown Bird).
Not to overtax your patience, bees have also made their brief appearance herein. They’re everywhere at the moment, and gratifyingly oblivious to the persistent photographer hulking over them. I have learnt that these are predominantly European honeybees, introduced in a sort of apiaristic colonialisation – but the authorities say they’re not necessarily a bad thing: their contribution to ensuring crops are pollenated is very valuable.
And at last: a life form not mentioned before – butterflies: a fresh obsession and possibly the most frustrating of all. If you catch them in the warm middle of the day, they will not sit still long enough to be shot. And their flight paths are more random and irrational than the tiny birds’. And once you manage to get one in frame, they’re revealed to be quite bulbous and hairy – not really the evanescent beauties our assumptions would have us believe. Below: an Australian Painted Lady, a Cabbage White, a Yellow Admiral and a Caper White.
All of these things that crawl or flit or flutter are integral elements of the rich, diverse ecosystem that is our garden – plus many more I can’t identify and/or capture for posterity (there’s a plan to immortalise the possum that roams the garden late at night using a laser trigger – watch this space). All deserve a bit of consideration, even if they awaken primordial snake-fear. And as we build our little Eden right here in Braidwood, they’ll all going to thrive under our stewardship.
Except the weeds – those guys have to go.