Six Square Metres
January 2014
At this time of year each evening finds me in the back yard, mosquitoes at heel, watering the garden. It is a ritual that accompanies the cessation of the day’s heat.
The silverbeet recovers from the day’s heat in an astonishing fashion. One moment it seems dead, flopping on to the soil. A little water flowing in to those veins and in minutes it stands proud, glossy and green. I revive it in order to kill it. A quick slash with the knife, and we have leaves for dinner. The end of the day’s heat is also the time for harvest.
Watering the garden is almost meditative. My back to the house, my mind at rest, I try to judge how much water is enough, and not too much, for plants that have stood all day in the parching sun. This involves an interaction with the minutia of my tiny patches of soil.
Gardeners know their gardens with the intimacy of a lover. Just as lovers know each dip and rise of flesh, so a gardener knows the contours of the soil. So it is that I can judge how long to let the hose play on each spot.
The jet of water kicks up dirt. Even though the soil is dry, it takes some time for it to accept water. The earth is like a sponge left to dry for too long. It has forgotten how to drink.
Lakes form, then overflow, then tip their contents into neighboring hollows. I know how long this will take, and the order in which the little holes will fill. I can judge it almost to the moment, and I shift the hose just before the deluge. Then there is a pause while the water sits on the dry earth. Am I imaging the tension? Suddenly, as though a mouth has been opened, the water disappears. Then I can return with the hose, and the garden drinks deep.
With my pot plants, though, water runs out of the bottom long before the soil is soaked. A slow drip feed is what’s needed, but who has the time for that? Inside the house there are jobs to do. Washing to be put on. Dishes to clear. Work clothes to prepare. So I create my little floods, then move on.
One of the difficulties of gardening in a small space is finding a way of doing the job without wrecking everything else that is going on. If I overwater the lemon tree the water runs out of the pot, across the brick paving and disrupts my grandson’s Lego town – although he seems quite pleased with the idea of a flood to enliven the evenings of his plastic, square-headed population.
When I water the lettuce, strawberries, beans and upside-down tomato on the sundeck, I have to first make sure that the washing line underneath is empty or everyone will be wearing clothes with earth coloured streaks. Summer took a long while to arrive this year. For weeks, my basil plants sat and sulked through cold nights, barely putting on a leaf. Now they want to run to seed before providing the customary summer pesto.
The coriander is all legs and arms and flowerheads, and no leaves. The capsicum is providing tiny, intense flavored fruit. Nothing is growing quite as I expect. These days that observation carries with it a freight of fear. Is this climate change? Will the intimate knowledge of the garden soon cease to serve? Is everything changing?
Tonight I am soaking the seeds of moonflowers, ready for planting out tomorrow. Moonflowers grow on long vines. They can put on five metres in a single year. I have read that the flowers open in the early evening and close before noon the following day. You can actually watch them open, it happens so fast. The fragrance is sweet and heavy.
Next summer, I hope to have the moonflowers to accompany me for the evening watering and harvest ritual.
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