On my way to visit you…

On my way to visit you, wildflowers of every hue peeked out from grassy clumps and tree stumps, wire fences and box hedges. The white stigma of the fuchsia bougainvillaea resembled eyes as I passed by—the big brother of the plant kingdom, I thought. The ironbark tree near the swings is shedding bark, and the channel-billed cuckoos are back from Papua New Guinea for the summer. I hear them all the time, even at night when the frogmouth is calling and the stone curlews are hissing and screeching at the red fox that lives in the undergrowth beneath the water pipes.

Last week I saw a kookaburra swoop into the Singapore daisies and pull out a baby carpet python with its beak. The poor reptile didn’t stand a chance. Speaking of close encounters, my daughter narrowly escaped stepping on an eastern brown snake while walking alongside a billabong yesterday, and then my rescue hound, Honey, had a close call with a cane toad, nearly ingesting its deadly toxin. Cane toads are a blight on the natural environment and a threat to wildlife. They were introduced from South America by sugar cane farmers before environmental factors were in vogue, and now their numbers are in the millions and impossible to control because there are no natural predators. I’ve heard a rumour, though, and seen the odd sign, that there is a river rat who has adapted and learnt to kill the toad by flipping it onto its back and driving claws into its heart, therefore avoiding the toad’s toxic glands on its back. Nature is constantly fascinating!

Since I last visited, the young tulipwood trees that the council planted are growing nicely and I’m pleased to report zero incidents of vandalism by the so-called tunnel-snake-teens. Oh, and did I tell you that a pair of ravens have chosen to build a nest in the mountain gum tree that towers over our pitched roof? I throw a chicken carcass every few days and they drag it into the secret garden and pick it bare in minutes. Knowing my reverence for those black-feathered birds, you can imagine my delight each day as I peer up into the sky and know that raven magic is literally breeding in my backyard. I expect it will usher in the change of fortune that has already begun.

For most of my 45th year, I pointedly scrunched up my dreams—such pretty pieces of paper, decorated with cursive and art, fed like expired waste to the yellow wheelie bin. That same year, I tried to remove my heart too, but its violet veins stubbornly clung to their crimson chamber. Still, I resigned myself to never love again—citing silliness and old age as perfectly valid, if not legally binding, terms. I could blame circumstances for getting the better of me that year, but a one-sided story is no better than a bare-faced lie. Now, in my 46th year, that long desert night is miraculously tapering off. If you look close enough you will see a scattering of tiny buds breaking forth on the horizon. I am starting to blossom again.

I think of you often. I thought you might like to know. But thinking about you and seeing you is the difference between jacaranda trees before and after October. Before, their bare branches and grey trunks blend into the landscape to such an extent that they might as well be invisible. Until one morning in October, you wake up to see clusters of purple petals adorning those nondescript trees of September.

Between visits, I am a nondescript tree, but today, on my way to visit you, I am that glorious jacaranda that turns heads and induces smiles, and I dare hope that you feel the same way.

I am at the gate now, picking up a rusted Coca-Cola tin and smelling the jasmine flowers as a gush of wind rushes down the hill. Soon, I will be walking up the driveway, checking your citrus trees for signs of fruit. If you are in the kitchen, put the kettle on, I have in my possession an ornate tin brimming with cloudberry tea leaves; I will brew us a fresh pot.

Bianca
xo