Garden losses.
Losses of plants are a given, and they can die in a variety of ways. Over the years most of the plants that have died have simply perished from not being suitable to the semi-arid conditions here. Others are beaten to a pulp by frost, and try as they will to recover during the warmer months, eventually they give up completely. These losses are par for the course.
More frustrating are the losses that shouldn’t have occurred: plants that have slowly died from other plants nearby taking over all available resources, other plants fail after being savaged by flocks of galahs or corellas, or munched on by sheep on the loose looking for feed before the rains come. The really frustrating deaths are of plants that have survived months of drought only to cark it after the first good rain, as if they couldn’t cope with all that water.
The sweet appleberry (Billardiera cymosa) between the trees
Out of all the ways to lose a plant the worst is by the hand of humans. I had one such loss today, when people came to fix the wire fence so that cows they were putting in the paddock next door don’t get out. I lost my appleberry creeper (a bushfood plant) to these men, who broke off the plant at ground level when they could have snipped it so much further up. That plant had taken ten years to grow. It was the only survivor of three or four plants I had put along the fence. Despite the current drought it was green and luxuriant, and I haven’t had to water it for years. Naturally I was bummed.
Winter morning
What was worse was that no one apologised when I explained to them what they had done. Four men just stood there gawking at me, the dotty plant person. Of course they weren’t able to tell that the plant they tore up was not some local weed, and I would have accepted an apology. Instead they all got in their cars and drove off.
There have been numerous other occasions where I have lost plants to people, some of them when the people were clueless like this time, and other times the damage was intentional. Like ten years ago around this time of the year when some well meaning person poisoned my cactus, a fruiting one, thinking they were getting rid of a prickly pear. That cactus I had had for 20 years, and it had been about to fruit for the first time… I wrote a poem about it. Okay maybe I am a little bit dotty. And it’s taken nine years to get fruit from the pieces I managed to save.
Before that there was a meltdown back in late 1991 when my brother accidently mowed over a marguerite daisy I had planted at my mother’s house, which I had propagated from the one I had left behind at my childhood home, and it was just starting to grow after a shaky start. Green lives matter, especially after we have survived tough times together, and I mourn them all.
And so today after all this my son says to me, “see, I told you it was pointless to garden….” You can tell he’s not a gardener.
Arghhhh! He just doesn’t understaaaaaaaand!
Gardener in a dry land 