I walk just about everywhere within a several kilometre radius of the yurt but one bit that I tramp regularly is a short section of scrub along New Line Road that has a scrappy over story of bent Snow Gums and a dominant understorey of Bossiaea foliosa (leafy bossiaea). It’s not that it’s my favourite place, it happens to be the way to lots of other places. During winter it looks nothing, just rubbish that should be bulldozed and replaced by Camelias and roses, or at least something that is visually pleasing like a dry stone wall neatly outlining mown grass. Actually at almost any season of the year you would drive past and think the bush in this place is boring and untidy. When the bossiaea flowers it makes a lemon yellow haze that is perhaps worth a second cursory look, but it is still scrappy.
Because I have walked past over several years, and walking is fairly slow so you tend to see more detail, I started to see other things besides the yellow of the bossiaea. I saw bits of blue, orange, pink, mustard, pink and red sometimes joined by the occasional weirdly-coloured toadstool.
The bits weren’t all there at the same time; they spread themselves one by one over the whole spring with the occasional splash of colour into summer and autumn. In some parts there were even tiny pink woolly flowers in winter. It gradually dawned on me that this scrappy bit of bush is quite complicated. All the bits were constantly competing and jostling for space. For community stability each individual could only occupy centre stage for just a few moments like they say for people only having 2 minutes of fame. This fluxing tenuous balance must have taken decades to reach. The bit of bush wasn’t just hanging around doing nothing waiting for me to take in the odd glimpse.
No comments:
Post a Comment