Our Eclectic Garden
for Kathryn Fry
Under the curtaining wisteria
who will take banana peel
to the orchids? Who will shiver the dew
over the freesias and the thryptomene?
Jean Kent, ‘In My Mother’s Garden’
for every house called home
there is a frame
with you the constant gardener
plants are portals into the past
like illustrations from a Book of Hours
in Spring
bulbs corms and tubers
push through the earth
purloined cuttings take on new life
my grandmother’s ivory freesias
heavy the air with the smell of childhood
my mother’s blood red dahlia petals
open as big as proverbial dinner plates
tree ferns from my brother
uncoil to feather the sky
your mother’s asparagus fern flows against
your ceramic I named ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good’
pink azaleas paint
the garden facing the street
to a postcard memory from our student days
Utrillo’s Les Maison Roses
in the beginning
friends from Canberra arrived
their car filled
with root balled camellias
to fill the courtyard in winter
with leaf gloss and flower
sometimes I change the names
Commander Mulroy becomes Sawada’s Dream
identical camellias white edging to pink
and who wouldn’t be tempted
to swap the military for romance?
when the nursery was out of stock
Soul Sister became a substitute Julia’s Rose
the name I want to remember her by
it’s a league of nations
Chinese Jasmine a pillar of grounded stars
climbs skyward around a verandah post
Callistemon rubs shoulders with Nandina Domestica
the front door key waits
for family and friends
under the stone god from Bali
its plinth a home for slaters and worms
tiger worms recycle kitchen scraps
you shovel ash from the hearth
I offer coffee grounds to the hydrangeas
our Labrador composts
under a camellia holding memories
of his faithful welcome home
a lap of honour circling the clothesline
fish laze the pond
in circles of gold
frogs surface to deafen the evenings
today we watch the bowerbird
decorating his edifice
squawk and hop
black sheen on the wing
meticulous arranger of blue
clothespegs milk container tops
over the back fence
a bushland reserve houses
bandicoots and water dragons
possums blue tongues and owls
the ironic laughter of kookaburras
our place in the connectedness of things.
Gail Hennessy
