Spring has officially sprung, though it is, for the moment, a matter of acknowledging the date on the calendar rather than the feeling in the waters, the stirring of the blood, the clichés of renewed hope and so forth that normally accompany the beginning of our ascent to the solstice.
True, the magpies in the park have that look in their eye – lining up for a swoop and a snap – but they do not yet perform it. The jasmine is tumescent, not flowering. The weather, frankly, is shit. Wet and windy and cold enough to discourage being outside.
I have been weeding, because the weeds are always the first things to get moving when the days lengthen. I come in with my fingers dirty and chilled, my skin feeling dry and tight from the cold, despite the drizzles of rain.
I prepare, nevertheless. On my dining room table next to the windows, I have five punnets of vegetable seedlings – broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, parsley and dill –beginning to put on their second leaves and crane towards the light.
Soon it will be time to harden them off – which means putting them outside so they get used to the chill. Then, into the ground and the battle with the cabbage white butterfly will begin, and it will be tomato seedlings getting their start on the dining room table, since tomato-growing season will be in reach.
As regular readers of this column will know, I garden in a very confined space in a tiny, shaded backyard, a strip of earth at the front and a collection of pots on my verandah. This is my barrier against the uncultivated city that surrounds me and the wilderness of the McDonald’s car park and drive-through that abut my rear boundary.
This is the location for spiritual reflection, or what passes for it in my pagan heart. This is the medium through which I understand myself, when I can pull my head out of politics and public figures and all the light and bedazzlement and constant movement of the things that, most of the time, matter most. (And yet, do they?)
It is the location for a different kind of mattering.
Recent events have made me consider if I am doing it wrong and need to concentrate less on bare garden earth and more on pots. Specifically, I have been brought to an awareness of the evils of damp next to walls, and therefore irrigation in small spaces such as my own.
My son and I have bought and are repairing the house next door, which is the slightly dilapidated twin to my own. It is a 140-year-old renovator’s delight, if renovations can ever be delightful. Thus, I have been speaking to experts in efflorescence on bricks, rotting wood, falling damp and rising damp while watching a river of money flow out of my bank account.
This house has been sadly neglected. There is lots to be done. It is a lesson in the importance of clearing out gutters. Water has been overflowing through the brick cavity walls for years, all due to mud and leaves caught in downpipes which, in turn, become little ecosystems of mould, lichen and grass.
This is the location for spiritual reflection, or what passes for it in my pagan heart. This is the medium through which I understand myself…
My primary motivation for buying this house is that, despite all I have said, it is beautiful. Second, I was able to buy directly from the owner, avoiding real estate agents.
Third, and I am almost ashamed to admit that this is so central to my motivation for this extravagance, I plan to combine the gardens. A few years ago, I wrote a book called Six Square Metres, which is the approximate size of my growing space. If there is a new edition, it will be called Twelve Square Metres.
Once we have done all the roofing and the dampcoursing and the replastering and floor laying, I have plans to take down the fence dividing the backyards. Once the budget has recovered (if ever), I will invest in self-watering planter boxes and new pots for bigger trees – such delights.
The many expert men who are now crawling all over the dilapidated house, running up my bills, all advise that I should pave both front yards and slope them towards the street, or even install a strip drain. In other words, no plants near the walls.
Yet how is it that my house, which has an irrigated garden bed, has no damp and very few cracks, given its age?
Should I rip out my garden and pave? I have had a plethora of opinions ranging from “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” to assurances that there will be problems, even if they are not yet visible.
I have put off thinking about this while I contemplate the pleasure of a new roof going on next door. As I write, I can see the old, leaky iron come off and new sheets being fixed. The pleasures of a good clean gutter.
This purchase is a financial stretch. It is taking all of a recent inheritance from my father, and more. Doing it means I will not do other things between now and end of life – tick off travel bucket lists, for example, or go on lazy cruises.
So why?
I have done a lot of travel in my profession, and will likely do more, for work. I have been to places where growing food is a necessity and having the land on which to do it is not to be taken for granted. I have been to places where people are too weak and poor, or too constantly displaced, to plant seed, or to reap what they have sown.
Being home is such a pleasure, such a rich and shining privilege.
Pottering around pulling weeds. Watching the fall of light. Erecting little wire cages to keep the possums off the bok choy. Sitting with a cup of tea and watching the sun set orange over the old housing commission towers.
Those towers are about to be demolished, and there lies another chapter on what it means to have haven.
I have toured the completed new flats – a sample of what is being built in place of the concrete towers. They are lovely – bright and airy with generous balconies, air-conditioning and modern appliances.
Some of the residents welcome the chance to move, and some do not. But none of them had a choice. They heard their homes were to be demolished when Daniel Andrews held the media conference to announce it. The same way, a few years before, they learnt they were to be locked into their homes during the Covid pandemic.
I used to watch the lights come on in the flats in the evenings. Now, the tower closest to me is mostly dark. Soon it will be demolished.
And so with my fortune I have invested in another home, twin to my own. To pass on to my children, to give them a stake in a suburb where community goes deep, where things mostly work.
In my dreams, my grandchildren may one day live next door.
If that doesn’t happen, I will be a good landlord to strangers, sharing the produce from a backyard I hope they don’t mind sharing, making sure the roof is sound and the damp has gone and the weeds are kept at levels consistent with the compromised nature of even the most fortunate lives.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on
September 6, 2025 as “Cultivating community”.
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