Jumping in

Sally moved to Windgrove this week. After returning from China, she packed up her Melbourne belongings into her little red car, took the overnight ferry across Bass Straight, drove six hours down the middle of Tasmania and then arrived at Windgrove for the start of an uninterrupted year long stay before she returns to Melbourne to finish her fifth year at medical school.

Nothing overly unusual about such a move except this: at sixty years of age and, for the first time in my life, a woman is moving into a committed, serious partnership with me. Excited and nervous, I have put a lot of time lately into sprucing up the house and yard in preparation for Sally’s arrival. New rock stepping stones to her studio along with a raised garden bed of kangaroo paws beneath her studio window are an attempt to demonstrate my desire to create a home where beauty resides along with love.

I know that what I have done is just window dressing, so to speak, and that the real tests of living together will soon bare their teeth, but my hands have always been creative at expressing what my heart feels and I have liked the building of our nest.

Anyway, several days after re-sowing several sections of lawn, I noticed little piles of grass seed beginning to appear like white mounds of rice over the areas of sown lawn. Closer examination revealed all the grass seed I had sown earlier was being removed by teams of ants to their individual homes in the ground.

My first reaction was to mutter a few swear words and to curse the ants from undoing the work I had done for Sally’s homecoming. But, then, I realised that what the ants were doing was no different than what I was doing: working industriously to create a home that sustains life.

In a way, it is all about a love of sorts. Bringing in the seed to nourish those with whom we live.

I set up a lady’s writing desk to create a space that might nourish the imagination. I thinned out the garden, replanted seedlings and watered them carefully, so that upon her return, my love, like the busy ants, would have food to munch on with contentment as the days drift past.