Waiting for something
Episode twenty one
Hello lovely reader, thanks for opening my Substack for this fortnight, I really appreciate your company.
I’ve been thinking about what I would write this episode over the past week, and a few things jumped to mind, all of which would have been relating to food (however vaguely), and most of which would have spread a smile across your lovely face, and made you want to go eat something delicious.
But while I’ve been pondering about these things, a magical thing has happened outside in our garden.
It rained.
Now, depending on where you live on this precious blue planet of ours, you might think I’m a bit daft to be celebrating rain. There’s been so much rain in certain spots around the world, in Australia, and even in my home state of Western Australia, that some people are absolutely sick to death of seeing water fall from the sky.
Here in Perth, we’ve just had one of the driest summers since records began almost 150 years ago. Since the beginning of our traditionally ‘dry’ season in October 2023, Perth has recorded a piddly 21mm of rain up to the end of March 2024 - which is usually when we see the rains return.
Rivers are a mere trickle, dams are dangerously low, and people who survive on rain water tanks for their water supply at home are getting very desperate indeed.
The landscape has gone from being merely brown to a dull, aching grey, and when I go for walks in my nearby bushland reserves everything is crunchy underfoot, like a box of cornflakes has exploded everywhere.
Friends who live on large unfenced properties up here in the Perth Hills say the kangaroos are getting quite desperate for feed. They’ll hop right up to verandas and start munching on your prized pot plants, or nibble away recently planted (and expensive) deciduous saplings.
We have two simple bird baths in our garden, one out front and one out back, and they’re constantly in use. Wattlebirds take turns in splashing water over their dusty feathers, while black and white Magpies sip the water and let it trickle down their parched little throats.
People who love summer are even saying they’re looking forward to The Rain. Anything to get reprieve from the scorching sun up there in the bright, cobalt, cloud-free sky.
Well, I’m pleased to announce that The Rain has arrived. Hesitantly but it’s here.
I think we’ve had one or two days of generous showers of rain, a couple of days where the sky is full of grey fluff and the sun is hidden, and two mornings in a row where the bushland surrounding us is threaded with whisps of ethereal fog, making bird calls sound oddly close and surreal.
The nights are chilly, the mornings are darker, and very quietly, little green tendrils of hope are sprouting from the dry earth.
This happens every year after summer, when we’re just so tired of hot, sunny days, and look wistfully at our coats and beanies stuffed at the back of our wardrobes. Tender green shoots appearing in the grey earth are a welcome sign that relief is on its way.
I know perfectly well that in another month or two these tender green shoots will have absolutely taken over the garden as weeds, and I’ll be looking at them with rather different thoughts in my mind. I’ll also probably be complaining about the cold and wondering why we don’t see the sun anymore.
But for now, I’ll take them for what they are: a reminder that dry times pass.
I think sometimes we need to remember that.
No matter what ‘dry’ you’re experiencing in your life right now, whether homelife is a bit dry and despondent, or a stale greyness has settled over your workplace, or if your creativity is going through a bit of a drought, the key words to remember are that you are going through it.
Things might be uncomfortably ‘dry’, perhaps there’s no joy in the regular things, and you just can’t see the light at the end of that immeasurably long tunnel.
Well, maybe it’s not the light you should be looking for. Perhaps it’s the little shoots of green struggling up through the layers that you should search out.
And you know what, don’t worry about what those tender green shoots of optimism will look like in another week or two. Sure, they might be weeds, they might make you drag out the lawnmower and the whipper snipper to keep them in check.
But you know what? They represent something.
Time is passing, the seasons are changing once again, and we are gifted another chance to do the thing, to get it right, or to get that bit closer anyway.
I really felt like I should remind you to look for the little changes in your life, the tiny shoots of ideas, the sprouts of new friendships, and the germination of possible futures that you might not have considered before.
Because sometimes life presents us with gifts so tiny, in our hurried & harried lives we rush obliviously past them, and wonder why things are so awful.
Often they’re not.
I hope I’ve encouraged you to look out for those little green tendrils of newness, however that might translate into your life.
Thanks for letting me chat to you about things other than food.
Maggie xx
Just beautiful!
It means so much!