You may not notice
the scent of new-
mown grass but it
subliminally adds
to your happiness.JACKIE FRENCH
is the author of
The Chook Book
(Aird Books). Her oldest
chook, Gertie, is now 17.
Although Gertie’s sisters
have all long since fallen
off the perch, Gertie still
lays extremely large
brown eggs most days of
the year. Get in touch with
Jackie via facebook.com/
authorjackiefrench,
twitter.com/jackie_
french_ and instagram.
com/jackie_ french_.Gardens of Life
I
am writing this from hospital, which is
somewhere no WellBeing reader wants to
be. Hospitals lack the necessities for getting
truly well, plus you risk getting yet another
problem that will mean yet another stay in
hospital, which is why I am here now.
I miss my garden. And it occurred to me that my
garden does contain all the necessities for living well.Fresh food
What is fresh? Supermarkets and chefs boast about
it, but increasingly it means “unprocessed”. A truly
fresh orange is so fragrant you can smell it metres
from the tree. And watermelon — you’ve never really
tasted watermelon till you’ve eaten one straight
from the garden. Don’t get me started on fresh
potatoes, onions and garlic, vegetables we think of
as “storage crops”. They do store well but the just-
picked taste is deep and rich with subtle overtones
lost with every week out of the ground.
Walnuts, pecans and macadamias also taste
quite different in the first few days after picking:
creamy with no hint of bitterness. Broccoli picked in
the cold of winter is crisp rather than hard or limp
or sulphurous. We are so used to varieties bred for
long transport and storage that most people have
never tasted tender, white-fleshed peaches that
drip juice all down your front.
The garden determines our daily menu. Do the
Earliblaze apples need eating? Apple crumble or
just stewed, perhaps with a few sticks of rhubarb
to eat with porridge or muesli? It’s apricot season!
Cherries! Asparagus! Their seasons are so short
we eat as many as we can as often as we can.
(Yes, you can have asparagus for afternoon tea.
And for breakfast on sourdough toast.)
Summer means we resume our long,
happy relationship with basil, tomatoes, apple
cucumbers and zucchini, though relations with
zucchini do get a bit strained toward the end of
their season when giants lurk under their leaves
demanding to be stuffed and baked. Usually I halve
them and throw them to the hens.
Fresh food contains more antioxidants, and
more vitamins, but those are only the substances
we know to test for. Fresh food carries its own
energy, the taste of life.Scent
It’s long been known that some people get depressed
from lack of sunlight. It’s less well known that we need
green and living things, too, the sight of them and the
scent of them. You may not notice the scent of new-
mown grass but it subliminally adds to your happiness.
A daily walk in the bush or a park — the proper kind
with trees to mooch under, not just a vast oval-like
green carpet — will boost your immune system,
provide you with exercise and even give you a new
community of like-minded walkers as well.Animals
Humans need other species around them. Our
garden has wombats, wallabies and hundreds of
other species if you count the birds, too, including thetwo lyrebirds currently chasing each other under the
lemon trees or the new owl that has begun calling by
the bedroom. Bryn says it’s a juvenile powerful owl;
I say it’s a mature barn owl, but we won’t know till we
catch a glimpse of it instead of simply hearing its call.
A garden is where you romp with the dog, or
contemplate the cat sleeping in the sunniest spot
in winter and the coolest in summer. Install a bird
bath and suddenly your life is filled with feathers
and the social life of birds. There is indeed
a pecking order and it is fascinating to watch.Exercise
In a garden you’re tempted to pick the fruit, plant
the basil, dig a few potatoes for dinner or possibly
climb a tree and linger there among the leaves. This
is especially good if it’s a mulberry tree and you can
eat the fruit as you sit there — if you don’t mind red
stains on hands and clothes. (The stains come off if
you rub on the juice of green mulberries. Mostly.)
I am longing to move my body in the way we
evolved to do, walking on ground that is not a flat
floor, reaching up or reaching down to pick and
pluck, not to mention strengthening both muscles
and mind with work that has meaning rather than
exercise for its own sake.Peace
Paradise is a garden, say many old religious writers,
and paradise can be found within a garden, even
a courtyard along a busy road if there’s a small
fountain creating white noise with its splashing
or, even more wonderful, a big old tree casting its
shade and the music of its leaves in the breeze,
more potent than the sound of traffic.
Our garden is also a map of our lives. It’s grown
from cuttings and seeds given from friends or plants
given as gifts. There are the two almond trees
I planted when my goddaughter was born because
she was, and is, so beautiful, and so is almond
blossom; the avocadoes planted when I was pregnant
and now my grandchildren pick the fruit; the cherry
tree whose hole was dug with a small wombat that
happily helped me dig — but not in the right direction.
It’s a garden of life and memories, strongerPh than the photos on the sideboard.^
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