I’m lethargic today. Hot. The south of France close about me. We got up early from a late night to meet with a new gardener to whom I pointed at tiny green sprouts emerging through gravel and walls and said I love them. These are my friends. If he thought I was an eccentric roast beef he didn’t show it.
So lucky to have land to care for, I wade relentlessly against the tide of neat, explaining again and again to the teams who work for me that I don’t believe in weeds. When I took on this garden it was a plague of topiary and bare ground, roses that didn’t belong here, watering systems costing the earth, hours of clipping costing more. And leaf blowers. Christ. Save me from those. We’re changing teams from one who nodded and said yes and then filled up their machines with diesel and blew leaves anyway, uselessly from one pile to another as if the wind didn’t exist, to this new man who is third generation of a family business, who suggested a watering hole for the forest animals. He understood our priority is fire and nature, to guard against one and nurture the other, that traditional aesthetics come nowhere. I used the word sauvage.
This place is thirty hectares of land, a steep forest and some lower fields, one of which I’m returning to forest, the other rented to a local farmer for grapes. There are streams that we will clear, wells that we looked down as I did when I was small with my father, lifting the lid to find snakes and frogs, them and I terrified. There are reservoirs galore and an overflowing sceptic tank we call Lady Godiva though I don’t remember why. There’s the petite garden close to the house where roses were planted unnecessarily, and the lower, wilder bamboo and pine groves through which there once were paths until the fire destroyed everything, but we’re going to cut them again.
As children, to defy our mother’s poor attempt to not let us drown while lunch was on, evaded the rope she strung across the gravel from olive tree to wall by skipping down into the thicket and emerging at the pool, certain we couldn’t be seen. The steps have all been burnt but we shall put them back. We’ll create it again for the children that will come here, let them think they are on an adventure and home in time for supper. And the trees too close to the house we’ll remove and the giant, ancient cypresses which guard two corners we’ll leave, and we’ll let the ground be covered by whichever survivors make the first move and the bushes will make their own shapes. In England I’ve done this, let it be wild, made the nurture of insects my priority and some people come and take a great breath and others say are you sure you don’t want to power wash the terrace or spray the nettles or pull out the thistles which blow great clouds across the fields. This habit of interference. Humans getting in the way, thinking they know best. One day it will stop.
Let’s hope it does. On my little bit of paradise I have a small front lawn. Vege gardens a chook pen and am busy planting out the rest with our hardy , fire resistant natives ! The hill behind me has never been cleared and is old growth native forest which has come back nicely after our fire of 2019. Let common sense and Mother Nature prevail 🥰🌏🌱🪴🍃
Yes it will stop. And so will humans if they don't. We are nature itself. No one is separate from nature. Thank you for the good read.