Orchids in the suburbs - Part 2

It's not often that I dont like being correct about something - but in this case I wish I had been wrong. Less than 48 hours after finding the orchids they are gone. Mow down in the cause of neatness and order. The stalks are still there, but they are cut and scattered, the flowers slowly wilting.

Just about the only natural thing on the nature strips has been cut down. I don't understand how it can be better to have strip of sterile mown grass outside your house rather than a slightly shaggy looking patch that contains orchids. How can we be so locked into order, that wild flowers need to be removed?

Having said that, is it actually any different from pulling "weeds" in my own garden? Aren't they just a patch of wild disorder in a planned garden?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uncertainty.

Image
Public transport is an eavesdropper’s paradise.  Disconnected conversations float along train platforms and down the aisle of trams; past coffee hungry commuters and seat searching straphangers.  Some are fragments of conversations between two present people, some are one sided fragments shouted into smartphones.  Platform One, Mont Albert Station. “Where are you? You said you would be here by eight.” (Inaudible phone noises) “Well, that’s a real shame, but you said you would be here by eight!” (Inaudible phone noises) I look at my watch.  It’s a minute past eight.   Tram Route 109, Whitehorse Road. “I hate this new weather app.” “Why?” “What the @#%^ does ‘10% chance of rain’ mean? I just want to know if it’s going to rain or not! We live in uncertain times. - At low tide a strip of rocks bends from the shore, away from the beach and out towards deeper water.  In places the rocks are slick with weed, in others rough wi
Read more

Green

Image
There are times when all I remember of my dreams is the colour green.   Neither detail nor narrative survives my awakening, but a colour does.   And even that is not entirely true, for no single colour represents the green of my dreams.   I would not be able to stand in front of the walls of colour swatches, beloved by paint manufacturers and often raided by my daughter, and say, ‘That one.   That’s the green from my dreams’.   It’s not the livid lime green of Ash trees, spring fresh, growing on grey northern limestone.   It’s not the sheened English Racing Green of ivy, inch-by-inch destroying my fence, or smothering a building.   It’s not the smoky blue-green of Gum trees, fire prone and sweating oils in the summer sun. The dream green feels calm, but not passive.   It’s alive and moving, but so far it’s never been frightening.   Other things do wake me in fright, spiders mainly or loud voices in darkened rooms; but not colours.   The green is neither a distinct memory
Read more

The Hills of Doggerland

Image
More things happen at edges than at the centre.   Dusk or dawn are better times to uncover secrets than the harsh hours of midday.   Spring and autumn bring out the hidden and the slow in ways that summer and winter do not.   The movement from problem to solution, that mental cliff edge of creation, is so much more exciting than the routine of production.   We gravitate towards the coast with its tide pools and estuaries, with its edges both temporal and spatial.     Tides and times.   Boundaries and borders.   And for me back in the UK, there is a strong pull towards the here and the past – that most intractable boundary of all. We headed north towards Northumbria, close to a political line that would soon be given the chance (rejected) to become thicker on the map and in doing so create a new edge of sorts. Not really looking for edges as such, but knowing full well that we would find them.   Up the A1, the old Great North Road, the older Ermine Street, past places I
Read more