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

Garden Variety Birds.

Image
Much can be learned from a single phrase. When a person says “Did you see the report in the paper?” it is clear they assume you know which paper they mean. They mean their paper, the paper they read. And if they ask you about “the paper” they assume you read the same one they do. In this way much can be learned. Much can also be hidden in a single phrase. Many truths can be obscured, many understandings prevented. “Garden Variety” is such a phrase. It means ordinary, humdrum, unremarkable. We get birds in the garden – this in itself is unremarkable – so we get a variety of garden birds. But are they always Garden Variety birds? I think not. To view our garden birds as ordinary, humdrum and unremarkable is to miss the point. It cloaks those birds in a veil, a veil that needs to be lifted. Many garden birds are common in the extreme, they may seen banal because of familiarity. They are never noticed because they are always seen. They are the garden constants. Some birds are noticed beca
Read more

It's been a long, long time.

Image
The last time I was here was 26 years ago. I was in my middle 20s, had only just met the woman who would become my wife and the mother of our children.   It was only the second time I had travelled outside of the British Isles. I had no real idea of what I was doing and absolutely no idea why I was going to India.   And even less idea of what I was going to happen once I was there. On the outside I was there to meet two friends, one I still have and one I have lost.   Nicky – dark haired then – less so now, Scottish, lives in the Lakes with a host of children and (in all probability) a decent whiskey waiting in the cupboard.   Mike? Well that’s a different story. I have no idea where he is.   Sometimes you pick things up and sometimes you put things down.   And sometimes you are put down yourself; put down by somebody when they see no utility in carrying you further.   It turns friendship into an object and conversation into scripted theatre.   It turns friendship into someth
Read more