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Gerry Jacobson

The Garden of Eden in a Plague Year

Lockdown and isolation: months of excess chocolate and TV. Australia’s borders are closed so we can’t travel or have family visit. But in Canberra there’s always somewhere to walk. And I re-discover the wilderness of my home garden. It has been neglected for forty years; our busy lives with two professions and three children.

In these autumn and winter days I pull vagrant couch grass from neglected corners; it thrives and spreads in years of drought.

underground
network with roots
deeply embedded
terrorist gang
or couch in my veggie patch?

I excavate a couple of low hills, landscape features that we constructed from paving stones and building rubble when we bought the house in the seventies. I think we were striving for an adventure playground. Archaeological finds include: weathered lamb-shank bones (border collie, 1980s); toy soldiers (our kids, 1970s); a red milk bottle top also from that era; broken tiles and concrete fragments (German builders, 1950s); and a knapped stone, maybe an arrowhead or spear point (Palaeolithic, pre-1820).

I weed carrots
prune the climbing rose
our world endures
a million deaths
from covid-19

We collect autumn leaves for mulch and compost to build veggie beds. Inspired by the ‘pollinator island’ concept we plant native shrubs, also lavenders. Some things are immovable: the great mulberry tree that’s split into two halves; the rotting woodheap that we no longer use but which is habitat for lizards and invertebrates; and the remnant “lawn” once for kids to play on and guinea pigs and chooks to graze. Kids, chooks, guinea pigs are long gone but there is a difference of opinion on whether or not to keep the grass. Let’s leave it for now.

my spade in the soil
planting out seedlings
out there
men in masks digging
to bury the dead

Our government stimulus payments come in so we pass it on to the local economy. The ‘Odd Job Lads’ help us with heavier weeding, and cutting back ivy and honeysuckle. Mr ‘A. Handyman’ is engaged to paint the old shed. Which leads us on to another lockdown project: clearing the shed of accumulated stuff.

getting rid
of old tins of paint
letting go
of good intentions
unfulfilled… moving on

And now this spring, La Niña brings us its blessed rain. A succession of bulbs flowers from June to October: jonquils and snowdrops; daffodils; tritelia and grape hyacinths; bluebells and freesias. We enjoy crops of parsnips, leeks, spinach, garlic, carrots, snow peas and broad beans; and an abundance of lemons and rhubarb.

By year’s end there is no local transmission of covid-19 in Canberra. The first and second waves are squashed with testing, contact tracing and quarantine. There is a gradual re-opening.

once more
unto that compost heap
collecting
weeds and manure
to fertilise our future

About the Author

Gerry Jacobson


Gerry Jacobson lives in Canberra, Australia, and can be found writing tanka in its cafés. He was a geologist in a past life and now celebrates reincarnation as a dancer.

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