catch a falling star

and put it in your pocket

When I am at home, each day begins with the-same-but-different walk.

It takes us along an unused (except by us) gravel road and then a fenced lane.

Green in winter.

Dusty in summer .

To go there and back again is about a mile (a British one , not the other kind).

I choose this walk because it gives me thinking space.

No need to worry about disturbing sheep or cattle, just the occasional fox and sometimes a koala wedged into a gum tree and now comatose after a night of rampaging about and yelling for a mate. (A koala sounds a lot like a cave troll as depicted in ‘the Lord of the Rings’.)

I can just walk, listen, look smell and think. I haven’t seen a snake on that track in years and suspect my footfall has become so heavy with age (and portliness) that the slitherins sense me coming in good time to get away. That they are all asleep in winter is a myth, by the way.

Today there is a warm wind from the north, an unusual phenomenon given it is winter here, though we had one a few days ago as well that prompted me to clamber up a ladder and scrape the festering cocktail of leaves, moss and possum droppings out of the gutters. Such winds herald wild wet weather , so I’ve bunged a load of sheets into the washing machine in the hope of having clean and dry linen before the change comes.

Magpies warble half heartedly in the distance. Their main performance is at sunrise, and far more enthusiastic than these last stragglers . It’s a sweet sound though, pierced by the occasional ki-aah from a kurrawong. The corellas that were busy digging up the paddocks all summer have flown elsewhere.

I’m struck by a sweet honeyish smell, and look up to see a eucalypt in bloom. I have a feeling that freshly picked blossoms might be soaked and fermented into some kind of condiment, or dried in a layer of sugar to infuse it with their subtle perfume, but the present state of the farmhouse kitchen does not allow for such experiments. Fingers crossed I remember these ideas when/if my dream of a seaside home is realised. Meanwhile it will be a task for the chief character in my novel. She likes cooking, too.

Tiny umbrellas at my feet prompt thoughts of mediterranean beaches, and though I initially thought they might be fungi, it seems they are the blooms of lichens. Extraordinary. Though perhaps not really so remarkable given that lichens are actually algae living in symbiosis with fungi. Next to them the ants have been building, their work looking very much as though a snout has appeared from the earth. Perhaps they are sculpting the view they might see from below as a pig rootles above them.

A smear of moss has bloomed across a favourite stone. It reminds me of a green velvet cap I wore incessantly when I was ten years old, and was ‘captain’ of my own pirate ship (in reality, a canoe) on a silver sea (Lake Morey in Vermont). At the time my other favourite piece of kit was a pair of turquoise Bermuda shorts handed on from my Canadian auntie. They reached just beyond my knees and the slight bagginess around the waist was sorted by tying a red cotton bandana (of which my mother bought at least a dozen) from the hardware store in Fairlee. It dawns on me now that the patterns on those bandanas were a hybrid of paisley and bandani, probably mass produced using screens.

I spot the first flowers of an Echium plantagineum. In Europe this plant would be carefully nurtured in a Botanic Garden collection. Here, my first thought is to pull it out, in a futile effort to control its spread. Even though early pastoralists called it Salvation Jane when, in drought years, there was nothing else for their sheep to eat, it soon earned the name Paterson’s Curse as well, given ingestion of this toxic plant isn’t good for stock in the long term. Even the honey from this plant is considered deleterious, though how on earth you’d restrict bees from gathering nectar from those pretty blue flowers beats me. Years ago I tried very hard to coax their colour into cloth, to no avail. The flowers instantly turn brown when dropped into hot water (just like the cornflowers in Lady Grey tea). I tried pre-drying them for printing. No luck. I even tried freezing them, in the hope that the ice-flower technique would work. Nothing. Nix. Nada. Niente. All I got was hay fever and a rash on my legs from wading through the blue to pick those tiny blooms. Pulling it out is laughable given a myriad small green asterisks in the surrounding grass already promise more itchy legs in the coming spring. But I do.

Last week’s storm has broken a lovely big branch, bringing lots of buds within reach. I pick a handful with the intent of making a bundle though it is more than likely I will find them desiccated and crumbled when next I empty my pockets for the washing machine. Years ago I enjoyed a phase of printing a daily bundle and stitching the dyed pieces into a big cloth. Sandra Brownlee has it now, though perhaps moths have devoured it. Then there was a period of folding small booklets for a daily boil, and stitching them together. I burned them in a small ceremonial fire on a solstice. Though in hindsight they might have been a nice sample for students at tomorrow’s workshop. Not to worry, I have other things.

Retracing my steps I stand under the blooming eucalypt, waiting for the wind to gift me some. The stars that go into a pocket must be caught, like beads at a Mardi Gras parade. Scraping them from the ground just doesn’t have the same magic.

I catch seven. Like the Pleiades or Matariki.

Honour is satisfied.