Tipping point
Time tips
flooding the world with light
within a week the canopy will close around us
as the dry dusty world draws close her new green cloak
Large portions of the garden are now monitored by Heuglin robins
who perch above our heads and rattle warningly
shepherding their new fledglings out of reach
The paradise fly catchers arrived two weeks ago and we have already begun to find their nests
housing tiny sitting females – beaks in the air
The couple who had their nestlings snatched by goshawks last year are also back
they sit in a considering way over the old nest
‘is it worth patching up? – perhaps if we put in a new carpet’
do they remember their loss at the gut wrenching level that we do
or is it just a new season?
a new present in the spiraling of time?
Two White-faced owls
perch fluffily on the fig branch outside the a-frame
watching for food…
I finally worked out where the black and yellow caterpillars come from
(the ones that utterly devastate the calendula crop within days)
the eggs are neatly inserted in the flower buds
and the minute larva hatch into a container of golden petals
as I watch, a wasp lands on one of these gold-eaters
and strikes with a deadly sting
and as it slowly writhes its last moments on the planet
the wasp busily severs off one end
to take this newly killed morsel back to its young
and I – who was about to get rid of all the buds-with-holes to protect the calendulas
am challenged to see the world through another lens
Life cycles at every level
The barbet argues ferociously with the Honey guide
who is trying to lay her egg in the barbets hard won nesting-hole
3 new species of cuckoo have moved into the garden
each one of them with a plan to drop their eggs into the nest of some unwilling surrogate parent
A trillion tadpoles have hatched in the pond
will they all hatch into a trillion croaking frogs?
what act of nature will limit their population?
the pond skimmer slowly sucks the juices from a drowned moth
and the spider who has diligently spun webs overhead
now winds the latest prey in its threads
the guppies have had baby guppies
are they eating enough mosquito larvae to limit this seasons swarms?
are their enough mosquitoes to keep them all fed?
it is that same old matter of survival
but at a distance – this beautiful system shifts a gear into new and abundant life
against the back ground of flaming bougainvillea and purple jacaranda
is a pattern of colour and shape and flower and insect
difficult in detail
unraveling in beauty.