The new normal

June 2020

The Prickly Moses is blooming, Acacia verticillate, that very prickly acacia with a lovely spreading habit. I’m out walking more, as many of us have been, tracing the same routes through Barrm Birrm. Perhaps it’s the repetition, the constant revisiting, but I’m starting to notice the slight changes that accumulate as the season shifts.

This band of acacia budded a while ago, and now a few here and there have begun to bloom. The hollows where the plant clusters will eventually be dusted bright yellow, but first, the buds of the future flower swell, crowded on their stems. 

This is a blooming that proceeds over days and weeks, floret by floret, individual plants making up their own minds when to bloom. Here in the dip in the hillside where I walk most days, I pass an elaborate choreography made for just this place. There’s another grove further west along the hillside. And a patch back towards Royal Parade—I must visit to see what’s happening there.

The disruption of business-as-usual has shifted the balance in our lives. The digital has expanded. We reel in products and entertainments. What we command appears in an instant, or next day by special delivery. What other movies has Raoul Peck directed? I can find the answer with a few keystrokes. I am master of the universe. It’s all dazzling and wonderful, but exhausting. Will this genie ever let up?

Walking through the bush, I walk my way into a different tempo, where things are always changing, but very slowly. My mind tumbles along like a gang of exuberant cockatoos, while all around, the plants grow their way into winter with meticulous presence. There is the crinkly edge of lichens at the base of a tree, grays and sage green and black, fat with moisture. The new growth at the tips of the Sweet Bursaria brings a paler green above the old growth. The Chuffs move ahead of me through the trees, calling to each other. A new normal.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare