Day 207

Written 18 October, 2020.

The problem was, we were coming from the city again and I insisted we stop at a twice-a-year plant sale I’d heard about on Gardening Australia, one of the few TV shows I’m addicted to- addiction to a gardening show makes me blush for my youth when I scorned such things- why? I’m no longer sure but I saw then an addiction to gardening like lawn bowls, only for the dodderingly old. Now I’m old but not doddering, I run out in the morning and inspect the rounds of the garden like a hospital matron- This patient is almost jumping out of her skin and this one is  at death’s door if it doesn’t have a drink…. Probably soon I’ll be addicted to lawn bowls.

So the Lane Cove legends, as they’re called, sold me two of the plants that were on the natives list I did with Andy- the natives that once grew here and loved it – will I tell you the names to prove I’m doddering: scaevola

and hardenbergia

Imagine a field of them! And they’ll bring the birds back, who’ve been gone since last summer’s bush fires.

Anyway, all this shopping made us very late. GG was worrying about an extremely low tide at 5- a point one tide, such a low tide there’d be mud out as far as the channel but I had to have my flowers, and of course we had to call in at Aldi. So, even though Dave  helped us load our boat, generously and warm as ever- we didn’t set off in the boat till 3.30 and though the trip was fast because Dave had careened the bottom of the boat, we didn’t get to our bay till 4.15.As we did,  I looked up and for the first time noticed that the sky had a fierce blue streak edged with a hard line, and it was almost above us. The air was eerily still. The tide was so low, we could only get in where the water is deepest, at the last jetty, which is C’s. It was tramp tramp tramp through the bush to our place, only with the frozen food, and we’d just got inside the house by a minute or two when a fierce thunderstorm broke. The lightening so close, zig-zagging near out jetty and the thunder so close, that, standing at the doorway still with a bag in my  hand, I thought I’d been shot!

(I grabbed my phone only after I’d put down the bag and stopped shaking – and by then,  the lightening had stopped).

Five minutes later we could’ve been stuck on there, said GG as we stood gaping and spell-bound at the door.

Unable to come in, unable to get out.

We’d have turned around and landed on the other side of the creek, I said, always sunnily optimistic.

We might not have been able to get out. Stuck.

We’ve never been unable to get outt!

We’ve never come in when it’s been this low.

But we’d have been safe- the boat would have a lightning rod!

Boats don’t.

You mean- we could’ve been hit by lightning?

That’s why I was hurrying us.

Remember this moment, Sue. Next time,  forego your pleasure trip. You want to live till you’re old and doddery.

Today’s low tide- not as low as the January lows, but low.And you can’t walk in that mud, you sink thigh-deep and as you sink, you worry about what’s down there- it’s not our world. after all…But that’s living with nature: we share the world and it’s more their world than ours.