The phone rang last Wednesday morning, the first day after we returned from Lakes Entrance. Lib was in Dandenong hospital waiting for her op. and I was doing housework including two big loads of washing the boys had accumulated.
The owner of the voice on the other end of the line said he had tried to ring the farm but only got the answering machine on which he left a message, but he needed to talk to someone because he wanted to buy 20 squares of lawn chamomile and he needed to pick it up on Friday morning as early as he could. He found my number in an ancient nursery journal so he gave it a try.
He was polite and well spoken. I explained to him that I had been away and couldn't tell him if we had the twenty squares available but if we did then it would be fine. I said I would ring my sister at the farm and we'd get back to him shortly to tell him when he could pick it up if there was no problem with the number.
I assumed he was a landscape gardener and didn't give it much more thought, however it did prompt me to ring Meredith to see how she was managing in my absence, as I learned on Sunday that mother Elvie had fractured a kneecap in a fall of her own. Meredith had 'moved in' to live at the farm to look after father Lyle, who had been mum's patient, and at this point she did not know of Lib's misfortune with the broken wrist.
We commisserated with each other, which we have done all our lives as siblings, and she said she thought that there were 20 squares there and that she and Jod could handle digging it and would have it ready for the customer. She told me our main wholesale buyer had been on the phone wanting as much dogwood blossom as he could have, which set my agenda for the rest of the day.
Next day, as I pulled into the farm with a second van load of lilac blossom, dogwood, pieris and snowball viburnum I noticed the 20 lush green chamomile squares in their trays neatly placed ready for the customer. There was a warm north wind blowing so I unloaded my day's picking quickly, putting it inside out of the wind, where a similar amount of blossom picked at the farm was already. It was a sight to behold. Buckets of pink and white dogwood, mauve, purple and white lilac and rich creamy pieris and greeny white snowball, massed together drinking water, standing fresh. The shop was steeped with the rich, almost intoxicating perfume of spring.
As we sorted the invoice, a van pulled up and the chamomile customer came in. He commented on how lovely the shop smelled, then stopped talking and looked a little dreamy and light headed, as if having an epiphany. Regaining focus, he said it reminded him of a time he was in southern China near the border of Tibet in a forest of naturally occuring tree rhododendrons growing around a lake, with an understory of azaleas. There was blossom wherever you looked. He said the petals from the azalea flowers fell into the lake and were eaten by fish which became relaxed and sleepy, the azalea flowers being narcotic. Black bears came down to the lake for an easy catch and the scene was the most extraordinary thing he'd ever experienced.
Meredith told me later that he was from the Camberwell Council. They want to grow a chamomile lawn at the civic centre and he was so happy to have found the chamomile after searching nurseries and herb places high and low without success until he found us.
Job satisfaction is a great thing and now and again my turn comes. I loved his story of the rhodie forest and the lake with the fish and the bears.
