Season and Reason

Unusually, it's a bright morning, a pleasant change from the dank and miserable lack of light we have endured lately. Many days I've struggled to see what I'm doing right in front of me, which is no doubt exascerbated by now 60 year old eyes. Nevermind, the sun coming through the window is cheering.

There are four cordyline palms ouside the window, between which the sun streams. These are feral. There were two I bought in terracotta pots some years ago. They became too big for the pots, sending tentacle roots through thr drain holes and into the earth, so I planted them in the ground a little further down away from the house. Two 'babies' sprang forth from root left behind where the two pots were. Lib liked them so I left them. They are now over 2 metres high and the originals are approaching 4 metres.

It would not take long for vegetation to reclaim this site and leave little visible evidence our human intrusion, were we not here to keep it at bay. Plants retain moisture around them to help them survive, moisture brings mould and rot and slowly timber disintegrates and mortar crumbles and cracks, letting in more moisture and rodents and whiteants. Even roofing iron rusts away.

It makes me think of  MacchuPicchu in Peru, a city of the Incas lost for centuries beneath lush jungle vegetation. When discovered by archeologist Highram Bingham and the jungle removed, the city was largely intact because the foundations and walls are made of solid stone expertly cut and fitted using compression to hold the whole thing together and withstand the extreme wet of the east Andes jungle. Of course the rooves made of timber and thatch no longer exist.

I suppose our concrete cities will stand for a long time but I understand there are fungi that will consume concrete. Probably once these get a hold they'd proliferate and do their stuff. I'd like to think so. That's a pleasant thought on this last day of the financial year or the season 2011/12 as I like to see it. For today, I'm wrestling with the problem of removing wallpaper from soon to be renovated bathroom. Other bathroom is already underway, it had no wallpaper. It's all a bit stressful.