rain rain and more rain

Spring has come to an end, and the figures are out. The wettest in Melbourne for almost twenty years, and in parts of regional Victoria for decades longer. The unfamiliar sound of driving rain through the night. The unfamiliar sight not only of full dams but - even more startling, because it sneaks up on you - watery sheets lying low or peeping through the bush or garden. The look of rippling expanse as rain hits the dam, roughing up its surface. The feel of soft, sticky, yeilding ground underfoot. The surprise of muddy boots and wet, trouser legs clinging round the ankle. The never before imagined reality not just of a trickle of water between the dams, but a cascade, noisy, frothy and exuberant. The powerful swell of water forcing its way.


I'm caught in a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Is the 'garden' (and this is the first time I really think I can call it that, describing something that others can actually see, rather than me just envisage) finally starting to flourish because the rain's come after I've laid all the groundwork, or is that water producing a miraculous transformation that would have occured despite, and forgiving, any of my planning and design shortfalls?

Either way, it's wonderful to find, after a winter when I'd finally felt that plans were moving along, more carefully thought out, more seriously implemented, that nature has lent such a hand.

Elsewhere we see the damage, or hear of the threat, that water creates. Along Campbells Creek and through Vaughn the waters have not only flattened swathes of grass along the surrounding flats but knocked down heedlessly knocked down small trees and bushes in their path. Elsewhere, massive old trees have toppled as the soil gives way around them. But we've been lucky so far. No more damage than routine storms, and all that water. Ernie's dam wall, channels and bridges seem to have held up in the face of it all.

Suddenly the swales and channels in the grove and the raised beds of the orchard have shown their value - only now, not in harnessing precious water and lifting roots a little beyond the struggle of this unwelcoming clay, but in damming and slowing the water that would otherwise rush down the slopes and overflow the dams even further, and in trapping the topsoil that the water gouges, lifts and carries with it.