Our family moved to the house where we now live, in early December
2007. At the time there was a fairly big birdcage in the backyard, near the
tool shed. Very close to it the previous owners had kept a small patch of
strawberry plants.
We soon gave away the birdcage, and trying to emulate the
one I used to look after in Yass, I decided to create a veggie patch where the
birdcage had stood – the soil there was richer there, for obvious reasons. For
the veggie patch to be of a decent size, I had to get rid of the strawberries.
I spent a fair bit of time converting that area into a veggie patch that
summer.
As a child I remember keeping a few strawberry plants for
myself, and I would be incensed whenever my brother ate my strawberries. Before throwing away the strawberry plants, I
asked the neighbours, who were not interested. Then I asked Clea if she would
like to keep any. Yes, she said. Clea loved strawberries – she loved just about
any kind of fruit, actually.
So I moved the plants to another area in the garden where
nothing was growing then. It was (still is) a smallish corner, and at the time
it was covered with some weathered mulch and nothing else. I dug up the soil as
well as I could, and pretty soon we had a few strawberry plants growing; we
even managed to eat a few strawberries – just a handful – later that summer.
In 2008 Canberra was in drought, like most of Australia, so
2008 was not a great year for strawberries, but the few small ones we collected
Clea would take to school for her fruit morning break. Like with any other
fruit, home grown strawberries do not grow to be huge like the supermarket
ones; but they are definitely tastier.
In 2009 I decided to give the strawberries a good boost and
applied a generous layer of Moo Poo to them (Moo Poo? – yes, that’s the brand
name of the fertiliser!). Some good rains that year – I remember seeing full
dams everywhere that October day when we were finally able to return home from
Samoa – produced a bumper crop. But Clea was not here with us to eat them.
Clea’s strawberries have kind of gone wild all over the
place. These days they grow by the veggie patch (which is rather neglected, I
must admit); they also grow beneath some rose bushes on the western side, and
they now have invaded part of the terraced garden at the northern side. Recent
rains have helped the plants produce wonderful blooms, and the coffee and tea
dregs we pour on them seem to give them some extra strength, without resorting
to Moo Poo.
One of the
sonnets I wrote in late 2010 began like this:
Shall I imagine an infinite field
of strawberries for you, …
Amid an endless field of strawberries – that’s where I would
have wished Clea to be then. Yet I knew she was gone forever. Depending on the
day, my wish (not a hope… What on earth is hope? What is it for?) may take one
form or another, but in actual fact, it never materialises. But let Clea’s strawberries
grow, let the plants take over the whole garden if they wish to do so.
Clea’s brothers will soon be eating all those strawberries
she cannot eat. As for me, if I were able to share one last handful of these
home grown strawberries with her, the last one, something in this new life I
have to live would make sense, somehow.