In the week when the small, beleaguered island of Tuvalu is running out of water, friends brought me a bunch of ranunculus from their own garden. I’ve never seen such flowers. Like the gum trees on our bush block, they are twisted and angled in all sorts of weird and lovely natural shapes; straight up, forty-five degrees, almost horizontal. Some bend down from lip of the vase like a woman leaning over a balcony, stretching towards someone below.
Ironically for these spring flowers, the colours are the shades of autumn. The bold scarlet of Remembrance Day poppies; the deep saffron of a Hindu holy man’s robes; a blushing, orangey pink. Fierce colours on the most delicately thin petals; a small cluster of black at the heart of every blossom. Where they sit on the kitchen bench, they catch the late afternoon sun and look as though they are on fire, a cascade of flame.
Despite having declared repeatedly and publically that winter is my favourite season, spring has got to me. I suspect it’s partly because this year we have been blessed with an abundance of the water so tragically lacking in much of the rest of the world.
We don’t hose our driveways down these days, but walking the dog around my suburb this weekend, everyone seems to be washing clothes. In back yards, Hills hoists hold aloft wardrobes worth of jeans and jumpers, T-shirts and socks. In the tiny front garden a few doors down, a young woman is delicately placing undies on an old wooden clothes horse. Her dog barks as we saunter past, but half-heartedly. The spring has got to him too.
Water is everywhere. Filling our tank. Running down the gutters in the street. In vast puddles at the local park. It’s a long time since spring looked this fresh. My Scottish step-mum who has been visiting cannot believe that the grass is, well, green for once. When we drive to Beechworth, Dad points out that the gum trees usually look green against the silver grey of the paddocks. This year, the paddocks are lush; it’s the gum trees that look grey.
Floods notwithstanding, water is the most precious thing. I drink tall glasses of it every day, and as I swallow I imagine I can feel it seeping into my cells, keeping them plump and healthy, keeping me alive. The sight of our dams filling up, of the mighty overflow from Jindabyne flushing out our Snowy River fills me with excitement and hope.
It’s been a week since I got them, but I can’t bear to throw my ranunculus out, even though their petals are weeping in drifts onto my wooden floor. I’ll throw my windows open to the sweet spring air and let them light up my kitchen a little longer. Reminding me of how lucky I am to live in a part of the world where there is enough water.