recuperation

The last Saturday of 2012 is the sort of day I enjoy most. Saturday’s paper, abridged for the holidays, is still the best of the week. I sit at the island bench in a sunny kitchen, read the book reviews, a lovely piece by novelist Cate Kennedy about a trip to Cairns in her car that wouldn’t die. Then I sit and finish Sonya Hartnett’s brilliant novel Butterfly.

About half after ten I step into the garden. I pick a few green beans to go with the big bag already in the fridge. I’m turning them into spicy beans later for my good woman and me to have for tea. A nice cucumber pokes its nose out from under an eggplant. Cabbage moths flit about with no cabbages to alight on.

The gentle sun encourages the newly planted spring onions and the next batch of green and brown mignonettes. Eight celery plants erupt from the milk cartons surrounding them. Lemons like jaundiced teardrops hang from the tree and the kaffir lime scents the whole place.

I get down on my knees and pull weeds from between the pavers under the clothesline and along the ragged brick path to the front yard and carport. I water, weed and wander among the plants.

My empty front room calls but I’m not keen to go in there yet. A drop-sheeted table covered in tools, spakfilla and paint awaits. Instead I sit on the couch and begin a new novel from my sister for Christmas, a crime thriller set in Norway with an 82 year-old protagonist. By page 40 I’m hooked.

I cruise up to Chirnside Park. I hate shopping centres but this one has a greengrocery that sells every imaginable vegetable. At eight on a Saturday morning you can’t move. It’s frustrating and fantastic. A bunch of coriander in the supermarket is $2.48 compared to 79 cents at the greengrocer. I buy cherries, mushrooms, oranges, the coriander, and strawberries for my good woman.

The JRT and I take a mid-afternoon stroll, no destination, no timeframe. He’s old enough to feel the heat, though it’s only warm this afternoon, and he lags behind. I stop and wait for him a few times. Back home I prepare the spicy beans.

My good woman comes over after six. We sit on the back step and look at the garden. I get my sixth grade reader and read Louise Mack’s Sunrise in the Blue Mountains to her. I have vivid memories of it from grade six but haven’t read it since. I read her Lawson’s The loaded dog as well.

Then together we peel the rippled paper off the crumpled front wall of the front room for an hour. She gives me my painting instructions and timetable. I tell her I’ll set my own timetable and certainly won’t be rushed into anything.

We eat the spicy beans—a bit too spicy for my good woman—and do a bit more in the front room. By half nine we’re heading for bed. My good woman lies quietly as I read her the novel we started the other day. Not long after ten we retire.

I’m recuperating from a bad year. Today is a good day for a recuperating spirit.

Rock on.