Letter From The Other Side by Cynthia.

Written by Elizabeth. M. Thompson.


Dear Del,
Well Spring has arrived hasn’t she? I always think of spring here in the southern part of the country as being like a very spoilt young woman.

I think she has been praised far too much in songs and verse in the northern hemisphere and arrives down here full of flouncing blossoms and waving bulbs and when she isn’t greeted with the enthusiasm she thinks befits her pretty face turns on a temper tantrum and blows off our roofs, tosses trees across power lines, railways tracks and roads and generally makes an embarrassing exhibition of herself.

Spring also brings with her the annual dose of hay fever causing many of us to interrupt our conversations with prolonged bouts of sneezing, or on occasions choking while valiantly trying not to sneeze a mouthful of our dinner across our partner’s plate.
We stand beside other afflicted folk who are making peculiar clicking noises in their throats at the chemists as they try and ease the itching while waiting to be handed the necessary antihistamines to relieve their discomfort.

Spring is also the time when blowflies arrive back from their holidays in the warmer northern states and force cooks to continually shout at forgetful children and husbands to ‘Close the door!’ as they are preparing the Sunday roast.

Along with the horrible flies, the cyclists dressed in those ever so revealing spandex outfits, swarm along the bike tracks and if one of them is suffering from hay fever and happens to be standing in the queue in the pharmacy with you it can be very difficult to know just where to place your eyes as he passes.

The weather bureau of course is in its element forecasting the coming gale and reporting the strength of the last one. If your power is out you may miss the riveting news that you will be waiting six more hours before the men in their trucks can clear the trees sufficiently to get down the road to your area to repair the lines enabling you to turn a light on to see where you left your glasses and make that longed for cup of tea.

Just to cheer everyone up, the weather man assumes the grim expression he reserves for such occasions and tells us we are about to go into a summer which will be even hotter, dryer and longer than the last one.

I think this is to test our resolve and to give us time to decide if we wish to live through another three months of temperatures up to 48 degrees or if we just want to slide off the world or emigrate to Iceland.

Of course it enthuses those mad ‘firebugs’ we seem to have in the population who love to play with matches and think they can make achieve some sort of sick fame by frightening us all.

Teddy and I experienced bushfires first hand and while I can think of very few things
more terrifying which leaves its trauma with you for a long time, I hope the survivors from last year’s fires are taking heart at the marvellous regeneration our forests can make.
This country is lucky to have plant species that have evolved to actually need fire to survive and although the forest looks black and dead for months, as soon as the first rain falls, green shoots appears across the ground and the tall eucalypts sprout the beginnings of new branches all the way up their mighty trunks showing the strength of the natural world to survive and carry on.

It sets a good example of a willingness to remain undaunted no matter what is thrown at us.
We spend spring getting ready for the threatened heat by making sure our grey water hoses are without unwanted holes and this year we are making an igloo to protect the vegetables from the searing winds which last year cooked and dried the tomatoes and lettuces where they grew.

The authorities allow us two hours of watering a week and no more. We have a tank which is full and hope this year we shall manage a little better than last.
Of course our companions of the shower, the blue buckets, will be put into use again very soon. Every drop is precious and necessary.
The climate has changed so much since we were young it seems almost impossible to grow vegetables in the unshaded areas any longer.

Only tourists and masochists lie out in the sun covered in oil trying to get a suntan. Along with the wished for tan they are quite likely to develop heat stroke and skin cancer or at the very least develop skin which looks like the saddle from an old drover’s horse.

So while Spring may come all dressed up and pretty, she is a madcap season and not to be overly praised and encouraged as she always trails that ugly stalker Summer behind her as he brings his swaggering bully-boy threats and vicious weapons of fire and drought with him.

They are an unwelcome pair this decade and we can only hope a change in the world’s greenhouse emissions will tame their attitudes during the next decade.
Your sneezing ‘flower child friend’
Cynthia