The news that SA will soon plug into satellite technology to monitor the environmental resources and vegetation of the State has sent a thrill of expectancy through our publicity-mad household.
My wife said that the whole complicated apparatus up there would be focusing not on missile silos, the wakes of prowling warships but upon the ecological maze of overgrown wilderness that is the spring rapture of our garden.
I was lying under the orange tree letting the maddening scent of the blossoms drift down to my reflective nostrils when she came thundering through the under- growth sending the snails fleeing in panic- stricken ooze and the thrip thripping for cover.
“Join me under the orange bough, my love,” I said through lazy, sensual lips, “Remember you wore the orange blossom in your wedding veil and I stood there as magnificent as a mandarin?”
Torn between her sentimentality and her inclination to strike me briskly with a rake, she said: “Do you know the satellite could be photographing us right now, that soon people may be poring over the picture and we could be surrounded by pest controllers, weed examiners and jungle warfare experts? Look at the garden. What do you see?”
I saw the crab apple shyly blooming. I saw the quince tree flouncing her skirt of blossoms to the prying breeze.
I saw the little oak tree putting on fresh leaves, like its old ancestors that had hulled English ships and opened branches for Robin Hood.
I saw the hawthorn and the tunnels of cool chaos where blackbirds soireed; and the old gums above with a galah, crest up, shrieking in the tops’ls of the trees.
“Well?” she said.
“There is no spring in space,” I said, “There is no pollen to stream the eyes and irrigate the nose. Can the satellite see a bee dreaming through the air, a golden orb above a beckoning rose.?”
I told her that she had used this ugly manifestation of 20th-century technology to drive me into activity. That we were all prisoners of surveillance. That I resented an overview of my garden. That’s what I told her.
She teed up my nose with the end of the rake and began practising her backswing.
I wondered, I said, showing unusual courage and monumental sloth, if the satellite could see my almond blossoms? Or hear the rufous whistler warbling. Or see the quick strut of crested pigeons, wearing little burnished collars.
But there is no spring in space, No women wearing old straw hats and sloppy slacks appear around the comer of an antennae to quicken the heart of the dreaming male up there.
“For goodness sake do up the front of your old gardening trousers,” she said, “And I want you to know I view your philosophising with the gravest suspicion.”
“I suspect that you are nothing but a lethargic ratbag. Nevertheless, I will bring out a cup of tea and we’ll discuss it like civilised people.”
“Get thee to a bunnery, my Ophelia,” I said, “And don’t stint the butter. Meanwhile I will press an orange blossom between my soft, office hands and we’ll remember auld lang syne.”
She tripped away with her rake, while beetles moved on the sun-dappled ground, honeyeaters pried with sweet beaks in the blossoms and Australian shrubs waltzed to a 10-knot Keith Martyn breeze.
But I did up the front of my old garden pants.
You never know when a satellite is looking!
Max Fatchen