..................... ♫ Misty Water-Coloured Memories ♫ ..................

Ask me to lose myself in memories of childhood and the backdrop that springs into place like a theatre prop is the garden of our family home.   My childhood is set mostly in summer, with brilliant sunshine dappling through large shady trees.  If I listen to the memory, I hear nothing but birdsong and, if the lawn’s just been mowed,  perhaps the gentle shwp shwp of a sprinkler.  The scent of moist, freshly-cut lawn touches my heart more than the high notes of a fine French perfume.   In this memory, the blunted blades of grass tickle my bare feet but I revel in the cooling dampness, as the sun warms my back.    

I know it’s morning if there’s the clatter of the metal rubbish bin as my brother drags it into place to use as the wicket for our game of backyard cricket.  I kneel under the hibiscus bush, rummaging for a soggy tennis ball (I know, I know, but they were less likely than 'real' cricket balls to break windows or noses).  I crawl through to the other side, triumphantly holding the ball aloft as huge orange flowers drop pollen, like fairy dust, on my tanned shoulder.  

I know it’s evening if I’m simply outstretched on the lawn, watching the sky colour change through the branches of the Virgilia tree, mesmerised as the  pretty pea-flowers mute from pink to grey when the sun dips.   My trusty ‘tranny’ lies somewhere nearby, playing a commercial for Woodie’s Lemonade, and then a  bit of  T-Rex or Sherbet … just loud enough for me to hear, just quiet enough to avoid music judgement from Mum.  

  

In 1970s Australia, big gardens weren’t just the province of the rich.  And everybody had a nice front yard - all the better to add prestige to our humble homes,  where neighbours vied against each other in an unspoken war of the (best) roses.   Oleanders clustered along paved edges.  Poplar trees lined the driveways.

 Today, the Poplars are skinny Pencil Pines.  And Pencil Pines are about the only tree any new home seems to boast.  How many suburban children still grow up in a home with a proper shade tree?   For that matter, how many have daily access to a real garden, rather than a tiled courtyard?  Their suburban home might have just a  couple of square metres of instant lawn at the front, and even then, it never plays host to a frolicking child and  dog.  

I’m a fan of balance and order, but the symmetry of modern gardens leaves me cold.   Straight lines of English Box Hedge are one thing, but a row of Iceberg Roses by the window, or six Agapanthus in a tiny front yard, does not a garden make.   Our parents and grandparents would always have a large clear lawned area, but that was surrounded by a delicious array of (mostly) non-matching plants that made everyone’s garden -  no matter the size – unique.  Most importantly, they had trees.   Many were shade trees and yes, many were introduced species – but it was colour; it was Nature.

Backyards of the era generally featured fruit trees – gnarly, ugly beings in the winter, but a delight of pink blossom at spring-time, and shady, bountiful friends in the summer.   Keeping chooks (hens) wasn’t uncommon.  My home never had any, but the memory of the soft bok bok bok from the neighbour’s coop brings instant comfort.
 
I fear Generation Y's childhood recollections will be hard-edged, in beige or grey.  Likely they’ll feature lots of screens.  Screens are quite simply a huge part of modern life for children.   For those of us from the 1960s and 1970s, the TV was a box in just one room.  Fewer shows were aimed at children, and even then, rationed out by Mum.   The phone in the hallway (on its own special table) was rarely used and most certainly didn’t have a screen.   Computers didn’t exist for the masses.   Even the ones we saw in science-fiction movies didn’t have screens, just lots of blinking lights and a suspicious resemblance to giant tape-decks.

Back when trees were more common than screens, we had a half-holiday in celebration of trees, called Arbour Day (later renamed Conservation Day, before disappearing right off the calendar, along with proper front gardens and backyard trees).

I reject the idea that trees consume too much water.  In any case, a shaded garden needs less water, not more.  Deciduous Trees also create summer shade which ever-so-slightly reduces ambient temperature, which should reduce summer cooling costs at some nano-level.  Most importantly, trees bring the tranquility of green-ness.  Unlike fleeting annuals, or trendy drought-tolerant agaves, trees become old friends.

When a person dies, people sometimes plant a tree ‘in their memory.’    Why wait until they die?  I wish everybody would plant a tree now, for a lifetime of memories, not posthumous ones.

Is Nature missing from the lives of ‘modern’ kids? 

Are weekend visits to the park a good enough substitute?

Do you remember the half-holiday of Conservation Day?

Will staring at all those TV/computer/phone screens eventually cause the evolution of square eyeballs?

I'd love to hear your comments.

The Sizzling Seventies

Summer in Adelaide BAC (Before Air Conditioning) was oppressively hot.   At school, we'd struggle to focus on our studies as the temperature climbed into the 90s Farenheit.  Although most public primary schools had an austere red brick building on the streetfront, you could not enter its hallowed corridors until you'd done years of  'porridge' in the de-mountables  flanking the school oval.  Every school had rows of them: teetering on struts, yet somehow surviving years of marauding students

None of the buildings was air-conditioned; the de-mountables (aka "pre-fabs") were hottest of all.  Ceiling fans would shwp shwp uselessly above us.  We girls,  in our very short skirts, left embarrassing sweaty thigh-marks on our chairs whenever we stood up.

Lunchtime offered no respite.  "Play on the oval" teachers would say, pointing to the shadeless expanse.  A mere sprinkle of gum trees was eked along the perimeter.  Gums?   You might as well stand under an empty  clothes line.  Were Gums cheaper than exotics, or were schools - even then - being botanically correct?

To intensify the heat experience, schools provided acres of asphalt.

Hardly any students came or went by car: we walked or cycled home when the sun was at its most fierce.

No events were ever cancelled due to heat.  During sport, one or two heatstroke victims was pretty much obligatory.  Excursions went ahead even when the road was a sweltering mirage and the packed bus felt like a furnace.  You did as you were told.  Your parents didn't intervene.  These were the days when students and parents feared teachers, not the other way around.