We’re pleased to announce the winner of the second WWWC: Lolo Houbein. Lolo’s response to the prompt ‘the birds return’ is a beautiful missive from her lush garden tucked away in the Adelaide Hills. It’s a love-letter to nature, and a rumination on our place in the world.

Read Lolo’s winning entry below.

One washing day I grab the big plastic bottle of eco-friendly laundry liquid and unscrew the top, turning it upside down in the palm of my hand. Now it looks like a doll’s house tea bowl, the way it curves up and outward. Re-use is the motto in this house. It would be a good cup to sit in a pot plant to offer water to tiny critters who dry out and die ever so swiftly in a heatwave.

No sooner thought than done, I step outside, push the cup into the soil of the potted fig tree and fill it from a can.

A comfy place to have a life-saving drink, shaded by hand-shaped fig leaves.

Once there was a willow tree, planted after World War One, that shaded the far bottom of the garden. Willows came as seedlings, picked up on St. Helena where they grew by Napoleon’s grave, and made the ocean crossing to Australia to be planted in the Adelaide Hills. This single willow, next to three pines planted after World War Two, was felled when its roots and branches ignored boundaries invisible to a tree, yet invisibly drawn by humans as they spread across the Hills.

To re-use, and commemorate this willow, we picked up slender branches to edge a border, interspersing them with short upright stumps, ideal for my pots of succulents.   Soon the branches sprouted tufts of green, but being rootless, the wood eventually dried and shed its bark.

By the time spring arrives with a first heatwave to herald a hot summer, all succulent pots have a water cup.

The sprinkler does not reach that area, so on hot days I pull up the hose or carry a can to fill the cups. During intense heat small amounts of water evaporate quickly. This becomes another task to attract insects and more tiny birds to my organic garden, or as my son calls it, my private national park. I’ve seen honey bees having a drink before buzzing off to the lavenders. The fuchsias are the domain of honey eaters who forage early morning and drink at dusk at the fig tree. Skinks skittle around their hunting grounds and climb up to any pot for a sip. Spiders weave here to make a living. Butterflies white and black pay fleeting visits. But one butterfly, or moth, who can tell (it’s so small, only half a centimetre when folded up, see-through wings with a dark fringe all around), has not revealed which plant it prefers. I always find it sitting still on a glass door or window. If I move a finger on the other side of the glass, it moves away. Is this a narcissus butterfly admiring its own image? All these fly-ins and permanent residents have a purpose in life. This refuge for all these creatures is my refuge too.  

Midsummer arrives all too soon. Soil-cracking hot. I water copiously with hose and sprinklers.

The cockies have finished arguing about who feeds first from the neighbour’s tray swinging from a low branch of the liquid amber. Two take their time, the rest wait their turn on higher branches. As the sun circles around, galahs graze under the tree, for the cockies are messy eaters.

The temperature rises rapidly and the boss cocky cries an order. All yellow crests fold and the flock rises, snow-white sails against a stark blue sky, screeching in unison. They settle in the highest pine that overlooks the terrain and decide where they will fly to for the day. Galahs seek coolness closer, they live nearby. They all come  back at dusk. Silence returns. No buzzing, screeching, cries or birdsong. Only dead twigs crack and fall.

In the coolness of the house I read, make tea, stretch and search the sky for a cloud. Suddenly, moving pink and grey on green grass crosses my vision. This is not the time when the birds return.

What are the galahs up to? It’s the hottest time of the afternoon. But they are not pecking between the grass blades. They are standing still, heads up. They stand in three queues of five and four and the three youngsters born this spring wait in the nearest line-up. Two adult galahs hop about on the succulent pots, inviting the waiting ones with talking sounds  to come up one at a time. Slowly the queues dissolve, until all have quenched their thirst under supervision and the group wanders off into the shade. I can hardly believe what I have just seen.

I spend the rest of the afternoon considering how closely related birds, indeed all sentient beings, may be to ourselves, and realise I know near to nothing about these creeping, flying, weaving, fluttering multitudes in my organic garden. I step out and drag the hose. All the cups are empty. How often have I omitted watering because I was tired or thought ‘things’ would survive till next morning? I created this mini-environment that attracted them to come here and now they depend on me, from bee to bird to skittling skink. I am their servant. Time to do the watering.  

About the author

Food security – and the absence of it – has been Lolo Houbein‘s lifelong preoccupation. She regarded every garden where she messed around with plants as a farm to feed her household.

Lolo Houbein’s great-great-grandfather was a market gardener in North-West Frisia, passing a gardening gene down the generations. Lasting influences were her Uncle Wim’s small farm and the famine of 1944–1945 in Western Holland, which she barely survived. She came to Australia in 1958 to escape the Cold War.