FLOCK
By Chrissie Guillaume
This piece is a preview of the upcoming book ‘Unearthed,’ this year’s edition of the UC FIRST Anthology, which launches on the 16th of October 2024.
Sweet basil is budding. Overlapping triangles are starting to sprout— white petals sheltered below the green. I chop off their heads: I have big pesto plans. I love to gather leaves. I prune parsley, lettuce, chives, beetroot tops. The leaves expand back into the spaces my harvest creates.
My hankering for herbs is why I have a veggie patch. I don’t remember eating many fresh herbs as a child. Us Afrikaners do best with preserved products, such as the spices from the East, on which we built the Cape of Good Hope.
My childhood is sprinkled with dried supermarket herbs. Mum tries to grow parsley; it doesn’t take hold under the dense umDoni or imposing papaya. She jokes that Dad must be sneaking out at night to wee on the plants: in a home that grows parsley, the wife is the boss.
The wind wakes up. It blasts past the green peppers, lifts their limber leaves, and I reach down to the tender basil more easily. One, two, three nodes up: snip!
Crickets chirrup. Baby marrow’s flower is open to the sky, beckoning to a honeybee. Light paints brinjal leaves neon, maps out veins as they spread under the velvet surface. I name the plants as the back of my hand brushes their green into the air. My words, my accent, creates South Africa.
A cockie screeches from the ironbark. The wind is dense with eucalyptus.
I adjust my glasses. The base of the cosmos flower looks out of focus. I duck closer and count the scales on a thickened stem. Thirty? Their needling overlaps into one rough blur.
I’ve heard that you can buy ladybirds. Establish your own aphid-hunting flock. Or I could be patient. Let the aphids’ honeydew attract free-range ladybirds. Either way, I’ll be a shepherd. I’m colonising my backyard, down to the very bug level.
Warmth strokes my back and makes me shiver. The sun’s extending arms through the ironbark.
The cosmos and I stand eye to eye; they’re exploding their anise like seeds into the soil. When I find that first packet of seeds, Bunnings’ aisles are transformed into rows of golden wheat, mottled by moments of marshmallow cosmos. I follow the wind’s gallop across the field. I only ever drove past this scene, but it is one of the few South African landscapes that my mind still travels to.
My fingers itch to touch this place. Will it be dusty and sweet outside the car window?
At the garden fence I scatter a handful of my Bunnings treasure. My new land embraces and nurtures the cosmos; I dig my roots down next to them.
Every evening, I pause before I pass through the gate. My hands cup a flower visited by a bee.
I rush through the gate; lukewarm mug in one hand, a school bag in the other. I wave the cloud of chaos up the bike path. My toes wriggle on dew covered grass; the garden is pearl-coated after a cloudless night.
A crown of droplets surround a brown nub; two tentacles reach from under the helix. I pick it from its perch, crush it against a log. Sun trickles past another snail: I hunt the foreign little organisms out of my foreign little patch. There are ten crunched bodies at my feet. I long for the giant brown-lipped agates that hunt the tiny pests in the shade of the umDoni.
I sip my tea.
Below the ironbark, sun weaves air into a curtain of silver thread. Native spiders are collecting in my veggie jungle. I coo a greeting to them as I inspect brinjal blooms, basil buds, beetroot bulbs. I count the illuminated hairs on their tiny legs. I shake them back into the garden from harvested leaves.
A tungsten thread leans the cosmos together, I follow it to a tangled eucalypt leaf. My fingers reach for the debris, but peaking from the perfectly curled leaf I see four red tarsal claws. I duck lower and see a plump yellow abdomen flowered into black triangles—I love her instantly. I cultivate spider-curled leaves in every corner of the yard: along the fence, across the washing line, from the eaves, between branches. The lawn is strewn with leaves of every extraction, but only the gum leaves make the spider’s curved cut.
My day tugs at my shirt. I dig my heels in past the grass. Why must I go from this breeze, tickling the cool dew into the ether? How do I turn from these limbs of light, nudging maple trees into autumn?
A wattle bird squawks me into the unfurling day.
Drizzle blankets the morning. The grey light hums the garden awake: amber baby marrow flowers, lilac brinjal blooms and mauve echinacea petals interrupt layers of green.
My veggies are crowded. It’s written on the baby marrow leaves in a leopard print of white fuzz. Google says it’s a fungus that thrives on poorly-ventilated cucurbit leaves. Reddit reckons illeis galbulae munch the fungus into submission. The fungus, aphids and I have not attracted ladybirds yet.
A pile of white-flecked baby marrow leaves grows on the lawn. I’m harvesting compost.
The echinacea offers its brown buzzcut head to the rain. I follow bruised flecks of mauve down its stem, past the leathery green leaves twisted into a dull brown.
I wait. A warm autumn wind rustles the seed heads dry and I can bank the precious brood in empty biryani containers. I store them in the shed; when the winter’s crispness fades I scatter them around the garden, the land absorbs them and the cycle continues.
I reach for another infected leaf. There’s a shiny pebble, it has frayed black on yellow spots. The secateurs hover above the offending leaf: I squeal into three pirouettes. We’ve attracted three ladybirds. I stretch into the soft air and give a nod to the ironbark.
Glossary
Agate – Great African land snails, native to South Africa
Baby marrow – Zucchini
Brinjal – Eggplant
Green pepper – Capsicum
umDoni – Waterberry tree. Native to eastern South Africa, common in KwaZulu Natal