And of course my indomitable housemate came back roaring with post-operative euphoria and found me rushing around the garden picking up fallen avocados knocked down by a gale-force wind tearing across from the north. I am furious to see the fallen avocados because they would have been fully ripe and enormous in July. Only a few more weeks and they would have been perfect.
But nature doesn’t do perfect in human terms.
The fields and garden are green as sea lettuce, great tides of watery green sweeping across the valley after all the rain. A blasted valley nevertheless, broken branches and clogged heaps of leaves and roof tiles and cardboard boxes. I go out in a padded rain jacket and clear the ditches, rake up leaves so that the leiwater canals tearing down to the river won’t choke and flood. The four streams that run down from the mountain through the village are thick with garbage and debris — later this week we shall get together a work party and clear those banks too. Then do some mending of trees in the streets, lop off dangling branches and make sure there are clean breaks and that younger trees are firmly rerooted. Cut back split and damaged bushes, rescue half-drowned seedlings. Simple co-operation with the nature forces turning our valley into a wild oasis.
It is not about us at the end of the day, it is about Her. She is our Mother in her local and specific appearance, marvellous and unconquered. She detests our cultivation and meek prettiness. She upends it all with storm and then bends to tender recovery. We are part of the chaos and the glory and the retrieval of wilderness, we fall under Her Wild Loving. But we are not one bit necessary.
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