I have lived on a rural property since 1981 but I have many relatives living in the city.  I am always grateful to come home after a visit to “the big smoke”.  No traffic, no smog, no noise; we haven’t heard a siren out here since the last time there was a fire in the local almond hulling plant hull heap (caused by spontaneous combustion).

But the city has it’s attractions and services we cannot get in our small local town and I am also grateful that the people who live in cities have the opportunity to access natural spaces and the beauty of the natural environment, even if not on an epic scale.

My brother lives in a very posh suburb, grand old houses, tree lined streets.  His partner has 3 beehives in their front garden, mere metres from the footpath.  You must have a permit to keep bees.   Family and friends receive yummy honey gifts for Christmas presents.  The bees are fascinating and seem to sit well in the neighbourhood, tolerated  as long as they are unobtrusive.

One of my sisters lives close to the city.  Her home has a front yard large enough to park a car, nothing else.  She has an internal courtyard with a lovely big planter box and espaliered fruit trees and succulents planted in it.  She is lucky to have many treelined avenues and parks in her area and the Adelaide parklands are within walking distance – about 1800 acres of landscaped parks.

My mother recently moved into an independent living unit.  She was lucky to find a ground floor unit and has a garden frontage.  Mum has long been an expert amateur of native Australian plants and at the age of 90 has been allowed to put her own stamp on the garden.  There seem to be more birds in her garden than any of the other ground floor units and she shares cherry tomatoes and strawberries with her neighbours.

My grandchildren live on one of the main feeder roads between the city and the beach.  It’s a nightmare to back out of the driveway into the busy traffic.  They use the front garden as off-street parking and there is a quince tree in a small patch of lawn in front of the house, always loaded with fruit, never harvested, attractive to birds and insects.  They asked me about the fruit but decided not to bother when I explained how to cook quinces. Takes too long.  However, one day Mitchell had a neighbour stop by and ask if she could have some of the fruit.  She was very grateful when he said she could take as much as she wanted.  I think she may have been making quince paste.

Connections come from unlikely sources.  The sharing of garden produce, even in small quantities, is a wonderful means of making human connection and can provide inspiration and comfort to others.