The View From My Couch: Daphne

It's a miserable Winter's day here in Melbourne.  Even loving Winter, there are times when I am simply over our squelching driveway.  When receiving a face full of icy water when the wind catches one of the fern fronds is no longer humourous, or refreshing.  We are in the true heart of Winter.  When the house will no longer truly heat up, and the crispness of the air takes your breath away.  Even our randy and raucous possums are less likely to bash across our icy roof top at night.  Instead, taking their nocturnal frolicking to the warmer realm of our roof space.

I still enjoy the ethereal beauty of the thick fogs that smother sound and shrink the world.  Even yesterday driving home on our windy hills roads and not being able to see the bonnet of the car, was more adventure, than annoyance.  The hills take on an otherworldly beauty in Winter that I would never change.  But wet, chilly days, day after day, and a back yard that is now a bog, does wear on the nerves.

Just as I was ruing the mud that seeped up through my thongs yet again this morning, I caught a whiff of perfume.  Over near our bins, of all places, we have a variegated daphne bush.  It's a resilient little bugger.  It is surrounded by weeds and smelly bins.  It is frequently hit by boxes and bin bags swung by pouting children who feel that bin duty is below them.  It has been chewed on my possums and swallowed by vicious blackberry canes. Yet here, in the midst of this wasteland and a miserable Winter's day, it has flowered.  It's sweet perfume is caught on the wind, and seeps peace into your pours.  It's a smell of my childhood.  Up there with the jonquils and freesias of my grandmother's garden.

Now a little piece sits on top of my cabinet.  The strength of the perfume, incongruous with a bloom so tiny.  Yet the fragrance fills the room.  And I sit in my lounge room, breathing in the sweetness, looking out the window at the mist and damp boughs, and Winter seems wonderful again.

Michelle :)