Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling
My phone knows me all too well.
Even though my brain is saying, “I see what you’re trying to do“, I’m still sucked in by a useful knot tying reel, a desert turned productive forest story, a top ten songs of 1973 compilation, an odd-shaped root vegetable post, clips of miraculous escapes from traffic accidents, collapsing buildings and falling objects and Jimmy Rees, so much Jimmy Rees.
A quick flick over to Marketplace for the plants, bikes, shoes, tools, firepits and hovercraft I’m currently looking for – how does it even know I have a secret fascination for hovercraft, oh and fan boats too…and down, down, down the rabbit hole I go.
When I eventually push my phone away feeling like I’ve just lost something I can never get back, I resolve not to go there tomorrow. But then the next day comes and there I am…
Today, in a patch of paper daisies, I’m trying for a different kind of scrolling.
I breathe the pink, white, yellow and orange daisies in with my eyes and feel a rush of dopamine in my forehead.
There’s something on the outer yellow ring of a flower head – a beetle and above it in the white petals, is that an ant? A hoverfly lands. Another breath in, another dopamine hit.
The fly hovers, reverses and it’s gone. Hoverflies, along with dragonflies, I remember are one of the only insects that can fly backwards.
A trill-squawk and a pair of green flashes draw my eyes to our street tree – a couple of upside-down rainbow lorikeets are going to work on the red bottlebrush, much to the displeasure of the currently very noisy miners, who consider this and every other tree in the immediate area to be theirs.
Like most people I’m not a noisy miner fan, though it strikes me that what we don’t like about them; their loudness, aggression, gang tactics and a complete inability to share space with others, are all sort of human qualities.
Back down in the paper daisies there’s a party happening – three hoverflies and a honeybee are frenetically hoovering up nectar on a perfect white and yellow bloom.
I watch them for a while then bend down to pull a milk thistle. Oooh, hanging off the side of the big black ceramic pot is the first ripe strawberry along with half a dozen others not far behind.
I pinch off the stalk and pop it in my mouth – red, warm and sweet – another rush and down the rabbit hole I go….
A couple of hours of garden scrolling passes and I go inside feeling like I’ve gained something back.
I spend the rest of the afternoon resisting the urge to search for a second hand compost tumbler and investigate whether there is a Facebook group for people who like noisy miners.
One day at a time.
Have a great week
Chris
