With bushfires 30 km away and the drought continuing unabated, I have found much comfort and happiness in creating an oasis on our farm. Everywhere around us is crumbling dirt, dead grass, and air filled with dust and smoke, but here, in my gardens, it is shady, cool, and green.

It’s especially wonderful before sunrise when all is dark, the drip hoses send a fine mist over the plants, and for a few precious moments, I can linger in a wonderland of thriving plants, scurrying lizards, and singing birds.

This morning I was out at 4 a.m., the dogs galloping happily around me as they dashed from one end of the farmyard to the other to check on the chooks, annoy the geese, and make sure the goats and sheep were in their yards. I didn’t mean to get up that early, but I woke myself yelling from a particularly bad nightmare. The experience left me rather wobbly, so I went out to water and wander in the gardens knowing that such things never fail to soothe rumpled spirits.

It was so beautiful and quiet. The rest of the world was sound asleep and I got to bask in the novelty of cloudy skies and no sun as I picked asparagus and cherry tomatoes and eyed the artichokes that I will harvest for lunch.

I found baby pumpkins with bright yellow flower hats, large ears of corn with gossamer tassels, red okra, purple beans, and leeks getting tall and sturdy again after the goats munched off their tops in a lightning raid they launched when I accidentally left the garden gate open earlier this week.

I refilled the water troughs for the goslings and before I was even finished they were in there splashing about and making a ruckus.

I returned to the gardens and smiled so big to find flocks of tiny fairy wrens swooping and dancing in the spray from the drip hoses and scurrying about under the beans, tomatoes, and capsicum looking for bugs to nosh on for breakfast. By putting out bowls and pots of water each day, our farm has become a haven for birdlife. Bear and I love sitting on the back veranda and watching so many different varieties stop by for drinks: pink galahs, vibrant rosellas and grass parrots, bright blue, lime green, and double bar fairy-wrens, willy wagtails (our favourites), magpies, crows, tawny frogmouths, kookaburras, and big white cockatoos. It is amazing.

Soon the sun began to rise, eerie yet stunning as it slipped between layers of smoke and clouds. The plants glistened and shimmered, the dirt smelled wonderfully rich and mulchy, and the dogs were ready for their morning naps. I prepared the drip hoses for their mid-day duties, cuddled the dogs, then went inside to put the kettle on.

It’s going to be a good day. xo