Another disturbance in the corner.
After a huge night of easterly gusts, the rain came and the creek overflowed. This morning, my backyard turned from a soft green grassy carpet to a rolling muddy overflow. Watching from high up in the house, the water level continued to rise, the neck of the creek too narrow for the torrents that were sweeping down from further up the road.
The Pohutukawa stump that I am working with, had vanished beneath the water. The ladder I’d been using as a rack to dry towels, was neck-deep in water. The entire corner had become an inlet.
I thought about the casting of this stump that I’d made just days before. How the teased towel skin had peeled off some of the tree’s debris. It was such a wet site to work with.
As the casting dried, it slumped inwards. Suspended from a lampshade, it took on more of a bodily shape. Its cast roots breaking away from the cast trunk and dropping to the floor.
Looking outside again … The missing part of the fence, the piece that closed off the corner, that broke in a previous storm, floated out from under our neighbour’s house — like a raft it took sail, before wedging itself on the far bank. I’m still amazed that the main body of the fence is still intact, and looking so amazing in its deep forest green coat. Gently arching its back, weathering, in this wild time. Oh fence, what do you know?
