The jasmine is late this year

The jasmine is late this year. It’s nearly August and the flowers are still little more than tiny carmine spears poking out of a tangle of leaves. I love jasmine: it’s the scent of spring, of new beginnings, of possibility and the inevitably of clocking over of another year for me come the last official day of winter. So I watch closely for the jasmine every year, waiting for the flowers to open so that I can inhale them at every opportunity I get, like a juvenile delinquent sniffing glue.

It’s said that you should stop to smell the roses, and I always do, but it’s the jasmine that I covet.

Who knows what the tardiness of this year’s jasmine blooms means but it means that winter — bloody winter, with its freezing, dark mornings and frozen fingers and bare feet on icy tiled floors — is loosening its grip. The jasmine means spring, as, of course, do the Masked Weavers, which are starting to zzztt again, fluttering bossily about the branches in their loud yellow and black.

At night, the Common River Frogs click and gulp, but this is nothing new: they have done this all through winter, on all but the coldest nights. These frogs astound me, they really do. They’re brown aerodynamic things with pointy snouts and lurid green speed stripes down their backs. Not that I ever see them, mind you — they’re hidden deep in the undergrowth and in all the years I have known this garden I have seen one once, and I have known it all my life.

The Hamerkops that visit every few days or so have more luck finding the frogs, and also the toads that dug themselves in a couple of months ago, preparing to sleep until spring. Unless, of course, they are rudely awakened. The birds stare patiently at the ponds or stalk through the sodden lawn, occasionally yanking an unfortunate amphibian out of the mud and flying off with it, legs dangling mournfully from the bill. Other times, a Hamerkop will take its victim and smash it repeatedly against a convenient rock until it is suitably tenderised and swallowed whole, head first. It’s a gruesome process and usually I can’t bring myself to watch it.

So I worry about the frogs. There is something almost heroic about them: you try being wet, coldblooded and outside when it’s 3 degrees at 3am. I’m an insomniac and when I hear those tell-tale clicks and gulps penetrating the cold, cold darkness I feel weirdly comforted. My throat tightens and I want to cry, which is not saying much because I weep at the drop of a hat these days — but I feel for those frogs. I really do. They represent the resilience of life in less than perfect circumstances, and I can always do with reminders of the resilience of life. In fact, if I were going to do one of those motivational posters you see in cubicle farms, it would be about these camo-patterned frogs, and how they keep going even when it’s so cold you can’t feel your own feet.

Why are they calling? I wonder. Surely they aren’t seeking a mate, not at this time of year? Are they merely making conversation to pass the time?

During the day they keep quiet, and the sound around the ponds is the quacking of ducks and hissing of Egyptian Geese. The ducks are completely wild, a pair of African Black Ducks. It’s not clear why they moved in almost a year ago, but they seem perfectly happy to exchange splashing about on the spruit at the bottom of the valley for this more suburban lifestyle. They waddle with their bright orange legs across the lawn, quacking amongst themselves, following the comfortably domestic routine they seem to have developed. I’m getting very fond of those ducks, though it’s harder to develop quite the same feelings for the Egyptian Geese, which are noisy and aggressive and poo everywhere.

Further from the ponds, in the dry leaves under the Karee, the Dikkops blend into the background, waiting for nightfall. Such unassuming birds during the day, their shrieks carry for miles at night. I’m hoping they’ll raise more chicks this coming summer.

So it seems that spring will soon be creeping slowly up the branches of the trees, over the flowerbeds and into the undergrowth. The air will soften and freshen, and it will be redolent with smells I have loved all my life, the jasmine yes, and also the Yesterday Today and Tomorrow. (A funny thing: the Yesterday Today and Tomorrow in Australia had no scent. I inhaled deep at every bush I found, and could detect nothing at all.)

The weavers will strip the palms of their leaves and their nests will swing at the end of every suitable branch, and life will be renewed. Another year will lie before me, a stretch of time that could bring me anything or take me anywhere. The frogs have comforted me, a lot, this winter. This spring I hope that they will breed, and multiply in the warmth, and that I won’t notice them nearly as much.