Zen gardening in Alice Springs

Alice Springs from Olive Pink Botanical Garden

Our climate is extreme
Ferocious sun lives here
Rain a rare visitor to our dry dusty land.
Salty fingerprints reveal ocean ancestry in ancient aquifer water
Once springs, now sucked up from the deep with engineer’s pumps and pipes
Thriving here takes Darwinian genes or generous custodians.

Where sprinklings evaporate and salty crusts accumulate
A long infrequent drip-fed soak rewards with lusher growth and showy blooms
As roots drink slowly, deeply down
At dawn or dusk when sun’s fierce thirst is a weakened competitor.
Winter nears, days shorten, sun’s ray’s grow softer
Plant thirst subsides
The season resets
Man’s soaking clock saturation, less often needed
Alice awakes, let the show begin. 

Liz Locksley, January 2013

The Alice Water Smart boat crossing the finish line at Henley on Todd