On and off, I have been steadily mulching my way through ute-loads of ‘green waste’. It is the time of the local council green waste street verge collection. In multiple acts of irony I have been relocating branches from fallen trees at our other house and my parents and carting them back to our house to mulch and store for the garden beds. Our neighbours also got cleaned out prior to the collection also.

This behaviour is not normal. But in my minds eye our garden will not exactly be a normal garden. In the coming weeks the mulch can begin to break down and prepare itself for being added to the completed and ready garden beds. It will feed the plants, keep them moist, protect them from the hot summer which is months away still. When we come to planting the fruit trees all the nutrients pulled up deep from the soil and formed into leaves and branches will nurture the growing trees and feed the soil microbes.

The bags and bags of mulch and decaying leaf matter will be just a memory of the trees from whence they came, but it will bring with it new life.