How long it takes to grow

We bought our little house in the trees fifteen years ago. Our (small) dream was to build a big deck and grow a grapevine that would flourish all over it, making a green cubby for us and our mates in summer, just like the one at my best friend’s place I’d spent many summers under. Our friends and family helped us build the deck that first year, the next, maybe thirteen years ago, we planted the grape vines. It’s a long way up from the ground to the top of the deck, about six metres, but being young and filled with grand plans and enthusiasm we anticipated we’d have a green canopy pretty soon. Ha.

There were sun issues, water issues, possum issues. We moved the pots, had a couple of kids, started new careers and kept dreaming of that lush green canopy. The kids played under the deck, danced on top of the deck, we put up tarps in lieu of a grape vine roof on scorching summer days to shade our mates. One vine was gnawed off near the base when it had reached a gallant few metres tall. We realised the trunk our imagined canopy would thrive from was fragile.

We tried again.

Some summers I would lament the number of hours my bloke would spend with hose and pruning shears in the garden. Our life had grown infinitely busier and big and I lost sight of grand plans under the tidal wave of life and family admin, study and work, stolen moments of scribbling words that might - impossibly - some day be a book. Lush canopies were not on my to do list - I resented those calm summer nights my bloke spent out there still patiently, doggedly imagining the dream.

Years of fire and smoke. Dry years, then rain that fell in a deluge washing soil down the driveway. Tendrils of vine reached the deck floor. A first book published. Kids at school. The loss of loved ones who would have loved to sit on our deck under the shade that still hadn’t grown. Our best friends moved far away for new adventures and our deck grew quieter than it was. The world rattled on, exploding and speeding and reforming in ways we hadn’t seen in dreams or nightmares.

Lush leaves clung to the deck fencing, tentative vines curled up the wires. Autumns where I yelled - ‘No - don’t cut it back!’ and my bloke assured me it was necessary - pruning helps the vine to grow back stronger.

A pandemic. A second book. Another loss. New trees planted in the fledgling garden, plants that failed, withered, did not take in our strange clay earth. Experiments. Trying and trying again. We tended the garden but not the house, holes in the floor of the laundry, cracks where the skylight leaked - we reminded ourselves that this was okay, continue to do so. An astonishing early summer where we stood under the first tiny corner of sparse canopy and exalted.

Kids kept growing up. Faster than the vine. Hard seasons for us, the often quiet difficulties that families keep close inside their walls. Seasons spent on the deck as the world seemed to stop and we could not leave our house. My bloke tenderly training the vine up the wires. More words. More tendrils. Enough to pose now for family pics in front of the green, the astounding red of it as the seasons changed. Another book.

And then this early summer. We wait for this place to crisp and dry again, as we know it will, relieved for a moment, for the reprieve of mist and fog and rain.

We are welcoming our best mates back from out West for the summer, we want our deck full with our mates again to celebrate. We jettison years of accumulated stuff out of boxes and tubs and drawers and make room. When we stop, sweaty and dusty - we notice how much the vine has grown. We marvel. Look! - we say - it’s really grown!

Our friends gather under the vine, we are all limbs and laughter as we eat and drink and look wide-eyed at how many kids we made, how much they have grown, how we, strangely, all still feel like we are twenty-six, give or take our bodies, our weariness, everything that has changed.

It took thirteen years to grow our canopy. Years of trial and error and tenderness and waiting. Years when we noticed every inch of growth and years when we looked up after months and saw what we had failed to notice. And now, lush and magnificent as it is, we still know that a rogue possum or a harsh summer or a particularly ravenous army of caterpillars could mean we lose it all.

So we’ll try and notice, care less about the mess next time we invite friends to sit under its shade, catch ourselves paying attention as the edges of the leaves start to turn at the end of summer, take those pictures in front of it as our big kid graduates from primary school this week, give thanks for what it took to grow.

Reading

• I just finished the astonishing North Woods by Daniel Mason. A sweeping novel of fragmented pieces and connection, all centred around a yellow house in the middle of the woods in Massachusetts. I loved it. Great for fans of Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead (who I interviewed for the pod here), Greenwood by Michael Christie (also interviewed for the pod!) and Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (still sending interview requests!).

• For the second hand book lovers amongst you - I enjoyed the world of Wigtown in Shaun Bythell’s The Diary of a Bookseller - despite the narrator’s general grumpiness! The book traces a year of the comings and goings, trials and tribulations of his second hand bookstore in Scotland.

• Finding solace and inspo on everyone doing Christmas and festivities differently, loved this from Emily Writes.

• I’m super lucky to get sent early copies of some truly excellent reading so here’s some books to look out for or pre-order in early 2024:

  • Ghost Cities by Siang Lu - a mind-bending, wonderfully clever, funny and philosophical dual narrative of automatons, China and empires where nothing is as it seems. Highly recommend.

  • Letters to Our Robot Son by Cadance Bell - an Audible original that is a rollicking post-apocalyptic adventure complete with thoughtful robots and a delightful kitten. Could not stop reading. Bell, like Lu, is very smart and very funny.

  • To the River by Vikki Wakefield - twisty crime thriller with excellent female protagonists, a wonderfully atmospheric river setting and propulsive pace. Read it in two sittings. Perfect for fans of Jane Harper, Anna Downes and JP Pomare.

• I’m VERY excited for summer reading time and already have a stack of books lined up including:

  • Held by Anne Michaels

  • Women and Children – Tony Birch

  • Prophet Song – Paul Lynch

  • Gunflower – Laura Jean Mckay

  • The Spider and Her Demons – sydney khoo

  • The Future - Naomi Alderman

  • Beatrix and Fred - Emily Spurr

  • The Vaster Wilds - Lauren Groff

News

• Today is a day of collection action by Creatives for Palestine. I’m a signatory, along with thousands of other creatives. You can add your name to the list here, and express your solidarity today. And every day. Continuing to call for a permanent ceasefire by contacting Senator Penny Wong, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and your representatives.

• You might have heard the S6 Finale of The First Time Podcast or seen on my socials that Katherine and I are taking a break from The First Time for 2024. It’s been a massive six years of conversations and we are incredibly grateful for all of the support we’ve had from listeners, guests and the lit community at large. It feels a little counterintuitive to pause when something is going so well - but it’s also time to make time for new things. I’ll be spending 2024 working on my next novel and my PhD, publishing my first picture book (!) and continuing to talk about The Hummingbird Effect at lit festivals and events. While The First Time pod is on hiatus, you can still listen to the entire archive, catch up on top eps you may have missed in our Summer Series in January, keep in touch with me here and on my socials and with Katherine via her newsletter and her brand new series which she’ll be realising on The First Time feed in March.

• Thrilled to share good bookish news: The Hummingbird Effect has been longlisted for Fiction Book of the Year 2023 in the Indie Book Awards and named by some of my most admired writers Tim Winton, Pip Williams and Toni Jordan in their Books of the Year in this article. Also delighted to have received funding to work on my next novel as the runner up in the Blake Beckett Trust Fellowship.

• I’ll be spreading Christmas cheer, finalising my Christmas book gifts and signing books at Eltham Bookshop next Wednesday 20th December 5.30-6.30pm, alongside my friend Iain Ryan who has a brand new and very thrilling crime novel The Strip out now. Do come join us, if Eltham is your ‘hood!

This is the last newsletter from me this year. Thank you SO much for your presence and attention this year, I’ve loved putting new words out in the world for you and I’m especially grateful to those of you who have subscribed as paid members.

The Bowerbird will return at the end of January 2024 with monthly editions for all subscribers and an additional post each month for paid subs. Without the space to ramble on the podcast, I’ll be sharing loads of book recommendations here, along with updates from the messy process of a new book, things I find curious and inspiring and news along the road.

However and wherever you celebrate the end of the year, I hope you find moments of rest, connection and time for words. K xx