Canapés for possums.

{A fortunate leap.}


{In magical stillness.}

They have eaten all the new growth on the bloom red bottlebrush. And they’ve eaten all the leaves on the small lemon tree. It is now a spindle-thin green stick in a pot five times its size. They’ve eaten the trumpet flowers of the mandevilla, and all the leaves within their reach of the clematis on the fence. Though that they’ve eaten the leaves of the clematis snowflake does not matter greatly as they were soon to fall in a week or so.
 
They’ve even eaten the leaves of the hibiscus planted in the knowledge that it is not a plant they like to gnaw with abandon. Those brushtail possums of mine, each night eat happily away, upturning pots as they go.
 
Nevertheless, they do endear as they sit in the hanging bird feeder, two furred forms nibbling at the pieces of apple and orange I have left for them, the nightshift brigade, to be replenished with seed for the birds in the morning.
 
I remember reading a garden article recently about adopting a more Buddhist approach to gardening, a sort of some for them, some for me style that left everyone content, though I am not too sure my possums lean this way. Nor me. Not yet. I am torn between loving living with them and wishing I could have plants that flowered.
 
No longer do I plant oregano, lemon verbena and other fine tasting herbs unless it is to keep them indoors. Nor succulents within their reach neither, for their reach is vast and the succulents, I am guessing to a possum, too, well, too succulent to resist. For gardening, I have finally learned is a process of planting what will not tempt them. They have one giant bottlebrush, after all. It is so tall and it forms an impressive canopy. They sleep, I imagine, in a bed made of its boughs, with jasmine leaves for pillows.
 
In my small terrace garden, I plant what I hope will survive, and I do not expect to get to the olives first.
 
+ Gould’s Brushtailed possum