With one billion households on the planet, and greed the dominant world religion we desperately need weedy gardeners. Now there is a plant you may have heard about - Ageratum conyzoides - the Billy Goat Weed. Moist grassland and woodland edge in hilly areas of the Neotropics used to be his only home. Yet someone, sometime past brought hairy Ageratum east, deliberately or unwittingly, with food crops to Africa (and many place besides) so that nowadays this cute yet highly pungent blue or mauve or pinkish white pom-pom flowered Aster is an alien par excellence and currently dominates my day .. Outdoors. Indoors, as now, my life is dominated by the mercurial magic of another alien in Africa - electricity! Something strange and new that is colonising this continent somewhat less effectively than bad old Billy Goat Weed.
The view from my desk is uphill all the way. Staedtler Noris pencil and A4 pad in hand I look up and stare toward the perceived serenity of magnificent Meru's "Socialist Peak". Searching for solace as much as inspiration. The .5 ha garden (ca one acre) funnels between lank Australian hedgerows (Grevillea and Eucalypt) to a point somewhere well north of east where right now the rising sun of solsticial June melts a golden hole in the morning sky.
In the immediate foreground, where we have painstakingly pulled-up, or cut away, the advancing ranks of Ageratum (who easily grow to a metre and a half in height) Streaky Seed-eaters, Red-billed Firefinches and Winding Cisticolas converge to glean within the weedy stubble of a rapidly regenerating indigenous vegetation. Some areas we have pulled completely bare and, especially where we have raked the ground, near to exotic scarlet hibiscus shrubs (Sino-Himalayan but adored and adorned by Sunbirds) formerly skulking insectivores now forage in full view. Splendid birds these, like the Spotted Morning Thrush who now chooses to forage there. Hopping cautiosly with slowly cocked and fanning rufous tail. Thoroughly indigenous Red-eyed Doves, Grey-headed Sparrows and, spangled black and gold, Baglafecht Weavers search for the minute seeds of local weeds all around the house, even in these barest areas. And now the Ageratum is on the run, insurgent insistent Singing Cisticolas and Grey-backed Camaropteras bubble and squeak, bursting-out from the knee-high native plants. Yes our ecological renaissance is already in full swing, and now we only need a little rain to fall here in the midst of the cool dry winter period.
As for the electricity, well it's back into town now to battle with TANESCO and all manner of institutional lethargy, with entrepreneurial power-wire-tappers and fly-by-night welders, a rogue maize mill down the hill and all the other operatives who by not paying for their utilities don't quite conspire but certainly succeed to keep my pencil in my hand and my eyes away from the softly-moulded plastic frames of Toshiba, Dell and an artificial Acer. And when I soon tire of that wee battle it's back onto the plot, to my long haul struggle with Billy Goat Weed (and his allies) in this moist afro-montane weedy garden where more and more of us find home.
Images: Ageratum Conyzoides (Billy Goat Weed) and Spotted Morning Thrush, Thanks to Anabel & Geoff Harries
