National Wattle Day - calendar spring

One of the most magnificent - and such a phrase is much abused - sights in the Australian landscape are the riot of wattle blooms that commence from late winter around mid august until late September. It is one of the ciphers of the slow defeat of winter and the opening stanza of spring.

For Australians, we tend to claim the wattle as our own, though wattles are found on all continents (excepting Antarctica). Nonetheless, it is a fact that in Australia is found over 900 or two-thirds of the world's 1,300 wattle species.

The Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha) is Australia's floral emblem. Growing to a height of between 2-8 metres its small pom-pom type flowers are unmistakable along with its stirring fragrance. In these weeks, with the wattles in assertion, it is as if the Sun is manifest in the blooms promising longer days, even though there is still some sniping from a reluctant grim flavour.

About me now, in the forests, in suburban streets and backyards, across farms and even in the ochre rich deserts, this remarkable acacia is showing off and my poetic heart pulses again with this devotion:

There is nothing so astonishing
As golden wattles in outbreak.
Across my decade heavy years
Such a vision has never ceased
To meditate.

From brumal kernels

Florets assert the Sun's meter
With incantations of amber.
Today at last is September,
Winter will fail of solitude
Three months more summer.

There is nothing so fantastic
As wattles demonstrating earth
That I witness the turn once more,
This contract of great Nature's lore.

The wattle, especially the Golden wattle, is a symbol of an Australian life and of proper spring asserting its religion.