Member-only story
Among the Weeds
A lesson in four scenes
FADE IN
EXT. DAY. A garden — mostly lawn — slopes down to a paddock with eight black-faced sheep. The sky is grey. A light rain falls.
BRONWEN bends down over a patch of lawn and scrutinises the vegetation with a hand lens. Stands up. Brandishes the hand lens.
B: I will learn to identify plants. But where to start? I know! With grasses. How hard could that be?
In the background, sheep look on.
INT. DAY. Office with a desk cluttered with books, a computer and lots of grass stems.
BRONWEN holds up a long flowering stem. She waves it in front of the computer monitor which shows a dichotomous key of Australian grasses.
B: According to this, there are more than 1,300 species of grass in Australia.
Offscreen, the sheep go baaa.
EXT. DAY.
BRONWEN throws grass stems into the sheep paddock.
B: Stupid grass. I’ll try the weeds instead. How hard could that be?
Picks an Oxalis stem.
The sheep look on.
FADE OUT
The house is built on a former dairy farm and backs onto two paddocks — one with sheep and the other…
