The instructions on the seed packets are clear. Damage the seed with sandpaper, cover with boiling water for a day, plant singly and cover with wood ash. It’s a simulation of a fire. The seed is a couple of millimetres long, dark, with the beginning of a root dry at its side, as long as the seed itself. I imagine its unfolding: the pale root extends, the cotyledons open. Compare these to basil or lettuce seeds, tiny specks that must be sown shallow into moist earth and covered in about a millimetre of dirt.

Australian suburbs misunderstand our climate. The houses trap heat when they shouldn’t, and can’t keep it in when we need it. Brisbane was built on a floodplain but we mourn the loss of taxpayer dollars to every storm or surging flood. Leaves thrash, boxing the air in rising wind. Plastic swirls in the mangrove roots.