I'm excited to be meeting up with author Janice Marriott soon for Book Chooks to chat about her gardening books. Common Ground was recommended to me by Margaret and it's a bout two old school friends who write to each other about their lives and gardens, Janice lives in Wellington with a townhouse garden and her friend Virginia in North Canterbury presiding over a sheep farm so it's very interesting to read the book which consists of their personal correspondence! Janice now has moved up to Auckland and living in Mt Eden so I can actually meet her now (without risking being blown away in Wellington). Rest assured she is now creating a new garden while busy with her new role as active grandmother.
Common Ground was serialised in NZ Home and Garden magazine and then made into a book with several sequels. Part of the thing with Rambling Garden Diary - this blog - is to have a record of my garden but also to reach out to other gardeners and compare notes. However, it didn't work out that great for me because my email correspondent then decided she was too busy and didn't actually want to know about my garden. Hmmph.
But it was she who suggested I write for her blog (no longer in existence) and after she told me basically to stop writing to her another of my email friends or rather my English teacher said, why not make it into your own blog and so here it is!
The only thing is nobody here writes back to me with their own stories of their gardens so it's a bit one sided. I need someone like Virginia to write to. Perhaps Sarah the Gardener (living in Waiuku) is a likely candidate.
However she's not an old school friend but then I did not have many friends I remember from school who moved to the countryside and now have gardens. Or maybe I do? Who knows. Shall I hunt them down on Facebook?
Don't worry, I'm quite happy with comparing notes with my practical gardening mentor Buffie for the time being. She's cleverly wangled 30 hours garden labour from me for doing APW. Yesterday we weeded the Ranui Community Garden new flowerbeds, mulched around the broad beans and planted peas.
I have done some wangling (or is it wrangling?) of my own and Mitre 10 Lincoln Road have generously offered Woodside Garden free timber for our raised beds! Hooray we don't need to hold a fundraising sausage sizzle after all! Because the next available slot for a fundraising sausage sizzle at Mitre 10 (we don't even have any sausages) is in February 2018.
