July school holidays are kind of like living in Lockdown again. You actually can go out, but would you want to? Gardening is not an option...unless you have a great hankering to garden in puddles, mud, and wearing gumboots. The people with wings have flown away to far off lands and are probably enjoying the weather in Fiji, Samoa, or the entire Northern Hemisphere. It's too bad I'm not a bird, I would have flown the nest by now.
I have been reading more George Orwell, this time a book called 'Books vs Cigarettes'. In one of his essays he writes that he counts up the cost of books he buys and concludes its not much more than buying cigarettes and probably a healthier habit. I've been chain-reading books for the past month like people used to chain-smoke cigarettes. Now I've heard everyone's into vaping and contributing to the plastic rubbish problem. At least cigarette butts biodegraded in the garden and were made of somewhat natural plants like tobacco and weed, but those vapes? Who knows what's in them? You may as well be inhaling weedkiller fumes.
The other essay that made an impression on me was 'Such Such were the Joys' about his boyhood as a scholarship student at a private school called St Cyprians that was prepping him for Eton, THE school for British elites (kind of like Kings College) and how snobby and bullying everyone was there and what sadists the Headmaster and Headmistress were. I can only say in my experience of working in private schools that he's not far wrong, more than 70 years later, and nothing much has really changed.
I did work in Kings College when our gardening team planted up their river bank with natives and others maintained the sports fields and grounds. My boss had planted up the front entrance and it was typical iris and guara fluffy flowers that was his trademark..but we all knew elite schools like that would never teach horticulture and get the students actually working in the gardens or planting anything. Can't get their hands dirty!
I have yet to find my dream job. I want to say that it will include a garden, AND a library but what manifestation that will take in the future I have no idea. Garden to Table, I think is a wonderful initiative but it needs to be in all schools with qualified Master gardeners and cooks teaching this as core curriculum.. complete with seed libraries and botanic garden field trips. I wish everyone would read a book that made me cry called 'The Power of a Plant' about a teacher in the inner concrete jungles of NYC (this is where most all 'To Sir with Love' tales are set) whose students who have little hopes or aspirations at all and are fighting all the time in class...until he discovers what he thought was a bunch of onion bulbs in a bag are actually daffodils and this magically transforms his rough and tough potential gang members into...kind and loving upright citizens who want to green up the Bronx, where you never see a garden anywhere.
At least, that's his story and he's sticking to it. They call his team the 'Green Guerillas' and then go round seed bombing the derelict wastelands. I'm not sure if this will go down with many young Auckland students who's experiences in horticulture mostly extend to growing marijuana under lights at home. Well Stephen Ritz, you tried.
Otherwise, I'm thinking, where is Auckland's answer to RHS Wisely Gardens? Where are all our future park ranger/gardener/playground caretakers going to learn their craft? Is gardening only ever going to be a pastime for the rich and wealthy to pay someone else to do? Must we all flounder around with expensive vegepods when we have no idea how to look after our own whenua?
