Out of the woods

Aloe flower

I got Dad to snap this one too, like red hot poker except, less poky...the succulent leaves however do have spikes, so this ones under Dad's bedroom window.

Dad has been culling my trees. Manuka got the chop as it was 'spoiling my view'...of the sky. So now I have a pile of walking sticks, and firewood/bbq kindling.

I was naturally rather upset.

I don't deal that well with violence against trees. Weeds, ok, I can pull them out no problem. But trees which have been growing that I have personally planted? Not so much.

On the bright side, (now we have more sun on the deck) Cenny has gifted me two lemon trees in pots for my birthday. I have left them in the pots so far as digging a hole for them in clay is like digging a grave for them to drown in. I recruited mum to come down with me to Woodside to get some seaweed mulch for them.  While there I sneakily snuck in some rose cuttings by the fence from my birthday rose bunch sister Glennis gave me. It's not so bad having a birthday during lockdown, I decide. I got to stay at home and have peace and quiet.

I am drying these rosebuds to make potpourri. The big cake was carrot cake and the others blueberries, lemon, raspberries, viola and chocolate.

At virus level 2 I have not rushed to the garden centre as of yet since it is going into the barren period (in fact, shopping is sometimes more of an ordeal than before) and it is getting cooler...we just need to pray for more rain as our dams are now only 40%. There are hose restrictions but seeing as I never watered the garden with a hose anyway it won't matter. But installing a rainwater harvester on the garage roof is a good idea, but like all good ideas they don't always happen at the time of having the good idea. If I had my good ideas happen straight away I would now be sitting pretty and not wondering why the garage spouting is leaking and rusted still.

They say the best time to plant a tree is ten years ago...and the second best time is to plant them now.
Mum surprised me by saying she wanted the fig tree that Dad nearly killed planted in the ground to grow big (and lots of figs) but now there is no room left to plant them in the garden, unless Dad moves into the Sky Tower to have his unimpeded view of the universe.

Blogging it with flowers

Dad took some pics of the flowers in the garden yesterday --it seems red and purple is the current theme. The leaves on the deciduous trees are starting to turn...it's going to be a glorious autumn.

Begonia

Tomato...not a flower Dad.

Bromeliad

Mexican Sage

Streptocarpus

Tillandsia

We'll always have...silverbeet

The days are flying by but I'm counting on going back to school on Tuesday for one whole hour. It's so I can take things home to continue to work from home. That is, books to read.

New Gardenland is flourishing. It really likes the extra attention paid to it. There are no dead leaves or weeds to be seen. All the plants are now happy in their places. Yesterday, I sat on the deck chair and it ripped (with me in it). Thankfully mum wasn't around to laugh but later said 'I told you so'. I am never buying anything from Trade Me again.

Mum and I went down to Woodside as Nicole had harvested some kumara for us. I trimmed the pink yarrow and added the seedheads to my garden.  I also took a few seeds that are over 4 years old, to sow. I hope they don't mind, mostly flowers. Today was Anzac Day so I sowed some poppies in the berm. My begonia is flowering as is my abutilon. Flaming red flowers. I have not forgotten.

We even have an extra day off on Monday to remember, but I get sad thinking about the horror of it all, and how none of those soldiers could come back home to be buried. So futile. If everyone stayed home and prayed, we possibly wouldn't have had such a huge death toll. And on top of that, the influenza epidemic that killed even more people than died in the battle.

I have been reading about garlic being the miracle cure of influenza. It has been proven in the past, but I wonder if it's as effective with the mutant strains we are now getting. Otherwise the vaccine is still a year away.

Easter has given us no eggs, but plenty of feijoas. I pick them up everyday and put them in egg cartons which are just the right size for them.  My neighbours have offered me lemons, and even more feijoas, which I have had to refuse. As for veges my peas have now come up, and we still have kale, and we will always, always have silverbeet.

Resurrection Day

Good news, my peas are sprouting...

People don't really give peas a chance, but peas are so important to our health and wellbeing. They can be snow or they can be sweet, they can be wasabi or mushy, or minted or buttered but wherever they go those little legumes are welcome in homes, gardens and dinner tables everywhere.

I love peas. They fix nitrogen, make a great mulch and can even be eaten raw in their pods. What is not to love?

Another vege that I love but I just can't seem to grow is eggplant. (Too cold at my place). However its the perfect food for Easter when you cannot obtain fresh eggs or chocolate, but a good eggplant gives you that satisfying vegan/vegetarian dish vibe.

For your passover seder along with your roast lamb and unleavened bread you also need some bitter herbs and there are plenty to choose from in the garden. My go to is parsley, the Italian flat leaf kind.

Surviving the ten plagues (or is it seven?) won't be easy, but I have some tips. I am not an expert, but who is at these times? Along with cinchona bark where we get quinine, sweet wormwood and oregano, other anti-viral plants include hyssop, for cleansing, eucalyptus, tea tree, sage, magnolia bark, and ginseng.

I have heard loads of rubbish given online such as bleach kills the virus, but it will kill you too if you ingest it, so I think common sense tells us to keep away from such toxic substances. Roundup kills weeds but it also kills other plants so...I don't put too much stock in what people are saying, such as drink lots of alcohol and it will kill the virus. Yea and if you don't die from it, the alcohol will kill you anyway.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Well I have plenty of lemon balm.
So let the healing of the land begin. Our planet needs gardens and gardeners, never more so than now. Get to it.

Every high thing must come down

I have been really busy looking after New Gardenland.

Mum finally got her wish and the rusty leaning arch came down. We toppled it and piled the hardenbergia clippings by the Cleopatra Magnolia Tree to make a refuge for Martha.
Mum wasn't finished, she decided to blitz the wisteria too and we stripped it of all its leaves, and cut the dead branches off. I thinned and pruned the nearby azalea and now it seems more air can circulate and more sun round the other plants.
Dad asked me to prune the manuka so I have thinned and pruned that as well. The manuka has seeds and where I've laid the branches new manukas may come up.

JoAnne dropped by with some Dutch iris bulbs which she said would come up in October. I put them in the corner under the manuka tree. The grapevine got pruned, and I have set up all the egg trays with seed raising mix. I have made a start on growing some mushrooms - at least, I hope I'm following the instructions correctly (still no real clue on how to do it?!).

I haven't really been counting, but apparently it's day 10 of lockdown.
I have found the cure for the virus, it's not privet but if anyone has sweet wormwood or artemesia annua also known as mugwort or qing hao in Chinese medicine, you can use that to combat it. Just don't drink too much as it's very bitter.  Do not use ordinary wormwood the kind used to make absinthe. It has to be SWEET Wormwood.  You could also use quinine, but the chinchona tree doesn't grow here. The bark is used for that. Synthetic quinines have been created, but increasingly modern strains of virus and malaria have become resistant to them.

Of course, everyone is washing their hands like mad and being a bit paranoid lately, but I would rather be at home than at school right now (school holidays have been brought forward..hooray!). And I've always been a bit suspicious of kissing and handshakes anyway.

Next door I notice are growing some taro and I'm hoping they will eventually become keen gardeners too. All they need are some more veges to grow along the fence and we could swap produce. Feijoas are just coming in to season.

I have estimated I need three more fruit trees to bring my total to twelve.
1. Feijoa
2. Olive
3. Tangelo
4. Loquat
5. Peach (on it's last legs)
6. Apricot
7. Fig
8. Grape
9. Apple

the rest on the (birthday present) wishlist are...
9. lemon
10. lime
11. Sweet Mandarin
12. Plum

Extras would be - Pear, Valencia orange, Passionfruit, Banana.  If all these are planted then I will have fruit all year round! So much to do..maybe this lockdown will last a bit longer hopefully for everyone to get their gardens established for spring. Wouldn't that be wonderful??

Crazy times

Preparing for lockdown...

The Massey Garden Ramble has been cancelled but that wasn't before I had distributed the flyers. At least people that have them now know where the gardens are - Woodside Road, Jadewynn and Triangle Park.

I said to Mummy Cat she had better get to work now the humans are staying at home. Before the shops close except for essential services tomorrow, I stocked up a bit on things like seed raising mix, potting mix, seeds, cleaning products, more flower bulbs, books and food for the week. I have decongestant essential oil (eucalyptus, peppermint, camphor)  and oregano oil for immunity. And hyssop plants, because that was all that was left in the herb section. All the veges seedlings had sold out.

Garden Planet is still going to air as scheduled but the next four weeks will be broadcasting repeats, but I have picked up relevant shows  to air so keep tuning in if you missed them the first time.

With mum and dad both home I expect they may be driving each other nuts, but I am thankful I have my garden. Or our garden. Mum might have to stop deriding my kale and attempts at growing food. She learned that dandelions are good for her liver and Dad is mowing less lawn. So I am hoping some good will come of it while we ride out the worst of it. Martha will be fine as it's not bird flu this time.

 Am going to take a hot bath and go to bed early. I looked at my posts from last year and it was around this time that everyone was catching some virus (or is it just the same one that keeps coming back every year?)  But as I am still here to tell the tale I think I will be ok.

Stay home and garden everyone, and if you are locked up, you are in safest place. Hebrews 13:3

Lightbulb moment

I had made it my mission to plant bulbs today, as the moon calendar indicates it's the right time.
So I've picked up Grape Muscari and two kinds of Dutch Iris.
I usually don't go shopping on Sunday, but I've had to after working on Saturday that I can't face doing a round of more shops after working in one for four hours. This has kind of thrown my schedule for a bit, but then, everything changes anyway thanks to Coronavirus. People are probably going to be predicting everyone's going to have the Mark of the Beast some time soon. (If someone asks me I'm just gonna say no thanks).

All I know is, when spring time comes around I need to have planted my spring bulbs in March!
My beds are now all mulched in seaweed, and I've taken cuttings of daisies and pelargonium in hope that something, anything will grow in Mary's bed.

I came home rather exhausted and I'd only just walked up the road. I have also been asked to be on a committee. A flower committee. They say they need someone younger but I'm wondering what I can contribute. In general people don't really like flowers I've found. Fruits and veges get the star treatment in the gardening world but flowers tend to be ignored. I had once suggested lets grow more flowers in the community garden but that kinda went down like a lead balloon. The last time I went there everything was weeded until an inch of it's life and I felt if I had planted some bulbs there it wouldn't go down well.

So I am just sticking to my own patch for now. I think it's safer. I read in the paper that people were voting for the best garden at MetLife care and you could win $5000 from Mitre 10. When I worked at MetLife care retirement villages the ladies were constantly having fights over who could pick the flowers.  Some of them HATED the flowers like euryops which were 'too yellow' and jasmine was called 'that smelly plant'. I haven't been back there to see what it's like now but I can imagine that that giant hydrangea is still there and the lady who lives next to it, if she's still alive, is still complaining about it.

I personally believe flowers can contribute to a better world, if they can inspire kids living in the Bronx concrete jungle possibly they could do the same thing here, but in my experience kids in NZ get more excited over slime than flowers. We possibly have too many flowers, and half of them are gorse.

Mum has given me a mushroom kit that someone at work has given away so I'm going to attempt to grow some mushrooms. The kit comes with 3 pages of dense instructions but the bags are not labelled so I can't tell what is spawn and what is compost mix and what bag is meant to go with what. If I were creating a mushroom kit I would just have 1 page of instructions, with 3 steps, and pictures, and everything clearly labelled. So I might just have to email the mushroom kit creator and admit my complete cluelessness and say um can you explain how to grow mushrooms again? In less than 100 words? Cos you have given me a thesis here and I'm mentally challenged. Thank you.