I've received the weekly Get Growing Newsletter, it comes every Friday to my inbox.
I'm as shocked as other gardeners are on the latest Auckland Council tax grab, and this time its if you want to put a garden on your grass verge (they call it 'berm') outside your property which you have to mow anyway, it's gonna cost you $150, and you aren't allowed to put fruit or veges or have anything over the height limit.
Um. I can understand the height limit but come on, paying the council to plant on the land that WE look after?? Ridiculous. And so, what, the puha and dandelions that some people eat, we aren't allowed to have? Would they rather just have weeds there instead?
Madness.
I used to work in Council and I tell you, ever since it amalgamated they have now put in some crazy by-laws and turned a blind eye to things that need doing elsewhere.
So much for 'eco-city'.
Maybe they are doing this (I don't know who THEY are, probably some bureaucratic panel that don't even live here, or maybe they are foreigners who think they own Auckland because they brought up all the houses like Monopoly) to make the ratepayers mad, so that we will protest and guerilla seedbomb the place and then run ivy and gorse rampant everywhere so NOBODY need mow their front lawns.
Which is fine cos I hate mowing lawns anyway, hearing it just gives me a headache. My undergardener and trimmer and hole-digger (Dad) does this.
I was planning on maybe just scattering some pumpkin seeds over the front berm in protest as the shops seem to think it's now 'cool' to celebrate Halloween. Then these poor, starving monsters can harvest pumpkins and other curcubits instead of knocking on doors begging complete strangers for sugary lollies. I always confuse these little monsters with genuine Jehovah's Witnesses. They both dress in black and scare me.
Big thumbs down, Auckland City Council and Auckland Transport, which has a sign like an anarchy symbol, which, I'm pretty sure is deliberate. It's a huge conspiracy to make Auckland into a 'world class' city, taken over and inhabited by zombies from afar.
