My own fig tree

Today I potted a fig tree which now resides in the corner of the terrace. Beside it is a pelargonium and a heliotrope 'cherry pie' plant. My fig tree is 'Brown Turkey'. I also have vines - grapes and passionfruit.

Easter Sunday saw the garden centres doing a roaring trade as I went to buy potting mix. I made a suggestion at church that we have olive trees and grapevines but this was rejected. The reason we can't have a garden is the church yard is meant to be a 'kid's playground'. I said ok, but I was disappointed. My pastor said a tree would ruin the lawn, be hard to mow around and there would be security issues with trees (?!) and the grapevine would attract bees and wasps which could sting people.

I'm annoyed because I don't have kids and there's plenty of playgrounds around where 'kids' can play but there's not many gardens where sheep and lambs can pray in private. I'm sure Jesus didn't go to a kids playground to have a quiet time with His father...

I thought about leaving this church behind and finding new pastures but was at loss of where to go. The goats had trampled the grass and the locusts and caterpillars had eaten the strawberries I planted in the hanging baskets. Also the playhouse was abandoned and growing mould and the sandpit...I had never seen anyone playing in it.

I went back home, well, as it turns out, is not my home after all. It's my parents and apparently I have no right to even garden there either. They are just tolerating me. Maybe the other church members who only attended church at Easter weren't missing out on anything after all. I am too young for the Bowls club and too old for Sunday School. The only other churches around played Christian 'Rock' that hurt my head. I asked God for a home of my own. Impossible in Auckland where the house prices start from half a million but it does say that Jesus prepares a place for us in his Fathers house in which there are many mansions.

After He rose from the dead his good friend Mary mistook him for a gardener. I can just picture Jesus smirking in the garden after Mary asks him where he has hid his own body. Gardeners know all the dirt.

Hotbeds and landscape design

Today is Palm Sunday, and I have planted my nikau palms in the garden. One is by the Japanese maple and another is next to the tree fern. Apparently they are very slow growing and like shaded gullies. I considered growing them within hammock distance of one another, but the opportunity didn't present itself.

Paradise is near completion.

I have also installed a new hotbed - of flaming celosias. Upon removal of the tomatoes, the back bed is now free and edged in tree prunings of peach and pinecones. I planted four punnets of celosia 'fairy fountain' in yellow, orange and pinky-red plumes. Also in my flaming bed is a rock rose and a hebe, rescued from their languishing state in the front rock garden and I have replaced their vacant spot with gazania. I also removed the ailing hibiscus which seemed not to last so now there is just one there, the one that came all the way from Whangarei. Clianthus too, is now planted there in hopes it will root itself again, the white variety doesn't seem to do too well and I possibly bought it too late in the season. Next time I will find a red one.

Flowers are so ephemeral.  They bloom and then they fade..

I'm considering growing sweet peas up the arch to replace the morning glories which are going to seed. The weather assisted me with light showers on and off this weekend.

I've started my landscape design course with the accumulation of stationery - I had to buy a french curve, tracing paper, coloured pencils and a set square. Of course, my garden had never been so much as designed as planted, but it was my brothers who put in the hedging which is the bones of the garden, which they clipped in box shapes and perfect curves. Apart from this, I had never given much thought to putting plants on paper before I put them in the ground. But I suppose if you have a vision you ought to put it on paper so everyone can see it, but in my case I am painting with words. For those with no reading comprehension skills, I suppose a birds eye view can come in handy but you could never completely replicate a garden by looking at it from above.  And gardens aren't flat either...aside from this difficulty in comprehending garden or landscape plans, I suppose to achieve my unit standard I must conform to horticultural procedure and documentation. But already I'm thinking , I didn't garden so I could do paperwork!

Perfection

I had never encountered another gardener saying I wasn't allowed to look at their garden because of weeds growing there, but I can now say I have.
What price perfection? It looked pretty good to me, but she barred me from viewing up close. I said it didn't matter, but she said it does. I nearly offered to remove my glasses so that it would all be a blur but she quickly changed the subject.

Can gardening become obsessive? Well, to be fair, my fellow gardener had been out of action for a week due to ill health, but I hadn't let that stop others wanting to view mine and commenting on my weeds.
Well, I wouldn't have noticed. Maybe others would have pointed out every weed on the plot but I would have just assumed it was naturally designed that way. I was disappointed, because she was the only gardener I knew that had a working water feature, and I could hear it trickling away as I sat in her living room.

Maybe she wants three months notice like we gave Bev McConnell. I could always give a donation to the Salvation Army and say, I'm going to look anyway.

In other news, I have just potted up the begonias Beth gave me as well as a spotty dumb cane. There's also two nikau palms I am going to plant by the deck that were on Easter sale. And I have managed to glean some seaweed off the beach and it is now mulching my ferns.
Jacqui notified me that, shock horror, the arch the gourds were climbing had been destroyed. Apparently some kids had used it as a monkey bar and it broke. Sigh. I knew those banana palms were going to attract monkeys.

Chopsticks

The peach tree has now been pruned. Sad to say Te Radar didn't show up and there aren't any more peaches left on the tree. So if he does drop by I have to say sorry, you missed out.

He could come to tai ch'i instead though. Its on every Sunday at 8am at Woodside. I just had a late night on Saturday and couldn't make it, but next week I endeavour to show up with my ipad and take a video.

Now we don't have to appear on tv we can just be on you-tube. I could also film my garden. My production values may be slightly lower and my supporting cast consisting of Mary, Martha and Mummy Cat who don't get paid any kind of acting wages, but hey, they would be advertising my garden! The name of my show would be...um..er..well I have to think about that one later. Not quite Ferndale as I think you'd need at least half a dozen pongas to qualify. I only have two.

I helped Joanne harvested apples from her apple tree - gala apples. I do not have any on my columnar tree, it may have fruited but the fruits were not very big so maybe I will leave it another year.

Other harvests include passionfruit ( a few, very tasty), grapes, capiscums, tomatoes, and sunflowers. My poor friends dog died last weekend so I gave her  a bunch. Her dog was named Daisy. RIP Daisy.

I was given a whole sack of Garden Design books by a lady in my bible study which I am going to read later. My course starts in a weeks time. I can't wait!

Perhaps one day I may be garden designer extraordinaire and give Xanthe White a run for her money.  People are already asking me advice on their gardens. Well, I can tell you now is the perfect time to plant cabbages.

Hidden Dragon

It was Olga's idea to have tai ch'i in the garden and so we now have it every Sunday morning at 8am. We are learning the graceful moves of this ancient chinese dance that my grandmother tried to pass down to me. Except when I learned it all those years ago, I couldn't quite get up early enough in the morning for my Por Por's liking.

I think its better than ballet.

Our teacher, Ann, says the sound of rushing water of the creek nearby compliments our moves which are flowing like water well, meant to be. We stroke the horse's mane and spread our cranes wings.

I haven't told mum what I get up to on Sundays. Church is bad enough but she probably wouldn't like that I am sneaking off to the garden and learning chinese moves from someone who isn't chinese. After the rain when my crystal gels swelled up like sago balls mum grew ballistic and said what if the chickens eat them? I countered 'are the chickens that dumb?' and she couldn't say anything. She also got rid of my plaque that said 'As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord'. I think she didn't like the cross. Well its missing, and things were moved around when I came back from church.

I didn't say anything. I don't want to start another battle. I will just find a new one.
Apparently this came about because I had removed a Garfield cookie jar that she bought me years ago that no longer held any cookies. It was in the kitchen and she didn't like it anyway. So not knowing what to do with it I put it in the garden. She said she didn't like it in the garden so I packed it up and gave it to the Hospice shop along with some other ceramic ornaments that were given to me. (I do not, as a rule, collect bric a brac). She asked where I had put it but I said I had given it away, and wouldn't tell her where.

So, not being able to buy it back where it would be useless anyway, I think she tried to destroy my garden.

I'm not sure I can go on with this any longer.
On a brighter note, I got accepted into Certificate of Landscape Design, so am going to start that this month. I know, what can you do with School Certificate? Well. I didn't learn this in school so I'm going back to learn anyway. If by chance the economy ever makes it easy to make a decent living again, at least I will have a useful skill besides.

I watched a movie about the writer Katharine Mansfield. She was funded by her banker father but was a complete disappointment to her mother.  I must read The Aloe again, to remind myself why I am still here.