I forgot to mention the author of the book I mentioned - Terry Hershey. The title is 'Soul Gardening'.
I have just put in some new plants for our church hanging baskets - they now have cascading lobelia in blue, petunia in white and nasturtiums. I've planted up the little playhouse windowsill with pansies and more nasturtium, and the garden bed now has a rosemary.
My groundcover bed now has oregano as well. Its slowly being carpeted. I had a visitor to my garden today, and was given a tip to get rid of whitefly thats buzzing around my tangelo, use neem oil. I'm not keen on spraying so am using neem powder instead to get to the roots, and heard worm castings will also help build up the tree's immunity.
This weekend all things are happening in the gardening world, there's the Parnell Rose Festival which is on every November, rain or shine, and NZ Gardener editor Lynda Hallinan is opening up her garden to the public this weekend. I'm not sure if I can make it since its all the way east in Hunua. Foggydale Farm she calls it. I don't really have a cutesy name for my garden but I call this land of mine Iranasea. Its been called that ever since I remember. I'm not sure where the name came from but it stuck.
It's kind of like 'Gondawanaland' that mysterious landmass which happened to break up when the land got divided in the days of Peleg (look in the Bible for that bit of history) after Noah's Ark. Or was it before? I'm not sure.
Iranasea is divided up into several states, there's Pussycatland, Jemima Land, Glenpurple, Washington (the laundry) and Anywhere Land. There's also Kitchen Land and Columbus (a vassal land). The enemy territory down the back is known as Midian. Next door to us is Newaland. We also have a Hen and Chickens Island and an Easter Island. There used to be a Pinecone Land but that got swept away. Recently there was a volcanic eruption and Mt Asher appeared out of nowhere.
Tolkien and CS Lewis may have their Narnias and their Hobbitons/Middle Earth, but Iranasea was first on the map in my book. I can tell you all about the history of Iranasea, but that's another story and another post....
