I used to love this song called 'Rainy Days and Mondays' by the Carpenters until I started gardening and then realised Karen Carpenter had got it all wrong. Rainy days shouldn't get me down, I should be doing a rain dance and singing, hallelujah my plants are being watered and I don't have to lift a finger!
Which brings me to Permaculture Principle number 2.
Catch and store energy - Make hay while the sun shines
Or in reverse, collect rainwater when it's raining. Duh. How did I not figure it out before? Because otherwise, home economics and the Auckland City Council tell you via a rates bill that you need to pay for it! So on that note I am looking at rainwater harvesting. I could put out buckets to collect this rainwater, and store it for future use, or, I could go for my already brilliant idea of digging a huge hole in my backyard to make a pond whereupon this water may safely be stored (for the wildlife, provided it does not turn into sludge) and any rain that falls on the garage roof be channelled into the appropriate receptacle thus bypassing the stormwater drains and going directly to my plants via my elaborate watering system of filling up a watering can.
Aren't I a genius? Well, no, its just I was very stupid before and living in cloud cuckoo land of suburbia where you just pays your money/bills and don't think about where it really goes.
I've decided since I don't have a lot of money left to go about living I'm not going to pay someone else to do the process of living life for me. Because if my plants depended upon my ability to make said money we would not be surviving for too long.
In other news I have shredded three more sacks of paper (goodbye secret jobs and TESOL worksheets) for mulch. Louise and I have mulched half of Myra's front bed so there still needs to be a bit more to be done so that kikuyu does not grow back and overtake everything in sight. It has already overtake one corner in which some kind of kikuyu bed enclosure appears that I think would make an excellent green playpen for toddlers. It might have been the former chicken run but now it's a mass of kikuyu that has grown so high you can sit on it like a sofa.
After that job is completed with the bark mulch on top so that people can in no way piece together my shredded library papers and accuse me of throwing my higher education away on someone else's garden, we plan to have a day off or day out and check out one of the Heroic Gardens of Coatesville called Mahoenui Farm and marvel at what was once strawberry fields. This weekend! So, if any of you reading this wants to join us and give $10 to the Hospice to look after the terminally ill, you can hop in one of our cars that will leave after church. We will just pray it doesn't rain this weekend.
