Te Atatu Bible Chapel on a Tuesday evening once a month is abuzz with activity. It's the meeting of the Te Atatu Floral and Garden Circle. Ladies bring flowers to share and to swap. There are arrangements, produce, floral aids, speakers, floral magazines and yummy snacks. You can bring your tools to be sharpened by the tool sharpening man. (He's the hired hubby, the other husbands act as chauffeurs)
I'm really thinking of joining and was blessed to win chocolates, buy cheap plants - passionfruit seedlings and a clivia, swapped bromeliads, and hear all about exciting group outings to gardens and floral festivals far away.
But the best thing is learning about flowers.
There's all different kinds
Roses, dahlia, dombeya (a kind of hibiscus), plumbago, goldenrod, naked ladies, hydrangea, mandevilla, camellia, they are all held up for us to see, with tips on how to grow them, and how to get the best out of them.
Could I be a flower girl? Jane kindly gave me a lift as she lives just down the road in Swanson so I don't even have to drive there. The guest speaker informed us all about compost and bokashi buckets. I've learned bokashi buckets are quite expensive at $70 a bucket and that compost requires 30% greens and 70% browns. So I was right after all to invest in a paper shredder to put in more carbon brown material - after all paper is just dead trees. But each time I have to remember to make layers.
We were also given a discount on worm farms if we signed up our email address. So, apart from the miracle paid gardening job (I have now made enough in cash to pay for my own gardening boots) I may be able to hire some worm workers after all with minimum outlay. I just hope they like their new boss.
Each months there's competitions for best blooms, singles and doubles, junior and senior arrangements and at the end winners add their points up to receive garden vouchers. So if you are into competitions, garden clubs are the thing! Many of the ladies arrange flowers for hospice, and other charities. Next months challenge is 'green and classy'. I'm thinking maybe I could arrange wisps of maidenhair fern and spider plant swords, with trailing elegant passionfruit tendrils.
The only thing is, with all this activity going on how am I going to fit it in with the rest of my busy gardening schedule?
