You can pay up to $120 an hour for good gardeners around Auckland I've found. This is because a truck comes to your house and takes away all your hedge trimmings, mows your lawns, prunes everything, composts and mulches and does nasty jobs like clear up Queen Palms (they have spikes) or clears space around your swimming pool so your don't get tangled up in the bushes while having your swim.
A truck costs a lot of money to operate not to mention taking away all your green waste to the tip, and all the tools involved, like strimmers and blowers, and of course, hard labour on hands and knees and ladders. And the plants get sourced from nurseries all over Auckland.
$120 an hour doesn't seem like very much to pay at all. You can just put it towards home maintenance costs and get a tax rebate if you had an investment property, which many Aucklanders seem to have these days. Us lowly garden workers are paid 6.6% of this.
I came back home after a hard days work with nothing to show for it but cash to buy food. Perhaps if I'd been working in a vege garden I might have bought home dinner but its the world these days that I come home, tired and pass the KFC which promises instant food. However my car needs petrol otherwise it can't get to work so money needs to be spent on that, and by the time I've done all my errands I have forgotten to eat and so end up buying something that can be microwaved, go watch tv and then go to bed to get up the next day sitting in an hours traffic to do someone else's garden.
I can't take any calls on the job sorry as I'm busy working so to arrange a holiday is too hard. I am just going to stay at home and maybe have some richer friends come visit me instead. However I count my blessings I am not sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours being paid a measly $15 an hour. (The most horrible job, ever, because of radio nazis and the people who read Woman's Day magazines) I may get a cut of $3 more than what I was earning for that job but hey its money that goes into Kiwisaver I have to wait 30 more years for, and by that time maybe I can buy my own house OR live in a kennel. I have seen some for sale at first I thought they were dogs' homes but no people actually live in them. They are on wheels so if you on a slope you could slide down a hill but otherwise they are a perfect solution if you don't want to end up in jail, for sleeping on the streets. They are called 'Tiny Homes'.
I plan to park mine in the Auckland Botanic Garden and have other people maintain it for me.
Oh second miracle, Karyn and I don't need to go digging sand from the beach by night for our chickens. Louise kindly donated some sand for Martha's sandpit. I better start making it soon cos she has already dug over the maple bed garden again which I had painstakingly planted with ajugas and spider plants. The packet said 'Sand for sandpit' contains no shells. Louise said that it had been sitting under the house for about 20 years but her children are too old to play in the sand now.
