I got a text from Jacqui this morning saying she's planting garlic at Woodside. The shortest day has come and gone, but any time after it is time to put garlic in. The key is preparation, so plenty of blood and bone, sheep pellets, and the biggest, fattest cloves you can find. Then after harvest time in December you can have lovely garlic bread for the rest of the year if you get a good crop, as garlic stores well.
The weather looks miserable so I won't be joining her - come on I have been gardening all week do I not get a day off? Not anymore - this full-time gardening job means I have to squeeze in all my shopping in the weekend where I get abused by shoppers at the mall carpark for being Asian. I'm sorry, I didn't know that looking like a Chinese person means you can call me a crap driver for simply beeping my horn when you sit there blocking everyone else, not indicating, waiting for a park.
Anyway.
I do need to buy supplies like everyone else and now I have been paid, but the weather is conspiring against me. I had a challenging/mucky week, and it sounds like everyone else did as well. My friend Taua was beat up on her new job, Karyn lost her pet chicken, Dad's off sick, and Rita's suffering jet lag. The challenge isn't gardening so much it's keeping 400 people who aren't gardeners happy in their retirement. Yes, I will mow your lawns and pretty up your carpark but I don't have to put up with your abuse.
My new workmates have decided to let me be ignorantly blissful of the realities of gardening for cantankerous old folk till next week but I do owe John a drink or a bottle of something for jumpstarting my car after work. I stupidly left my light on inside because I was going to work in the dark and had to see where I put my secateurs. I wonder if he would appreciate a smoothie, but I think he needs something stronger it sounds like, it's just that I can't really buy him a beer as I don't look old enough. Yesterday one of the gardening club ringleaders asked me if I liked Massey High School, she thought I had just left it. I had to tactfully tell her I was no spring chicken. Little does she know I am three years shy of my 40th birthday and I already have white hairs from years of not gardening.
I wonder if artists ever get abused for making a mess when they make paintings. Actually I have seen some artists just spill paint everywhere and it does get called art, so, what do I know. But how can you even start a job if you can't make a mess?
I think I will take Herb lady Karyn's Book Chook advice and plant more sage because apparently it's good for alzheimers and it's demented cousin, I think I'm going to need it. It will be my last Book Chooks this Sunday so tune in!
