Forget-me-not

Les didn't forget. In fact he was waiting for me for nearly an hour at the church because I must have told him 9am. But I thought I told him around 10. Or maybe he heard 9. I had to get the funcargo loaded with tools and buy plants and then ran into an old schoolmate at Kings Plant Barn, who told me our high school was having a 50th reunion. I tried not to be distracted then went to pick Les up at his place but nobody answered the door. I should have more faith, he took the bus to church. I'm still not sure whether he wants me to pick him up or if he can get there himself since his place is not on the way. But it was cold that morning and I didn't want to get stuck in rush hour traffic at 9.

After an admonishing and forgiveness we got stuck into the triangle garden, weeding and removing canna lily. Then we planted hollyhocks, statice, valerian and pink alyssum. We filled a big sack with cannas which I then took home and plonked in my garden, as Graham the elder had given the ok to remove them. Did you want them planted elsewhere at church? Nope! Get rid of them. So that took the rest of the afternoon.

I'm going back there again today plus picking up Les from home this time and he may have a cappucino for his trouble this time, as yesterday I had run out of money, had spent it all on plants so with my spare change we ended up sharing a sausage roll at the corner cafe.

We still have to fill that hollow and weed the shady bed and tidy up the other bed. And take photos, and sort out trees. I don't like the shady bed because it's got too many bushes in it right next to the church building and they are just too big. I've added clivias and busy lizzies and begonias but it certainly could do with more colour than dreary castor oil plants and camellias, griselinia and cocrosmias and pseuudopanax that's already there, before it was weeded nightshade and oxalis grew all over. I want to take them all out and start again, but it's a permanent fixture, plus covered with scoria and indestructible tarpaulin weedmat (the weeds just grow right on top).

On my list of items to buy -

heart shaped pot for entry bed
pea straw mulch to stop weeds in new flowerbed
something colourful for the pot
trees - although haven't staked out where to plant yet.

However, I must get dressed, have breakfast and get going otherwise my forgiveness quota may run out. At least Les is forgiving not like my boss if I am minutes late gives me the third degree. The gate doesn't open till seven and it takes time to walk to the other side of the village I don't have the swipe unlike some people who can park right at the entrance! Auckland, what a rat race.

C-cold

Temperatures have plummeted to below zero and I'm now wearing thermals to work. But today, hooray I have a day off and tomorrow, as well as Queen's Birthday (Happy Birthday to Her Majesty) to 'get some things done at home'. Which is code for gardening the church garden.

My to do list -

enlist trusty helper Les to help me with the triangle garden beside church doors
dig out cannas
weed
plant with busy lizzies or hollyhocks
compost
rearrange bushes and trees near day care fence
buy trees - 3X feijoas, olives, bottlebrush, kowhai, manuka
buy guaras - as many as I can for a fringe flower garden beside the church
somehow find room to plant mountain flax
plant spider plants as groundcover
contact tree guys about removing tree again
fill in roadside bed hollow

Now I must focus and not get distracted. I have been reading 'Plants of the Bible' and 'Planting a Bible Garden' as well as 'Inspirational Gardens of New Zealand'.  All very inspiring. I found a biblical themed wedding garden in Sumner called Gesthemane Gardens which has the Lords Prayer in clipped boxwood. What happened was some Russian sailors arrived in Lyttleton they were stranded because their captain refused to pay his crew. They were given food and support by the residents and in return they helped with the garden and even built a small chapel.

The income tax return can wait. If I get this done today, I can rest easy knowing we will have plants that flower for spring and trees for summer shade.  I just hope/pray Les is around and hasn't forgotten.

Death and taxes

Sorry to be depressing but looks like the next thing to do is fill out my tax return.
A lot has happened this week, but then a lot hasn't happened.

I was offered another gardening job, and if I wasn't already working for Bark I would have taken it. It's even more pay...and they have separate mowing teams, so I wouldn't even have to touch a mower if I moved. But then I thought how much I would miss the real gardening with oldies rather than simply tidying up parks and reserves for a company owned by Australians. Although you never know what may happen in the future, because I have a feeling Riverpark Reserve has my name on it. That's if I'm allowed. I may get in trouble though - who planted this garden in the middle of the reserve, who??

On Tuesday we had a roadshow which I embarrassed myself by falling asleep in, but I did warn them beforehand. It's just the big boss was there and saw me nodding off. Powerpoint presentations after lunch tend to do that to me. I don't know how I made it through university even. I also found out my Permaculture Design Certificate means nothing because it's not NZQA approved. My boss said it was a gypsy degree taught by people in beards and sandals. Well actually some of the teachers were barefoot but I didn't let on.

By today (Saturday) I was fairly exhausted and ignored yet another community gardening working bee text, I don't quite understand why I keep getting them when I've been working all week anyway. I thought they were only supposed to happen once a month. And the church garden still hasn't got off the ground. We had a walk round last week but all that came of it was I was not allowed to plant anything because of some bureaucratic reason. Nobody offered any suggestions on what plants they would like, except hydrangeas, but since they got mowed over I decided I wasn't going to try them again.  I'm thinking of calling the guys who used to do the Mucking In shows and ask them to come help cut through some of the red tape.

Aside from that I've planned to take two days off work to get stuck in to that and have a whole lot of mountain flax that could go on the roadside verge but I'm holding off buying any plants because it's exhausting knowing you have $350 left to spend except it's your own money that will get reimbursed later. I think the church may be worried I will buy 350 plants and ask everyone to help plant them. It's not easy being a gardener, you make more friends being a baker or morning tea helper, because everyone enjoys having a cup of tea with a biscuit and chatting more than planting plants and picking flowers.

Perhaps I shall get on the pulpit and remind everyone that 'He who sows sparingly, reaps sparingly, and he who sows generously, reaps generously'. But somehow people don't understand what that means, and some churches have got the idea that has something to do with gambling and money.
Speaking of money, since I have to fill out a tax return...and am wondering if I shall take the advice of one oldie who said why don't I ask my boss for a pay rise.

Good question, why don't I? I've never asked anyone for a pay rise before. I wonder if I am worth 50 cents more in the dollar. Certainly it would help buy more plants for this church garden....which is one of the thousand and one things I must do before I die.

They paved Paradise

And put up a parking lot - and there is a tree museum which you pay money to go and see the dead trees - the Kauri Museum, up north. I have been...and it's a bit unnerving to see a huge Kauri tree sawed in half and all it's guts displayed and turned into furniture polish.

The kauri trees are dying - and it's all our fault.

Of course, the official line is that a water borne fungus is killing them, but the fungus is only a symptom of the damage WE humans have been doing to these mighty trees over the decades. What is happening is the kauri trees are stressed because we have been stealing their water. Go up to the Waitakere Ranges, and you will see the evidence (except you can't go into the forest because of the rahui - the ban) by simply observing the dams. Those dams supposedly supply the whole of Auckland with fresh water. But they do not. Rainwater is collected in a huge reservoir, dammed, and filtered - treated with chemicals, and diverted into plastic pipelines which we pay Watercare for.

Our streams have been drying up and polluted because not enough rainwater is flushing them. Instead greywater, wastewater is polluting them. Runoff from roads is polluting the drainage systems - all piped and underground, instead of feeding the riparian waterways that used to be there. Queen Street was a former watercourse. It is now an oil slick for cars that pollutes the Auckland Harbour with it's runoff. When Kauri, who's roots are deep and wide, are not getting fresh water that is flowing around them, and are sitting in stagnant water, moulds develop at their roots thus killing them slowly and they are dying back. Our Kauri do not need injections to develop immunity for this 'disease'. They need fresh water!

I am very much indebted to permaculturalist Sepp Holzer for helping me to see what's happening. His solution would be, release the dams and restore the streams of Auckland. Yes collect and store water but in the wetland low lying areas are natural habitat for wildlife. Swamp and wetlands should never be drained, they are the filters of our water, and they keep it flowing and fresh with the tides.

Queen Street ought never to have been paved over. We should restream it and divert the cars and buildings somewhere else, to higher ground perhaps have our main street on K Road and Great North Roads, and leave the gully to be a stream/watercourse again. Plant it with ferns. Our former water supply, Western Springs, used to pump fresh water to the whole of Auckland back in the day. Because it was a spring. Every home ought to have a well, there is water underground that has stayed fresh because it's constantly moving.

Yes we have a problem with Auckland traffic, but people don't see it as a circulation problem, underground. Auckland is one day going to have a massive heart attack ie. volcano eruption because of what we are doing to the land. Our soil is becoming hard and compacted - the heartbreak clay it becomes when all humus and forest litter is removed. If left in a natural state, properly stewarded and not overgrazed by lawnmowers, the soil becomes like a sponge, absorbing water and feeding tree roots that can go on for miles. At current our soil is showing signs of toxicity and the symptoms are our mightiest trees that anchored the isthmus and flanked our forests are sick and dying.

I think it's criminal that people are paying to drink bottled water when we could have fresh water from a stream or well for free if it was not polluted. Plus I don't know what people do with all those plastic bottles, send them to China to make more?

There is a way to live in harmony with the land. If people would stop raping and consuming and exploiting it and let it rest - nature wants to reclaim it and restore it to it's proper hydrological balance. I can't probe the water table to tell you exactly what's wrong as I'm not a land surveyer - just a practicing permaculturalist - but imagine a vision of a future where instead of a ten lane motorway fettucine junction we had living streams flowing all over Auckland and we could all ride to work and school on a kayak.

A bird in the bush

Herb lady Karyn fed me well for my birthday, I was shouted lunch at the mall, a free meal voucher at a restaurant AND a wild bird seed bell feeder. I have hung up the bird seed bell on the peach tree. Speaking of food, according to our Auckland biodiversity speaker at last night's Floral Circle meeting, there are some foods you shouldn't feed birds, unless you want to attract rats with wings (pigeons), indian mynahs, sparrows and cuckoos. What, aren't those birds? Well yes but they are 'undesirable' birds. What we really ought to be feeding, is the natives, and they don't like to eat your tip top bread crusts and mouldy scones. Isn't that racist about birds? Hmm maybe.

See the problem is this, just like our Auckland housing crisis, our native birds have a housing crisis too, because they can't afford to live in the city either, due to lack of decent trees. Trees that have lucious fruit and nectar dinners and warm cosy cavities for nesting in. Solution - plant more trees? Even though they take years and years to grow? Maybe...

I don't think the immigrant birds are crowding them out. They are used to roosting on powerlines and nesting in nasty phoenix palms. Scavengers would make their home anywhere, but natives are a rare breed and set in their ways and maybe just a little bit fussy. Or more discerning. If you've always lived in a Kauri or Puriri and suddenly these trees are dying or being cut down and no new ones being grown, well yes I think that sums out the current housing crisis. They don't want to move to...Australia. Heaven forbid! Can you imagine living in Australia, with Australians? No neither can I.

And there is a slight problem with our native birds. Some are flightless and some just can't fly that far.  I don't know if they afraid, but like me they get a bit woozy on a long haul flight. Besides, there is no place like home...if nobody demolishes it to make a high rise apartment block.

Thankfully we can provide temporary accommodation with nesting boxes if there are no trees available, but these trees and shrubs are recommended growing for native birds.

Kauri
Puriri
Kowhai
Cabbage Tree
Pohutukawa

Some of the native birds - tuis, fantails, riflemans, warblers, kereru, bellbird have taken a liking to fancier hotels and restaurants in exotics accommodations such as..

Loquat
Cherry or Plum
Bottlebrush

I walked near through Tui Glen yesterday, or former Tui Glen, I am sad to say I have never heard any tuis there in all the time I've walked or biked through that park. I recall that place has quite a few phoenix palms (WEED!)  though, so a better name for it would be Pigeon Glen, because that's what they attract.  But I am going to remedy that by establishing more natives and bird friendly trees in my garden. Which I could rename Tui Selina. My sister Glennis already has way too many places named after her already.

Ayrlies revisited

Yesterday Louise and her husband Derek and I made our pilgrimage to Ayrlies Garden for the Plant Fair. There were many people visiting and buying plants and enchanted by the wonderful atmosphere of Ayrlies. Last time I was there with friends in September, when the magnolias were in bloom, this time, it's all about autumn colour - the golden liquidamber trees, the purple tibouchinia, the vivid red forest pansy, and the yellow hot pokers stood out for me. As we strolled around the paths exclaiming at every corner, how masterful Bev had planted her garden - the groundcovers beside  the stream and waterfalls especially. I did not see one weed, or even bare soil or mulch, every inch was covered by living plants.

Several signature plants we liked included the swamp cypress, one was growing right in the pond, the waterlilies, the giant gunnera, the ponga ferns, the fluffy papyrus reeds, the zigzag plant (I don't know the name). I loved touching the furry plants beside the path and thought of all the different textures Bev had in her garden, one thing you can't say is that Ayrlies is boring. Having so many different plants all in one place makes for unusual combinations and juxtapositions - succulents in forests, fruit salad plants climbing up pine trees, natives with exotics, somehow it all works. To me it's a real Auckland garden,  just like our people. Diverse, multicultural, vibrant.

I also liked the little touches that made the garden more than just a collection of plants, the little resting areas and gazebos along the path, the wooden stumps that can double as seats, the quirky ponga log dog. The garden, created from bare paddock in 1964, is more than 50 years old. We came across a 90 year old visitor who recalled how much it had grown over the years, she could remember when the temple pergola was the only feature coming up the path and now it was surrounded by mature trees.

Ayrlies is an artist's garden. It's about colours and textures and layers. It's vistas and frames and contrasts. You won't find a vege patch although there is an orchard/meadow that is more for effect than producing fruit. Somehow my petty envy at the size and vision of this garden fell away and became inspiration instead. It's also about having fun and experimenting. We are so blessed to be able to grow a range of plants here from succulents to conifers that the whole is more than the sum of it's parts. It was Ayrlies that introduced me to the possibilities of colour, being more than flowers but leaf shape and form. You don't need to plant in rows and straight lines. Instead of levelling the ground, work with it. Create hills and gullies, peaks and valleys.

Louise said she must come back again. I bought iris  from the plant fair stand and so wanted to linger for a few hours more, if it hadn't started to rain on our way back. I am going to plant those iris and dream about future gardens once more.

From Desert to Paradise

I have a to do list -
Plant peas along fence.
Sow broad beans, radishes.
Empty compost bin into my raised beds.
Source plants for St giles church garden roadside - olive trees, grapevine, rosemary, lavenders, citrus, manuka,
Get some more bulbs in - hope it's not too late
Organise tree mulch for community garden/church
Train passionfruit on wires.

I have been reading Sepp Holzers book 'From Desert to Paradise' about his permaculture practises in creating lakes and ponds to catch and store water to create gardens where there was once desert. Feeling so inspired that I pitched this idea to my boss about making Glenfield College lower paddock and rugby field into a lake so the residents of Orchard retirement village can look out on to a beautiful lake, with wildlife and abundant garden instead of just weeds and shorn grass. He didn't think was feasible, and said I had to focus on my task, which was blowing the leaves off the steps. He also said I had to buy my own property and then I could do what I like with it. I am not sure this is true.  I should have reminded him that, I am only on what will soon be BELOW minimum wage and cannot afford to buy any property. Plus, I am not like Bev McConnell who had a wealthy husband who could bankroll her plant mania.

I am not sure where this dislike of the priveliges of wealth comes from. Maybe it was when I found out even when I part owned some land, I wasn't allowed to even do anything with it. It had all been spoken for and the part where I lived, mum seemed to resent that I was gardening it. She would in an instant turn it into a carpark if she had her way. A carpark is just an urban version of a desert. For example, none of the residents of the retirement villages actually own the land they live on, one person who is the CEO owns it all and he doesn't even live there. The residents, many who have sold all they had to go and live there, can't really do what they want with their bit of land. Creating a garden that they like can be like trying to pull hens teeth because of all the bureaucracy involved I was reminded I am not gardening for these people who live there, I am supposed to be gardening for the big CEO who owns all the land. But that's just one person --- who never comes and sees the garden....and makes more money from people dying than from people living, because if someone dies, they can then sell their unit on to the next person and make a profit from it.

I tried to think of a way out of this moral quandary but so far came up with no solution. For example, if I bought some land, in say Katikati, or Mangawhai or anywhere outside of Auckland since its unaffordable to buy here where all my family live,  would I really be able to build my own earth house and have my own garden on it or would I have to battle with bureaucracy like all the orchardists there do because the government dicatates what they can grow by subsidising chemical agriculture. Plus, if I bought some land, would I then be able to live there all by myself because I don't see myself doing it on my own. I learned from couples who went and did that there were pros and cons to living off the land that could not pay for itself, so one would have to commute elsewhere to work to pay the bills but then the one staying at home could not handle looking after it by themselves. Their solution was to have children and train them to become farmers so that the land would not be lost. Otherwise they would sell up and move into a retirement village. But what if your children hated the expectation of having to become a farmer and didn't want that land, especially if, after years of chemical agriculture it had become so degraded that it would take years to restore it.

My thoughts are its very easy for the rich to say, just buy your own land and develop it. Speculate and then flip it and then invest in a property on the Gold Coast, which is a blight on the landscape. I have been there, its just towers of apartments on the beach.  But land is not so easily bought and sold that way these days, it's treated as a commodity, available to the highest bidder,  and for the people who genuinely need it, it is withheld from them.  I try not to think about it and just decide that if land is given to me, I will look after it regardless.  I don't need to go buying and selling and climbing the 'property ladder'. After all it is the meek who inherit the earth. The rich can just go live in their sky towers.

Spaces have been filled

The Border is coming along nicely, I have planted three silver ferns (ponga) and a wheki ponga, divided some reeds and fennel, added a little john callistemon bottle brush - great for moist soil - moved some carex, transplanted a blechnum fern and swan plants, as well as cuttings of abutilon that hopefully will root. I moved a hen and chickens fern. Then watered them in and added blood and bone and  a mulch of manuka leaves.  There's also a a sprouting choko in the mix too, having cut back the grapevine to one side.

I made a little edging with mugwort sticks. The dragons gold kowhai was moved to the front garden,  although not sure if the transplant will survive as the roots were looking a bit sad. Also shifted a climbing rose 'Cecile Brunner' to near the peach tree in hopes it will clamber up the tree.

Elsewhere have added more to my Princess Diana flowerbed. Plants added include ivy geranium, scented geranium, abutilon, mint, catmint, lambs ears, marjoram, clary sage.

I made cuttings of hydrangea, hibiscus and luculia. The hydrangea cuttings have been laid lengthwise along the shady side of the fence and some uprights in the reserve.

Sounds like I had accomplished a lot this week, but there's still a bag of pebbles to use somewhere, that I got sucked into the buy more for less spiel, when I bought several for church and had one left over but one bag of pebbles is not enough for the entire bed in front of the house, so am not sure what to do with it now. Also it's very heavy!

Am still not happy with the maple bed (or Snowy's bed) as the guaras have died down and bulbs are coming up, but still looking a bit ratty. I have put in two clivia there but its not really going with the established licorice plant and lavenders. Too much silver, and there's purple sage which is ok, but seems to be getting eaten by caterpillars. So am not sure what to do. There's lambs ears, and also bracken fern that only looks nice with fresh growth, the dead fronds look terrible. Maybe I should just renga it.  Although that would involve finding extra rengas somewhere. There's plenty of spider plants but they aren't growing there. Perhaps more hen and chicken ferns? I don't know. Seems like a dead area, nothing will grow there, or it will grow but eventually dies. I want something permanent that will look good all year round. Am almost tempted to put star jasmine in, but feel that star jasmine is best used as a climber not a groundcover.

So still more to do and think about, PLUS getting the church garden started now that the main established beds are tidied up and complete. Thanks to my workmate John for help getting clivias in!  I need to buy or source new plants especially trees and shrubs soon and get them in the ground before winter.

Hoping to visit Ayrlies this Friday for the Ayrlies Plant Fair - it's on Friday and Saturday entry $10 and get some plants and a truckload of inspiration.