Well, two weeks of school holidays are over and I managed...to stay home and not do anything. Perfect. I just had no energy. I think I saved some money too by ignoring everyone that tried to ask me out.
I now need to save heaps of money because I'm planning on going to the Taranaki Garden Festival this year. Now that I don't have a boss that talks all about it all year and says we going to go and then at the last moment says we are not.
I'll just tell my new boss, I am going on the Garden Festival to visit my garden family and get back to my roots. Surely she won't object to that, I'll just take two days off school. Possibly I will chuck in a visit to the Puke Ariki library, but really, there's no point going to a library if you can't borrow any of the books.
So it's going to cost about $2000 for five nights including accomodation, breakfast and dinner. It will be on a big coach with about 20-30 other people who are keen gardeners. Its not going to be with the Floral Club because they are going somewhere else this year - Te Awamutu. But thing is, they only have rose gardens there and I'm just not that interested in roses. I want to see the entire mountains and forest, fringed with rhododendrons.
To drive down it takes about 5 hours to get there from Auckland.
I'm sure its probably much quicker by plane, but I don't think I'm in too much of hurry.
They also have Sustainable Backyards and Fringe Garden Festival going on all at the same time. The whole region is garden-mad I tell you. They don't put on a big flower show in a sports stadium and pretend its a garden. They just have gardens there all the time and show off the whole town when the rhododendrons are in bloom. Apparently because of the volcanic rich soil, maritime climate and countryside remoteness conditions are just perfect for gardens and anything that you would see in a traditional English garden will thrive there. But thing is, its not just English gardens and flowers and such, they plant the flowers in with the pongas in the bush. And they've been doing this for 32 years. They not closing the festival like they've done in Auckland because they run out of cash, exhibitors, designers or founding fathers. It just carries on year after year after year.
So I've just got to see it for myself.
