August has me like the windshield wipers, or intermittent gardening. I garden, pause a bit between showers, then carry on. I manage to ...
-Scatter village green seeds from Yates, according to the packet this Vintage Border Mix contains 43 flower varieties.
- fork my garden beds, then scatter granulated gypsum over them to break up the clay
- transplant two potted eggplants to the sunny bed by the garage, in hopes they will fruit better rather than be eaten by bugs.
- plant peppermint
- transplant two rhubarbs at Woodside Garden
-win a potted parlour palm thanks to Fabulous Garden Mama, now in the library
-plant growing potatoes in the bottom of the sack
-transplant two potted capiscums, also in danger of being eaten by bugs
Basically I am tidying up loose ends here and there. It's rather like housework only outside, but strange thing is I don't keep a household diary or describe my interior decoration endeavours to the extent I do this garden. I wonder why. Is it because we've had the same carpet for 40 years in the lounge, and my parents don't want to change it because it would mean moving all their stuff?
Is my furniture placement that inconsequential?
I guess thats what drives people to own their own homes because they can then do extreme makeovers, the same as I am attempting to do at my garden and library. However my way is a little bit here and there, because if you totally gutted the place and built a new one I think there would be an outcry.
The one thing I don't like that I can't get rid of is those buxus hedges my brothers put in now because they look square and ungainly and kikuyu is growing right through them. Sometimes I read articles in the NZ Gardener magazine, about some garden that's been designed, and it will say 'the owner wanted this and that' but it will never say their name. It will show photos of the garden but never show their faces. Inevitably it will say 'the owners only visit on weekends' and 'require it to be low maintenance' and then it will name some prominent designer who shows off their skill designing gardens for people that don't live there half the time because they have four other homes they own. Like you need at least four homes since people divorce and remarry and then divorce again I guess. The owners then pay someone else to maintain the garden for them. It's called climbing the property ladder or playing Monopoly. You know you've reached the top when you can rent out your place as a hotel.
I thought about how the other half live and wonder what they do if they don't garden. Spend the rest of the time doing housework in their gigantic homes? Bake cookies? Go on $2000 holidays? I don't know. Maybe it's best I don't...
Am excited to report I saw my first - freesia, and gladioli of the season.
Flowers blooming now include hellebores, hardenbergia, magnolia, calendula, polyanthus, bergenia, diosma.
To come - lavender and echium.
It's blowing a wild wind out there. I have finished reading Tom's Midnight Garden. It is a classic children's book by Phillipa Pearce, but I confess that I still prefer the Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. My formative years I don't remember doing anything exciting on the children's playground, with its noise, shouting and bullrush games. After you've hung upside down like a monkey a couple of times over some bars sitting on some bark chips it just gets real boring real fast. But the enchantment and miracle of a garden...that will never grow old.
