Well it was too good to last.
Auckland has gone back up to level 3 alert as the nasty coronavirus rears its ugly head. Or body. Or whatever viruses have. Coronas.
But this means yesterday, I was able to get into the garden again..hooray, so I have claimed more territory for New Gardenland, extending the cabbage patch area beyond the azalea to the next concrete fence post, which was just enough to use the last batch of compost. The compost didn't look very composty, it looked kind of dusty really, or fluffy, because it mostly consisted of lawn clippings and vege scraps. I cut down the green manure crop of mustard, and also for good measure added some dried yarrow and lambs ears, made a fennel woven fence to cordon it off, and manuka and feijoa tree prunings. This was all placed on top of turned over turf that was a lot easier to dig thanks to the weather being rather benignly cloudy, not wet mud and not baked hard by the sun as of yet.
I didn't have any gypsum or blood and bone or horse manure or seaweed, that's still to come. But I have made a start. It should all break down a bit and be sort of workable by spring, and I'm planning on an initial crop of potatoes, provided I can find some that are sprouting. In the meantime I have shifted one diosma that was being crowded out by the sweet wormwood. a pineapple sage division, and a lavender cutting. I've also snuck in some pelargonium cuttings. If these don't take I will just clear it for potatoes.
The potting mix bag got ripped open for the aloes, which are now in the last remaining pots I could find, and some are planted by the driveway, I'm thinking they do a bit better on the cooler and less sunny side of the house, as they seem to be badly scorched by direct sun, which is a bit strange seeing as all the books say they love full sun. They also don't enjoy frost either or being exposed and would rather be sheltered by other plants.
After this sudden burst of activity my nails are now extremely in need of a manicure, and my mind is on further parts of the garden that need attention, like the languishing raised bed trough, the hanging wall mangers, and the very back corner that has grown wild with applemint. I pulled out one remaining rose that had sent out a very long and spindly barbed shoot, without regret, seeing as it had hardly flowered at all and was still taking up space in one of the buxus beds. The buxus could do with a clip but I am still not sure at this stage what shape I should clip them into. If it were up to me I wouldn't have buxus hedging in the first place, I would have corokia or manuka, or possibly rosemary. Having a buxus hedging means you can't grow much beside it as the buxus are taking in all the nutrients. One day it might possibly get blight as that's whats happened to all the buxus in England, and so they don't have all those miles of hedging anymore that is the English hallmark.
Buxus and roses. Yes well that's the vestiges of my brothers' attempts at gardening that was all the rage in the 90s. Our house is possibly the only one in the entire street that had a buxus hedge with roses, before that it was conifers and flax on a bed of scoria. I shouldn't mock it though there are worse gardens. The house further down has a berm full of agapanthus and no lawn at all but pebble rock, a magnolia and a tree aloe. It's the height of minimalism. The owners have left the agapanthus to go to seed and don't even weed between them. I think they just don't like mowing, but surely they could make the effort to clip off the dried agapanthus heads. At least they aren't yuccas.
