This season has been an exceptional one for flowers, my cuttings - lavenders, pelargoniums, geraniums have taken off. The oxalis is actually prettily flowering. Ajugas are pushing up their purple bugles. I've got a blue lily like flower that is stunning that I can't identify...photo to come, possibly a native weed, but gorgeous. Pink watsonia has bloomed. Mustard is flowering like mini sunflowers. The nasturtium brings oranges and yellows into the mix with lily pad like leaves.
Loquats are ripening. The apricot may fruit this year. And my citrus I've repotted have now recovered from their scale outbreak. Was it all the lockdown gardening that made the difference?
Last week I took a stroll down memory lane and went to visit Raewyn in the Waitakere Gardens. I notice many new developments since I gardened there two years ago, some trees had been removed, and others planted, the roses now have a few companion plants (phacelia?) and there's a row of espalier pears and apples where the climbing roses used to be. There is a lot more colour (and I must admit, a lot more garish than any garden has a right to be) but that's what the oldies wanted. They weren't keen on restful/funereal white flowers and green foliage.
Dozens of azaleas in pots lay in wait to be planted in the new garden where I recall was a sloping lawn. The spider plants I sneaked in have multiplied. But the iresine I killed didn't come back. That's what got the chop from me. "Oh no I'm not a gardener" says Raewyn who cuts the flowers for koha donations. I don't know what, in her mind, a gardener is. Someone who sows and plants? Does maintaining or pruning not count as gardening? Or picking flowers? Giles said the same thing. 'I don't do any gardening at the community garden' he claims. Then what does he do, just look pretty? "I just maintain it'. Maybe the very act of planting and sowing makes one a gardener after all.
Perhaps I was being way too radical being a gardener, planting plants where they weren't allowed. People get miffed to see something growing that they hadn't authorised. I guess that's what gets cannabis growers up in arms, wanting it to be legal. But if you make things legal, doesn't it take all the forbidden fun out of it all? Maybe they want to fight for respectablity too, well they could now join the gardening club, and don't have to hide their growing credentials. No more secrets, no more mysteries.
I watched the Secret Garden movie in the school holidays. Bad idea, because my well loved children's classic book was totally massacred in this movie. There was a dog in it! Mary didn't do any actual gardening whatsoever! And Misselwhaite Manor burned down! Talk about a spoiler, THAT wasn't in the book. The garden wasn't even really kept secret.
I found myself missing the regular Wednesday morning garden group at Waitakere. The oldies, invigorated by fresh air, sunshine, and digging would find themselves less prone to temper tantrums like Colin, and treating people like servants like spoiled, disagreeable Mary. They would miraculously ditch their walkers and habit of wandering aimlessly round indoors in circles, and rib each other while poking fun at how old fashioned they were because they believed in the magic of growing things.
Now how horrible would it have been if they didn't do any gardening, and just romped around with stray dogs and then let Waitakere Gardens fall into disrepair and potential fire hazard like in the movie.
