Kumara time

 Season's Greetings! (summer for me). 

It's all on in the garden. Clearing out the apple mint to make way for...kumara! Even if we don't get tubers, we can eat the leaves. I found the red variety at Kings, who were having a Boxing Day sale. So I got a bundle of slips - about two dozen, and have made three compost mounds for them to grow from. They are part of the convolvulus family and related to morning glories, which can be a weedy vine in some areas. 

I'm hoping they will take off in my garden and keep down the other weeds. I'm also trying butternut pumpkin, and beans. Jacqui has given me some basil, which I've put in pots. I've been a bit slow to start growing veges, but I think we are in for a long warm summer. 

Other Boxing Day gifts were Ehlo hanging baskets (the white, trendy looking ones to hang spider plants from), four sacks of compost (I have used three already), Autumn Joy sedum in a pot, and Pacific mix statice. The statice has been very good this year so I'm planting more. Mum likes them as they make great dried flowers, and they are easy care. 

The spider plants got a new home and moved to under the loquat, which will need a summer trim to stop the fruits getting too high and out of reach. 

Currently I'm harvesting gardenia flowers and chamomile, and have a load of apple mint leaves. It's nice to be home, as every day can be a garden day. I don't need to go to far..I have Mitre 10 and Kings Plant Barn just up the road from me. Shirley's given me apricots from her tree, and I think ours will be ready in a month's time.

I feel sorry for those people who always go away from home for the holidays. Leaving their gardens and pets behind to languish. My thing is always to stay home in the holidays and try and go away in work time! Though it's not likely as I still haven't been invited on any school trips. Maybe next year? 

RIP Karen Leonie Ginn

 My cousin has passed away (suddenly) aged 56. We laid her to rest on Wednesday in the rich volcanic soil of Mangere Cemetery, near my grandma, grandad and Aunty Lily, her mother. 

Karen was a sweet gentle soul and a cat lover, like so many of us in the family are. I remember her kindness and generosity, to us the younger cousins, though we did not see much of her as we got older. I believe she had a quiet simple life with her circle of friends and flatmates at the rest home, where she spent the last six years of her life, as friends and flatmates testified she was a valuable member of the home, caring, kind, and with a great sense of humour. She loved country and western music, especially the songs of Dolly Parton. My favourite picture is of her as a young girl with flowers in her hair in one of our family wedding photos. 

God gave me a scripture passage from Ruth 1: 16-17

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: 17Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.

Rest in Peace Karen, the Lord has called you home. 

School's out, the garden is in...

 Hooray school is out!

I feel like I'm reliving my perpetual childhood all over again. Makes a change from the retirement villages... but then I never seem to be around people my own age in any given environment. Those born in the year 1980 - where are you?? Class of '97? 

I've left my spider plants, hoya and mother in laws tongue for six weeks and they should be ok by the time I get back. They are pretty indestructible plants. I learned one of the previous librarians had ferns that she would take home to water over the holidays, but then she just lived right next door to the school. 

I caught up with the Woodside gardeners with a bbq in the garden, and now we are doing working bees on a Wednesday evening, when its much cooler. We harvested half a potato plot of summer delight potatoes so I have filled my coffers. Jacqui has also given me some basil seedlings which I have now transplanted anywhere there is room. Shirley gave me rooted geranium cuttings so I've also plonked them in wherever I can fit them, even though I've got many geraniums (or pelargoniums) already from Beth. I'm not sure what's going on with the tiny(or wee)  house saga of hers, although I could not live in one and I'm somewhat smaller than she is -  a tall person with a tiny house reminds me of the old woman who lived in a shoe. 

Mum surprisingly has got into some gardening and now has bitter melon in pots, and some strange chinese herbs that apparently costs thousands of dollars a kilo, and she's even watering the beans at Leyton's house. Next door's gardenia predicatably did not survive. I think they mowed straight over it. Maybe someone gave it to them and they thought if they planted it right in the middle of their lawn strip and gave it a bucket of water and left it, it would somehow grow. But..their taro is going great with big leaves and the weeds periodically cleared from time to time. So - taro trumps gardenia? 

Our own gardenia has had it's first blooms and had cheered up considerably with application of Epsom salts. Chamomile has started to flower, and the daisies are having their first flush, the lavenders are on their second. Amazingly, our apricot tree is having its first fruits. 

There's so much going on at the moment and I have flowers in every colour of the rainbow. When the agapanthus blooms, you know it's an Auckland summer. 

There's a few things on my bucket list for next year.

• Visit/stay at the Eastwood Hill Aboreteum near Gisborne
• Visit 'the paddocks' garden up at Warkworth
• Visit the Taranaki Rhodoendron Festival - did not get the opportunity this year, again!
• Do the Waiheke Islands Garden Safari

That's all for now. I need to have Christmas shopping done by Friday. Food is  easy, its keeping children entertained thats harder, because there's only so much chit chat you can do before everyone is tuning out and watching the boring Christmas movies of OTHER people celebrating Christmas on tv.