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.
