Bounty from the garden

 

We got grapes, one apple and the naked lady lilies are flowering. 

We had a respite from lockdown for 2 weeks back to work but then last night it was announced Auckland would have 7 more days of lockdown so I might be able to extend the garden at home after all. 

Certainly everyone seems to expect that I have more time for gardening (and to do theirs) down at Woodside on Monday evenings but I can't promise I will bring ten sacks of compost, weed the entire plot or even do any extreme makeovers - I just will be there, in case anyone needs any help wondering what this or that plant is. Maybe I will just pick the flowers. Certainly they do need picking! Though it doesn't seem likely now because it's level 3 right and we all need to stay home. 

I've got Peruvian lilies that need planting and a few dahlia tubers, but otherwise, the weather has been summery, so it's generally just long days of watching figs and feijoas ripen and watering the pot plants in the cool of the evening. 

Some might have assumed that I do floral displays and such but I have to disabuse them of that notion that I am any kind of floral artist. My floral arrangements are mostly bunches to put in a vase, or posies in a jar. I dry flowers but I don't make any pictures or wreaths or garlands. 

Nor am I any kind of writer, dancer, musician or illustrator. I have no ambition to be published or have my name in lights or any of the things that people commonly assume about me. 

Marcus Tuillius Cicero famously said -  If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. 

My own garden is admittedly small, and so is my library, but I have both and its true I have everything I need. So don't worry about me over lockdown. 

Homestay

 Ah, home sweet home. 

Thanks to Level 3 lockdowns, we get to stay at home in Auckland for at least 3 days. It's my third Monday in a row I've had off. 

But that's ok as the rain has started and the humidity is up. We ate all the peaches Golden Queen provided this year, before the worms got to them.

My courgette has fruited and is bursting, though I made a horrible mistake of caging it (to prevent being dug up by Martha) and now its kinda being strangled by the cage when I forgot to remove it. 

As you can tell Martha is a bit oblivious to any damage she does to plants and believes she is 'helping' Her plant ID is not that great! 

Aside from that, I've weeded the driveway garden and removed most of the spider plants. Swan plants are rapidly sprouting. At school, the spider plants did survive and perked up after a drink of water. 

I visited Kings Plant Barn on the weekend looking for a Kaffir Lime but they didn't have any in stock, neither did Mitre 10. I want to grow one in a pot and harvest the leaves for my new-found interest in Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. For that I need ingredients like chilis, lemon grass, galangal and thai basil. Mum is rather skeptical about me learning any cooking, but how can I reasonably make anything without having the proper ingredients? 

For some strange reason, just because I'm female, I'm meant to magically know how to cook a perfect meal from absolutely nothing, when I have never been trained as a chef or had any experience in the kitchen. Now, if I had been given say $100 and been directed to go buy a weeks worth of food with it and my own kitchen and tools to mess around in and use, maybe I might actually be interested in learning and creating. But Mum always jealously guards her kitchen like a hawk and resents any time I attempt to make anything. She won't eat anything I make either, without a whole barrage of complaints, so I've just learned to live on mousetraps and instant noodles when she's not around. 

It's Chinese New Year and my lucky red packet money IS burning a hole in my pocket. No crayfish and no kaffir limes on sale, so I'm saving for a rainy day I guess. Or the Woodside Road garage sale which is apparently this Saturday.

I don't know if we'll go back to work though with the Covid still making the rounds. I'm not too worried though, as the vaccine roll out is just around the corner. 

I saw one of my naked ladies flowers made an appearance down the back, maybe it was Mother Nature giving me a Valentines flower, though I also had two droopy roses and lots of catnip enough for a bouquet. My moon calendar indicates its the best time to plant, so, if we have a few more days in lockdown I might be able to create another garden. 

Death Threats

 I'm back at school (again). Aren't I too old to go back to school? Though I claim you can never be too old for school. I think about all the people who had to leave school at 14 and get jobs, which they mostly have lost now anyway. Why leave school at all? Get a job at school, it's a self-perpetuating thing. There's always something to do or learn at school. Plus, you do get paid in the holidays after all! 

One thing I had to go back for was my wilting spider plants. I gave them a good water, though it might take them a while to perk up, the hoya and the mother in law tongue were still the same as if I had never been away. 

Then near the end of the day as I'd parked my car by the school hall I decided to take some cuttings of lychnis that were going to seed, to see if they might take in my corner bed where it's dry as a bone. I know gardening isn't technically in my librarian job description, but I'm sure a bit of weeding and cutting (or culling) now and again applies to books as well as plants. And books WERE plants before they were ever books. Tree plants. 

I wonder if I should start a paper-making industry at school? Whenever I read 'How A Book Is Made' I am sure some of the children had never considered where books made of paper came from. (Answer - mostly sustainable forests in Canada). 

A sunflower forest is surely growing down at Woodside. Jacqui is desperate for water bearers and slaves to help out in the garden. But thing is, I'm already being hounded morning and evening to water my own garden and mum's bitter melons under pain of death. 

'The plants are drying and are going to die if you don't water them!' Says mum. But it sounds more dramatic in Cantonese. It sounds like I will die too if I don't do as she says. Or, I will be labelled a plant murderer. 'Call yourself a gardener' as she does a massive guilt trip.

I haven't actually been on a real guilt trip before. Maybe a guilt trip is one your sister who runs away from home does, after mum begs her to come back and stay - implying she will die or never see her again if she doesn't. I thought with Covid-19, travel restrictions, all guilt trips had ceased. Ergo, I don't have to go anywhere thanks, because I just can't. Sorry.

Why do we do things we don't really want to do? I've stopped doing that. I'll just say I don't want to do it. 

Mum thinks this is an excuse, but I just think it's a reasonable answer. When asked about watering the Woodside plants she will say I only want to do things when I feel like it. I decided well said mum, so I can do that too. Next time I'll probably turn into mum and say to her 'Have you watered the plants? They are gonna die!' and she will have turned into my slave, by mother-daughter vicious cycle teaching. 

Terri, it seems is her own boss and slave driving herself in her garden. Last time I contacted her she was cementing and bricklaying in the hot sun, making the rod for her back another cast for her ankle. I thought this is madness, but then I think, we just live in a fallen world, and are just spending out lifetimes picking up the pieces, patching things up, trying, little by little to make the world a better place. 

Ah summer. I suppose if it really did rain people would just complain about the humidity and how their plants are taking over the house. I don't know what else to say. I'm more of a go with the flow type person.

Dad took this pic of a late Christmas lily. Gorgeous. Now someone with a controlling type A personality would be complaining  'it's too late for Christmas, silly plant should have flowered on time' and  forced it to flower earlier. But I'm like you know what?  Everything is beautiful in it's own time. Better late than never.