Gardening tales

 Went down for a walk in the Woodside garden, I laid the bait for mum - kumara leaves. So we went and picked some, as well as some chillies and a load of lavender.  My secret plants are showing shoots and the radishes have swollen.

Karyn and I are still chatting on Garden Planet. She has started her own show Korero with Karyn and it's on once a month before Garden Planet. I think Karyn is a natural and very easy conversationalist, while I am not so much. We've picked out our topics for the coming month, mine is on paper and Karyn's is on photosynthesis. 

I didn't know how some people could get such a buzz out of chemistry and mathematics, but they do. For me, looking at patterns and straight lines and things sometimes just makes my head hurt. I'm always the one breaking out of the box. I don't understand how people think sometimes when they miss the obvious because they always want things square shaped or linear. 

For example, remember crop circles? These patterns appeared in fields of wheat in England, and people really thought they were caused by aliens! How could plants be flattened in circles when farmers had grown them in dead straight lines?!  

So silly. 

I'm sure the plants can grow anywhere they really bloody well please if they want and nobody would think they were wrong for doing so. It's only silly humans who want them to grow in grids and lines so they can control them. 

I finally had enough of Facebook NZ Backyard Gardeners constant moaning of 'how do I get rid of x' that I just up and left the group. The last straw was when someone wrote 'how do I get rid of chives and mint?' My last comment was 'eat them'. 

 Life is too short to think of complete annihilation all the time. 

We had our Garden Club meeting. I manned a new books table where club members can get 20% off gardening books at PaperPlus Henderson. I felt like a real sales rep at that point. 

Here is one of the winners of the Best Bloom table. Barbara's lovely Dahlia. It's a showstopper this one.

Ssh don't tell

 The Woodside gardeners may get a surprise come spring under the fruit trees. It's all very secret squirrel but surely they cannot object? Otherwise I've planted parsley in every corner of the raised beds because there was just no parsley at all in the garden. Shocking for a so-called kitchen garden not to have this essential garnish.

Mitre 10's cafe was offering free coffee grounds so I grabbed a bag to put inWoodside's compost. And sprinkled some in the radish bed - which has now come up, and may need to be thinned out soon. 

It does look like something other than oxalis is growing in Sock's bed - I can't tell if it's parsley, coriander, phacelia, yarrow, or something else I had scattered in there in hope of green coverage. For good measure, in case nothing else grows, I've put in sweet peas seeds, dutch iris bulbs, a globe artichoke seed head, swan plant seeds,  calendula seeds, borage seeds, geranium cuttings and ice plant cuttings. Please grow! Honestly anything is better than nothing, and even oxalis can look pretty when it flowers.

I found out there always seems to be a war on other Facebook garden groups. Garden Planet is very peaceful because I don't let just ANYONE join. They have to be gardeners and love gardening. But the others I am in always seem to be full of so-called gardeners asking 'how do I get rid of this plant??". And it will be a plant that is actually useful or pretty.  If you don't want it well you can pull it out, but it might grow back. What they are really after is complete  annihilation. 

I sometimes am tempted to comment back. YOU CAN JUST NUKE IT. 

I mean honestly, do parents post on Facebook groups 'how do I get rid of children'?' If you don't want any children...then don't do the thing that produced them in the first place...maybe?

Instead I just write. 'You can't get rid of plants. But you can get rid of yourself and go live in a concrete block if you want'. 

Uncle John is very taken with my dried statice flowers and seems inspired to grow some in his garden - which has a water feature, chickens AND rabbits. I am hoping my green fingered efforts would inspire my family to greater horticultural heights. Or even the next door neighbours.

It seems my prayers have been answered, because, even though sadly the boy next door passed away, their family decided to plant two fruit trees where the gardenia was so now we have a pear tree and a plum tree next to our driveway. One for Sparky and one for Nga. RIP. 

Sisters hanging out in the garden

 Miracle! I got mum and sis to come with me to the community garden. I got sis to plant some radish and chinese veges in one of the empty beds.

I had some radish on seed tape and sis was a bit sceptical that I had 

'cheated' because it was then dead easy then to sow everything in a straight line. I said well if you want to do it the hard way and sow every single radish seed by hand and space them 10 centimetres apart you can be there all night...

I got her to water the seedlings (although this was actually to keep her busy as Lord knows if I start her on anything else I run the risk of the ire of all the other gardeners for making a mess) and then prayed for rain, and it rained that night. 

As reward for our labour, I took home some livingstone daisy seedlings and two rose cigar plants that someone had kindly potted up. Mum cut some silverbeet and we harvested a few tomatoes. 

I wrote it all down in the new 2021 diary and up on the whiteboard map of the garden.

Sis had given me the garden hunter shoes you see in the  pic that she's wearing and also the red gardening gloves. 

At school I planted some hyacinth I managed to snag the very last purple bulbs in stock at Kings. I've put them in a vase over glass pebbles and water in the library, so that in 

spring we will have glorious blooms in the reference section.

I've snuck in some purple dutch iris in Sock's bed which is now dripping with feijoas. I feel like I go on a big Easter egg hunt each time I pick them up, if easter eggs can be green look like feijoas. Hey, who said eggs have to be made of chocolate? 

It's Good Friday today and I notice my garden is now putting on a red flower show. I have pinneaple sage and red pom pom dahlias, red nerines and a red canna. Christ's blood in the garden? I know I planted them but my garden continues to surprise me by blooming all at the same time. 

I try not to surprise the other Woodside gardeners with my plantings but surely they cannot object to radish and chinese veges (it was their expired seed after all) and they are not flowers so I hope that is ok. Otherwise if I hear anything else about how I can't plant this or that I'll just add it to the growing banned plants list that I need to commit to memory.