Garden + Library

 It looks like my part of the world will be Garden Planet after all. We won't be recording many more shows as now I am too busy with my new full time term time job at Sunderland School as librarian. So I am taking my plants with me and now spiderman spider plants are now hanging out on the shelves. The library had only fake plants before so of course I had to remedy this. 

Sorry Mitre 10! I won't be forklifting plastic bags of compost or selling bottles of Round up. Instead I've blagged some begonias off cousin Winnie, and I'm only going to Mitre 10 for garden club raffle prizes. Last Tuesday the winners scored gerberas, platycodons, basil, a windchime and a Kids Mitre 10 DIY birdhouse. Cenny took over the best blooms table where my red hippeastrums won second place. Next to this giant sunflower. 

I ordered a moon calendar from Puriri Lane and it has now arrived, telling me that now is the most prolific time for planting. If only I had time to do it. Maybe after I get this library organised, which is annoying me as all the books were all over the place in a strange order  and I was tripping over books and people and wires just to get anywhere. I also have monkeys in the library I need to tame (with bananas?) who like swinging and sliding down the bannisters.

It's either monkeys or gorillas or rabbits.  Half my potted plants are now by the stairs and I have my office in the cupboard under the stairs which could either be magical or a torture chamber depending on how big your imagination is. But the Sunderland students are very forgiving of me as their new librarian rearranging everything though not as huggy as the Ranui children. They like the same books though. 

We had another heavy rain warning on Friday but managed to escape being flooded out again though why it had to rain near 5pm just as I was heading home I don't know, but my car made it through the flash flooded roads instead of me attempting to swim or walk on water. 

I surprised Rita last week by giving her my hanging trough baskets to put on her new balcony and we did a detour to Palmers (where I won $10 in Palmer's Rewards) for some plants and more $10 potting mix so now she now has no excuse not to exercise her green thumbs. Palmers had some lady's mantle hidden away under the shade house so they are now relocated in my garden as part of my waterproof super combo border of taro, nasturtiums and lady's mantle. 

 

Mitre 10 Makeover

 If I were to makeover the Lincoln Road Mitre 10 Garden Centre....

Because it is basically a flat square with walls all around, it would be easy to design something that plays on this perfect, square shaped symmetry.  No more plants in boring long supermarket style rows. I would open out the space to make it more customer friendly, so that when you walk around it's like being IN a garden. 

As you walk into the Garden Centre, I would have an arch covered with climbing plants, and in the nook near the entrance a water feature display with ferns and hanging baskets and orchids in the cool shade. Then off to the side a little library (an actual little library of gardening books knocked together out of wood off cuts from the ingenious Mitre 10 handyman carpenters) and painted in Mitre 10 colours. Then as you walk on further all around the walls of Mitre 10 are trellis with climbers growing up the walls, and in each nook there's a different display of plants, with low hedging all around to contain them. 

There is paving laid down so you can see the different paths you can make using different materials. And around the edges of the paths, edging plants and annuals. Then there's a hillock made of ground cover plants. In the centre of the space is a green playground where children can play and climb trees in the middle. And on the sunny side of Mitre 10 is a large square foot kitchen garden of raised beds near the Columbus Cafe, which has lots of herbs around and coffee plants.

Then there's the she sheds and Men caves display. The She Sheds are filled with pink tools and the Mens caves have blue tools, and this is also where the gifts section is. 

There is a butterfly garden display and beehives and worm farms section with all the plants needed for that. And around Mitre 10 there would be a hedge plant clipped with the words Mitre 10 in it, like I've seen in motorways around Toronto, where, instead of billboards, businesses clip their names into hedges. 

There is also a clearance corner of plants that are desperately needing a new home, and they have signs stuck in their pots like 'take me home' and 'love me, I'm cheap'. 

There is also seats in this garden centre so shoppers can rest their weary legs for a bit apart from the cafe and read some DIY gardening books or maybe talk with the staff who are busy ferrying plants from place to place and looking after them. In the indoor section are the house plants on display. 

There is a contest to grow the biggest orange pumpkin at Mitre 10 because it's the biggest, most orange store in town. Along with orange, tangelo and mandarin trees of course. Every day as the giant pumpkins grow measurements are taken along with the giant beans stalks and sunflowers that can reach to the rafters of the largest mega garden centre in all of New Zealand. Try and beat that, Bunnings. 

Get your $10 Potting Mix!

 Mum saw an ad in the Herald - Palmers Garden Centre in Remuera had $10 potting mix. 35 Litres of Yates Premium so we swooped in and bought two bags. 

It might be the only Palmers left in Auckland now but it's still going strong. Ok my loyalty to Kings and Mitre 10 is beginning to waver. I still had my green Palmers reward card in my wallet. The cafe was selling sweet and savoury tempting treats. There were orchids, fruit trees, ferns, a packed gift shop, perennials, severed Buddha heads.. but every time I asked for something they didn't have it. No Lady's Mantle sorry and no Moon Calendar. Does that mean I have to go all the way to Puriri Lane again? Many of the staff looked elderly like it was their retirement job. I wonder if that will be me  when schools decide they don't want librarians anymore. 

I bought a picture book though, it was called 'Who said kiwis can't fly?' Yes they were selling books, and they even had a little info centre that was lined with gardening reference books that the staff used. It wasn't all Material Safety Data Sheets. 

Wasn't it Cicero who once said 'If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need' ? 

Yes but who was Cicero? According to Wikipedia - Marcus Tullius Cicero was 'a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire"

Huh. I don't think 'optimate' is even a word but it does say his cause of death was 'Beheaded by order of Marc Antony'. 

Hmm maybe he had a few enemies....

This coming storm tropical cyclone warning for Sunday doesn't look good. I'll have to get my gardening all in before it swoops in and lashes the plants. 

My Mitre 10 Makeover plan may have to wait. After my reconnaissance mission yesterday I had a think and ideas started popping into my brain. If I don't write them down soon they may explode. But that's another post. 

Blooming...

Hippeastrums

Hooray the snails didn't totally munch my hippeastrums. Again mum had something to criticise, they were now too tall. I don't think she particularly likes any plant that grows upward. 

 I didn't care and she came with me to Kings Plant Barn anyway. She said she wasn't interested in plants because she wasn't going to be around to see them grow but then I thought does that mean I can plant what *I* like in the garden unless she does this vicious mother-daughter thing in which when she dies, I die too? Like those mummy cats that got buried with their owners because when their owners died and they couldn't bear leaving them alone in the afterlife. Or those widows who throw themselves onto the funeral pyre to show their love for their dead husbands. Suttee I think they call it. Otherwise what life can they face alone? I am not married to my mother though, it sure feels like I'm in some kind of weird bondage all my life like I can never get away. 

 Both Kings and Mitre 10 don't have Lady's Mantle so I will have to go further afield. It's a weed supressor which is better than putting cardboard over everything.  Or Roundup. 

I can't believe it's still being sold at Mitre 10. When it's been banned in all other countries, or at least restricted. But no you can just buy any amount you please, spray it over everything, even at school, in bare feet and no protective gear and nobody will bat an eye. And if you die of cancer nobody seems to link it with all those poisonous chemicals you've mixed up in your own backyard, and artificial fertilisers and pesticides made from the remnants of World War 2 weaponry. Agent Orange, Napalm, whatever. 

When you see the telltale browned off ring of Roundup spray ringing trees and edges of turf it's not the prettiest sight to see. But who cares the weeds are dead right? Plus if you get buried in a lawn cemetery they'll use it there too. As nobody bothers to look after any 'garden' at a cemetery anymore. You might as well be buried in the middle of a motorway and have cars race all over your dead body. That way no weeds, flowers or anything else will ever grow. 

I am not sure how this is how I want to be remembered (have a street named after me, or a city, or a town) but it just seems a weird thing we have poppies for fallen soldiers but don't really do much flowers for anyone else.  I tried to think what flowers my mum would like but she just said I had too many and the only one she really likes is that wild jasmine and ginger that grows like a weed in the forest and the City Council has actually banned. 

 

Budding...

Dad got excited.

He had to take these pics of the budding hippeastrums at Epsom while the two ones in my pot at home got eaten by snails/slugs. However all is not lost as there are some more shoots coming out and I moved the pot to higher, drier ground under the eaves of the house and sprinkled my secret weapon to stop- snails- in-their-tracks trap - rolled oats all around the base of the bulbs.

Otherwise we are keeping our heads above water. I bought two new watering cans from Mitre 10, a large heavy duty one and a smaller one for little pots that I trust won't crack like those cheap Warehouse ones. 

Gladioli have unfurled - I have now both purple and scarlet sword lilies. Great for cutting. 

I'm reading Bizarre Botany. Its a Kew Garden book so it's a bit heavy on the worship at the altar of Charles Darwin...but otherwise it's fascinating. It's an A-Z miscellany on all things botanic.

 Did you know that taro, lady's mantle and nasturtiums have a special protective coating that is hydrophobic which makes them water repellent and scientists are trying to replicate the cell structure of these plants to make water repellent roofs, paints, materials? Wouldn't that be something that's sorely need in Auckland???

I can just imagine our roofs and walls being wrapped in taro/lady's mantle/nasturtium leaves and the water just sliding off in little globules. They could spray this leafy substance on anything and it wouldn't leak. And unlike a teflon non-stick coating, it would be plant based so it would be win-win and good for the environment. 

Otherwise, our leaky homes (or mouldy, rotten homes more like) really need to stay dry and I suggest putting in more eaves. Like extending them to overhang the walls of the house so the water doesn't splash on the walls and rot them. Maybe have triangular homes like camping tents do so the water can just run off, and have a little moat around them like a mini castle so you can grow water cress and have whitebait. It could be called the Aucklander Arkhouse. It would be our version of Californian Bungalow, except instead of being made out of dead Kauri tree trunks and imitation bricks or cracking plaster our homes could be woven out of swamp flax, Crown Lynn clay and covered with taro leaves and the sticky stuff they used on Noah's Ark. 

I'm all for small and slow solutions. I haven't really been keeping up with Permaculture One or whatever is going on with the Auckland bio-region at the moment but the permaculturalists who haven't got fed up and left Tamaki Makauru for greener pastures must have known this was going to happen and pushed for urban forestry and spongy rolled oats/rubber roads to soak up all the storm water. 

I can dream - I am just writing this down so if on the off chance the Mayor reads this he might get inspired to do something about the city he is now kaitiaki of. If he even knows what a kaitiaki is.