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.
