As promised, pics of the latest garden trip. For those who love symmetry and order the Auckland Domain Wintergardens are for you. Planting in grids and colour coordinating your flowers for the mathematically minded Minecrafters amongst us. I can imagine maths books having questions like how many pots of flowers would you need to source per square foot to create bedding displays like this. I remember using string lines to make perfect circles and patterns for car park beds and had it down to a fine art. The heartbreaking thing was pulling them all out again when the display was over. But then this is the reality of mass annual bedding displays. It is the garden equivalent of fast fashion for the 'wow' factor.
I'm pleased that a parcel from Garden Post has finally arrived. I have ordered tiger lilies 'Corsage' 'Red life' 'Yellow Bruse' and Oriental lily 'Stargazer'. The instructions said to plant immediately yet I have to wait in between thunder, lightening, hail and wind. Real witchy weather. I don't know who made God mad, but He was sending His judgement down on Henderson today. Thankfully at the end of the storm is a rainbow and the sweet silver song of a ...tui. I recommend wearing gumboots should you ever be struck by lightening and not flying a kite.
Pat had given me a parcel of seeds to sow including beans, bee and butterfly wildflower mixes, rocket and coriander. I'm still hanging out to plant snow peas if they have not drowned by now.
Rivercare had their Matariki and Matauranga talk in which they reiterated that schools are the places to get the message out there to be environmentally aware. All Westie schools are somewhere along the awa (Henderson Creek, Opanuku, Hururhuru, Taikata) do water testing and education of what to flush or not flush down the toilet. Apparently our sewerage system is breaking down. Sir Dove Myer Robinson did not forsee the over flows from a population nearing 2 million in the wider Auckland area! To think only a few decades ago Auckland was fledgling city with its outer limits only reachable by tram. It was basically a big village ending in Western Springs and Westmere was 'the West' while Henderson was a small country town that you could only get to by rail. It was also a 'dry' area on one side of the tracks. Te Atatu Peninsula (or Henderson North) was scrubland and wild and there was no motorway or even causeway..everyone travelled along Great North Road from Karangahape until they reached Swanson. And there were Kauri forests all around (before it got cut down for Auckland's houses and then all the gum dug out). So far, so progress.
Queen Street was just a ditch and the way to get down to the harbour was on your waka, imagine if the Pakeha settlers had their original dream and the centre of town was actually Cornwallis. I try not to look into the past so much but now I've lived long enough to say to youngsters well it was not always like this. I remember when....and they look at me incredulously as if I've just jumped out of a tardis and travelled back in time. I've started singing a waiata E Karanga E te iwi E 'Pomaria E' in the mornings just to be grounded. This is my turangawaewae the land filled with so much we loved and lost. The apple trees are still growing as I've put them back to remind me of those days of yore when Henderson was a Garden of Eden of orchards and vineyards and the apple man would go door to door bringing Granny Smiths, Golden Delicious and Braeburns when the fruit was just there for the picking and the cats play and are buried when they die in the pet cemeteries of our yards.
