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. 

Lazy days

Summer is rolling by. Hibiscus are out. My pumpkins/buttercup didn't germinate, so I have resorted to transplantation. I've now got a courgette, bought from the new Te Puna Henderson market.

Mum has got me to plant some kind of purple leaf salvia near the apple trees. She's also got this mystery plant that has baffled me no end trying to identify it. She says the chinese name is 'Teng Chut' or something like that, and I have no idea what that is in English, let alone Latin. Maybe you can help. When I put it into Plant ID site, it gave me such wild guesses as basket plant, hebe, daphne, swan plant, tradescantia, and it's none of those. I hope it's not tradescantia anyway. She says it's a ground cover and the root is used in chinese medicine. Any clue?

The leaves are kinda fleshy but smooth, and the roots seem to be tuberous. There's no smell, and it doesn't flower. 

Aside from driving me nuts, not knowing where to plant it and not willing it to take over and be a noxious weed, I've kind of left it to it's own devices. 

My sister is in quarantine at the moment and escaping on Tuesday. She better count her lucky stars as she's been thoroughly spoiled in the hotel, with way to much food, even whining about not being able to taste our homegrown apricots, so mum made a special trip just so she could drop some off. 

 Now the apricots have finished I think the next fruit will be grapes and apples. 

Karyn's been going on about Syntropic Gardening. I had no idea what is was until last week but I think she might be a convert. Next thing I know she might be on a hippie trip up north to check it all out. So far I've kind of resisted joining the whole Permaculture movement because of all the time, effort and resources required, and heard not a peep from my fellow permies over quarantine, but they must have congratulated themselves for staying homestead  sweet homestead. Those who were lucky or priveliged enough to have a home that is. 

Permies are ok, bu they were kind of on the fringe side of things and if it wasn't so expensive, I would do more of it. I think they were hoping we'd all move to Earthsong or something, and give our free labour to the designer architects of strawbale homes. Weren't they aware of the current housing crisis where if you wanted  a place of your own your best bet was to buy a shipping container? 

Mum thinks that they are good and the ideal home. I don't know if I could get used to living in a kennel. I think its best if I just stay living with her thanks and being annoying. I can't help it that houses are so expensive that nobody can move away from their folks and keep their jobs. And their garden. 

 

The odds

 

First time apricots...and a lone Japanese Iris.

I went through all my plant tags and labels and counted all the ones planted that are still living today, of 165 plants, 88 still live to tell the tale -- that means in my garden a 53% success rate. Or just over half. Ok I am heartened that at least the odds are in my favour and over half the plants are surviving that I planted in the last five years.

But then how to account for losses?? I can't take them back to Mitre 10 or wherever and say please refund me it didn't grow. But I do know not to try again with those plants. I suppose you can't win them all. 

My beans are starting to sprout but seems my buttercups are still taking their sweet time. Mum rescued an anonymous plant from Leyton's place that he'd dumped in the compost, and I could not identify it - maybe it's a weed? She's also got this expensive chinese herb worth thousands of dollars on the black market, so she says, in pots and trays that is ready to be planted out but I'm afraid it may die wherever I plant it as I don't know what it is. She also found some sage/salvia, which is a quite easy plant to grow and transplant but I wasn't too sure about this herb. 

Let's just say even I don't trust my gardening skills if 46% of plants die under my care. If I am like this with plants, which don't even go anywhere, how would I be with children??

Pumpkin Patch

 Inspiration struck and I now have a pumpkin patch in the corner bed near the feijoa. I have made two mounds of compost, with comfrey and lambs ears underneath to provide moisture retaining and fertiliser, scattered a jar of butternut pumpkin seeds, have placed netting and barriers to stop the chicken bulldozer, and have watered and am now waiting for germination.

I'll be adding liquid seaweed/fish fertiliser when things start growing. The kumaras have started settling in and putting out new shoots, and some of my beans have started sprouting. 

All the applemint has been added to the compost although I'm a bit concerned in it's dried state that it won't break down any further although I have chopped it up more and dad has added lawn clippings, the two compost bins are now full again. Even the worm bins are full. I'm trying to be zero waste this year and not put anything into landfill but I do place the weeds with seeds in the bin at times. 

Dad however, cannot be trusted to compost anything other than lawn clippings and I have found to my dismay perfectly good compost material in the rubbish bin. I am tired of fishing out recycling from it as well. It's hard work to educate oldies. Mum was furious when he weeded out the choko vine, we won't be having chokos this year - as we aren't allowed to plant them at Woodside either. I'm not sure what the deal is with planting plants nobody else eats. Surely if it's edible it can be planted? After all mum and I are the only ones that eat the amaranth and garlic chives. If we didn't eat them they'd just get composted.

Due to summer sloth, I haven't had time to actually go to the beach and collect sand and seaweed. The problem is living too far from the beach means we can't just walk there, its actually a mission to get in the car and drive there, and finding parking close by is also a joke when everyone else has the same idea. 

So I have stayed at home and done my beach reading within the safe confines of my bed, with added advantage of shade, and creature comforts close by, including nearby shower, bathtub and  ice cream in the freezer should I decide I need cooling off. Who needs the beach really, when I can just go barefoot on the grass and enjoy the distant breeze and oozing mud tides from the Henderson creek?  

Welcome 2021

Dad took this photo of the lily just opened yesterday, my first flower of the year.  I am recovering from a wasp sting with my hand swollen up like a balloon but otherwise no other new year mishaps to report!

Now that the applemint and spider plants are cleared away, I might possibly have room for more plants. 

Though my drought stricken corner area with the feijoa (Mary's grave and Sock's garden) now needs attention. Though most everything I have tried growing there has failed. I have some scraggly daisies and lambs ears, two abutilons, a manuka and that's it.  

So it can't be any of these plants:

Echinacea

Dahlia

Ponga

Cabbage Tree

Jacaranda

Lemon

Ferns

Nasturtium

Sweet Pea

Poppy

Silverbeet

Hydrangea

Azalea

Clivia

Chinese Toon

Dusty Miller

Licorice Plant

Hardenbergia

Choko

Poppies

Spider Plants

Renga Renga lilies

Ginger plant

I am waiting for inspiration to strike. If the neighbours stop clearing all their trees I wouldn't have to keep changing my garden grrr. 

Kumara time

 Season's Greetings! (summer for me). 

It's all on in the garden. Clearing out the apple mint to make way for...kumara! Even if we don't get tubers, we can eat the leaves. I found the red variety at Kings, who were having a Boxing Day sale. So I got a bundle of slips - about two dozen, and have made three compost mounds for them to grow from. They are part of the convolvulus family and related to morning glories, which can be a weedy vine in some areas. 

I'm hoping they will take off in my garden and keep down the other weeds. I'm also trying butternut pumpkin, and beans. Jacqui has given me some basil, which I've put in pots. I've been a bit slow to start growing veges, but I think we are in for a long warm summer. 

Other Boxing Day gifts were Ehlo hanging baskets (the white, trendy looking ones to hang spider plants from), four sacks of compost (I have used three already), Autumn Joy sedum in a pot, and Pacific mix statice. The statice has been very good this year so I'm planting more. Mum likes them as they make great dried flowers, and they are easy care. 

The spider plants got a new home and moved to under the loquat, which will need a summer trim to stop the fruits getting too high and out of reach. 

Currently I'm harvesting gardenia flowers and chamomile, and have a load of apple mint leaves. It's nice to be home, as every day can be a garden day. I don't need to go to far..I have Mitre 10 and Kings Plant Barn just up the road from me. Shirley's given me apricots from her tree, and I think ours will be ready in a month's time.

I feel sorry for those people who always go away from home for the holidays. Leaving their gardens and pets behind to languish. My thing is always to stay home in the holidays and try and go away in work time! Though it's not likely as I still haven't been invited on any school trips. Maybe next year? 

RIP Karen Leonie Ginn

 My cousin has passed away (suddenly) aged 56. We laid her to rest on Wednesday in the rich volcanic soil of Mangere Cemetery, near my grandma, grandad and Aunty Lily, her mother. 

Karen was a sweet gentle soul and a cat lover, like so many of us in the family are. I remember her kindness and generosity, to us the younger cousins, though we did not see much of her as we got older. I believe she had a quiet simple life with her circle of friends and flatmates at the rest home, where she spent the last six years of her life, as friends and flatmates testified she was a valuable member of the home, caring, kind, and with a great sense of humour. She loved country and western music, especially the songs of Dolly Parton. My favourite picture is of her as a young girl with flowers in her hair in one of our family wedding photos. 

God gave me a scripture passage from Ruth 1: 16-17

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: 17Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.

Rest in Peace Karen, the Lord has called you home.