Surviving Omicron!

 Yes Covid got me in the end. However thanks to triple vaccination, it was only mild. I had a cough and a sore throat and tiredness, but I didn't have to use heaps of toilet paper at all. I just went through one box of tissues. 

Bev very kindly dropped round a whole lot of bearded irises. So I have planted the rhizomes anywhere they can fit in the garden.  Some are by Mummy Cat's grave. They are of all different colours. Thanks Bev!

I pruned a non-fruiting branch off the old peach tree. Next thing I know, Dad totally destroyed my climbing rose, which was climbing up the other branch. For no reason. It wasn't hurting anyone - it was climbing up the branch, which it is meant to do. 

Otherwise, what can I say?! 😶

If you haven't ordered your spring bulbs yet...please do so soon as I am putting in the order this week.  

Cats leave paw prints on our Hearts

 RIP Mummy Cat

Woodside Community Garden Garden Bulbs Fundraiser

 Dear Rambling Gardeners

You can now buy spring bulbs from me! To grow in your own garden or to plant in the Woodside Community Garden orchard under the fruit trees. All profits go to our garden. 

Be in quick because this offer ends 15 March. Pick up the bulbs from our garden or I can arrange home delivery. All enquiries and orders to gardenplanetfm@gmail.com

Choose from...

7 Daffodils Mixed

 $9.70

7 Jonquils "Grand Monarch"

$11.00

10 Tulips mixed 

$10.00

10 Freesias Fragrant Single & Double Mixed

$9.80

 10 Ranunculus Mixed

$6.00

10 Dutch Iris

$9.90

10 Anemone- St Brigid Mixed (Doubles)

$7.50

Sweet Pea - Early Multiflora 20 seeds

$4.70

Feng Shui - Wind and Water

 This morning was one of the windiest we'd had in a while and the last few days a fair amount of rain has fallen, making for muggy, hot sticky weather. The plants are loving it, the humans, not so much. 

I venture outside during calm interludes to move iris rhizomes around, dividing up clumps to pop up in empty spots in the garden beds and amongst the thyme in pots. I take cuttings of lavender hoping they might take in the now moist soil. 

It's now the start of bulb season and they should be appearing soon in the shops. I want to get a head start on the mail order so I can buy in bulk and possibly sell some as fundraisers at garden club. I so far have stayed away from shops and much buying, though I am building up a list of purchases that might come at a later date, if I am brave enough to venture out in red traffic lights with over 500 community cases of covid now recorded in the country (it changes all the time...it's like counting the number of ants crawling in your house..most of the time there is none and the there's a trail and then suddenly you are infested) though the wind and water has put a damper on any initiative. Planet FM is still closed and Garden Planet is on endless repeat. 

I miss out on a couple of zoom meetings thanks to fatigue and technical issues, but the word is Garden Club may have a field trip in April and a proper meeting in March. Hooray. Or ...at long last. If all things go to plan. If we are all jabbed five times or what not.

The rain lilies have made an appearance and suddenly have all bloomed like little crocuses all at once. Beauties they are when they do, the rest of the time they look like chives. Naked lady lily also has bloomed. Perhaps in time for Valentines Day? I had emailed the local florist to see if they might need extra hands but heard nothing back from them. Looks like I'll be the one picking flowers  anyway. One can't depend on secret admirers to remember the one day when they are supposed to let you know they like you. Here, have a gazania. 

Otherwise I'm doing ok here...Mum and I managed to get down to the community garden, harvest some veges, and drop off some empty buckets and baskets to help protect the seedlings.

Feb wishlist - 

Bulbs (eerlicheer, dutch iris, freesia, ixia, babiana, bluebells, gladioli..any and all!)

Matching indoor pots

Cats tail trailing indoor plant

Zygocactus - hanging

Letterbox numbers - 41

Paint for letter box - decide that milk white might be safest but boring, when I want a bright red letterbox, so that NZ post cannot miss it

Flower book that has blotting paper (to press flowers in)

Fairy lights to decorate trees. Why not

Lanterns

A mirror

Year of the Tiger Mummy Cat

 The garden seems quiet without Martha. The gate is now open though I still feel it should be closed to protect Mummy Cat. Dad had mowed the lawn to an inch of its life and it now looks like a brown threadbare carpet. I'm waiting for the compost to build up otherwise it will be hard to build any depth of soil on our hardpan, bulldozed flat section of clay.

The grapes are ripening on the vine. I've made some hay (of what little I can) from the long grass that grew by the fence while the sun shines. I've been watering the pots, thanks to Louise's donations, several pot plants now have permanent planters hiding the plastic.  Basil and some parsley are now growing thanks to Jacqui's surplus. 

Hooray, Aunty Jenny found us a letterbox, one big enough to hold milk bottles should we ever need them delivered again. Just needs a bit of paint and numbers affixed to the front, and a new hinge. 

Now I've been let go of my bookshop job, and as my former boss had given me flowers upon my leaving. I was thinking of applying for the flower shop up the road.  Or selling bulbs or something. Though February is the 'armpit' of months, lots of things happen like Chinese New Year (it's tigers, Mummy Cat), Waitangi Day (shall we dig up the lawn for a hangi?) and Valentines' Day (most over rated gift day) that everyone seems to make a big fuss over but actually nothing much seems to happen. I think people put more energy into Christmas while they still have the cash.

In the garden it's day after day of sun, ripening the fruits and being too hot to do any work. Which is fine by me, napping being a lost art form, but it doesn't make for interesting blog posts. I returned to school to find my spider plants turning pale and gave them emergency drip feeding. Hoya had survived on a diet of practically nothing though. I'm thinking of repotting the hanging baskets with zygocactus, if I can get a good size one. 

I'd promised to visit Fab Garden Mama to get some pots, but since I was given some already (and found two sturdy indoor ones from Briscoes) that  I hadn't had the energy to go further afield shopping. Having to wear a mask out hasn't helped matters, as now the omicron variant virus has somehow got in threatening our best laid plans, including school, garden club meetings, radio shows, and holidays away. 

We'll see what this year brings..it's all now in the paws of the remaining Tiger Mummy Cat.

 

Planting Martha

 Yesterday we planted Martha in the garden, next to her sister Mary. She lived with us for 8 years. She was a bit bossy. She liked eating bugs. She laid soft eggs, but also manure, which she never did in the garden (and preferred to do in the house). She liked listening to stories. Of course, she was the original 'Book Chook'

RIP Martha, will miss you. 

The long hot summer

 Dad's thermometer has been peaking at 30 degrees celsius, making him happy every time a record is broken. I am not however, meant to set foot on the lawn while the thermometer is on the grass, for fear that I may step on it and break it (although I do have eyes, and I need to water plants). Half the Swan plants have been ruthlessly cleared away so that no shade befalls the precious mercury.

While this was the death knell for one cucumber plant, amazingly three more miraculously appeared, thanks to Saint Jacqui patron of Woodside Garden, the very next day. The snake plants and lazy housewife beans though, were a complete disappointment, not growing much at all in the thin clay soil by the fence, probably the worst place to grow them and when they should have raised beds of which I am not allowed. Even the Yates orange cosmos, now flowering is barely 30cm high when the seed packet promised 1.2 metres of triffid plants 'good tall flowers for by the fence, tolerates drought'. Well at least they flowered...

I had to do lots of remedial potting up with 2 bags of potting mix from Kings. Though I noticed that the mixture is made of up of bark, peat and pumice. Peat? Isn't it bad and environmentally disastrous to harvest peat? And I wonder where the bark is from..dead kauri trees? 

Some gardeners swear by Zoo Doo. I haven't tried it for manuring yet. I've just been soaking or baptizing my pot plants in seaweed tonic. I asked veteran gardener Louise what she fed her plants and she surprised me by saying 'nothing'. I pictured her plants going hungry and crying. Nothing?? Just compost. huh. 

She said they seemed to grow anyway, so I think she must be of the 'treat em' mean, keep em' keen' ilk. Kind of like the way mum treats me (sometimes). I guess adversity toughens you up, but I don't really know in my case. 

My new thing for new year is to learn raranga or flax weaving. I have started a little on weaving flax wall mangers when I chucked out the old coir and hessian that was rotting and replaced them with flax leaves and cabbage leaves. They actually don't look too bad, plus, I have lined them with meat trays and put pots in them instead of filling them entirely with potting mix which then dries out and turns to dust.I have a few old hanging baskets that no longer have linings so when my flax bush grows more leaves I will weave them too. 

The other thing thats new is obtaining some cover pots for my plants. As they are pricy and hard to come by am doing it gradually so that Mr plasticky black pots will be turned into stylishly cordinated indoor decor and glazed outdoor features in tasteful colours. 

Cabbage tree has been thinned and I am experimenting taking cuttings from the branches. And I am clipping the buxus, wanting in vain to turn them into stylish cones or turrets but instead they still want to retain their boring rectangular blob shape. It echoes the bricks and shape of the house (one big rectangle). My garden is not going to grace the pages of 'Private Gardens of Aotearoa' anytime soon. For one thing there is no swimming pool or tennis court or 'car court'. Although the next door neighbours now have a swimming pool..I can hear them splashing. The only water feature I have a is a pot full of taro. But it seems to be doing much better than next door's taro which is now flattened by their new trampoline. 

Mr Postman has still not delivered me any letters or a brand new letterbox so, am still waiting on that or Mum will imporvise a roof of aluminium she'll get Dad to knock together so it will look instead like a mini-garage that may or may not rust away when it's nailed down. Ah suburbia.