Lady Ga-den

 School is nearly out, and I'm out too. That is..I may be imagining things, but apparently I am not welcome back at primary school next year as I have graduated and am too smart for it. The children were sad to see me go, but the ones going on to Intermediate want me as their librarian next year. 

This will take some wrangling to do. I have never walked into a school before, and announced that I will be taking over their disused and neglected library. However, I have done the same thing with gardens, and usually it has been appreciated. What can they do, throw books at me?

Anyhow I can't think about that right now. Now the sweet peas have gone to seed, other gaps are appearing in the garden plus it's Monday, watering day for the community garden and I better get cracking before the sun bakes the ground. 

The lychnis I rescued from school have put on quite a show and also are now going to seed so have cut a few down to seed by the back fence. The accounts lady will be looking after the library indoor plants by hanging them outside her office. I have been asked to return the feathery asparagus fern back to JoAnne  and the puppets back to Joyce. I'll be providing refuge for the Holy Family and the Wonky Donkey. 

Mr Muggs will be looking after the library for me. He is the library cat. Mum found him in the op shop and I secretly rescued him for her for $2. He was very happy to be the new kaitiaki of the library and is even has his own picture book, illustrated by Dave Gunson. He is going to be working with the Lucky Pig, who was found on Lincoln Road. The Man Who Ate Lincoln Road would be happy to know there is now a Yum Cha Book Restaurant in Ranui. When that book was published, there were no Yum Cha restaurants except a Chinese one next to Hell's Pizza and Burger Fuel called Nood Les restaurant. Steve Braunias would be happy to know that Valentines is now gone Gagnam Style. The last time he went there, he dined at Valentines ALONE. 

Who dines at Valentine's alone?? It seems crazy journalists do. Perhaps he didn't have much to do that year, though I suggest a new project for Mr Braunias, he go visit all the school libraries in West Auckland, and report on what he finds. 

One of the teachers who hosted our staff Christmas party has goldfish and a fountain in her garden. It's also full of hydrangeas, Japanese maple, hippeastrums and other gorgeous plants from the previous occupant, who was a gardening widow. The property is on a ridge which I now call Teacher's Row since two other staff members also have their homes there. As I am in the valley I don't get a view of the Sky Tower, Warehouse or Fresh choice supermarket, but you can go up to their place and see for miles. 

Anyhow must get to watering those thirsty plants. Jacqui gave me a courgette, which promptly got eaten by snails. However, choko is thriving. 

There's no place like home

 Garden is looking 'da bomb' i.e everything is in bloom...and dad cut the lawn so it's looking perfectly tidy and clipped. I had an attack of hay-fever on windy days when the grass is in flower elsewhere, but my garden is allergy friendly.

I'm compiling a wishlist of plants so Secret Santa has some idea of what to drop by our NEW letterbox we installed this year. 

The shortlist - 

hippeastrums 

dichondra silver falls

dymondia margaretae groundcover

pink orchid cymbidium

cattleya (in bloom)

more catmint edging

purple osteospermum 

blue lobelia

You'd think I'd have enough plants for Australia (or Africa)  but there's always a unique treasure that catches my eye. I could make a long list of all the plants I tried to but couldn't grow in my garden...it doesn't bear thinking about all the ones that didn't survive. 

Good news though, with the studio move and perhaps changes to my job situation next year, I may be able to resume Garden Planet! Fingers crossed my co-host may become available. Karyn's had quite a year too what with her garden being renovated and all. 

The pohutakawas are now in bloom - they'll probably be over by Christmas day but I have some Christmas lilies poking through now. There's still one house in our street that does Christmas lights every year but I don't know if I can sleep and wait for the second coming of Santa Claus with all those lights on. 

Otherwise everything seems ticking along fine. At school the sunflowers have bloomed although they looked a bit pitiful in the thin soil of Ranui. I think a lot of work needs to be done working that clay and cleaning up that area that was full of woolly nightshade and probably a dumping ground for lawn chemicals and roundup spray. I miss Rosemary the gardener and hope she's keeping well. The irises she gave me are now by the driveway and will be coming into bloom next year. 

I'd be making a case for plants in every classroom...something has got to absorb all the carbon dioxide the children are breathing out constantly! However it is near the end of the year so everyone is winding up/wrapping up. It's always a mad rush at the end and yet we always do it every year. Maybe those covid times where we had to stay home were  a blessing after all. After all there's no place like home for the holidays...! 

Garden Club Ramble

 My garden club ladies all came over to my garden last Saturday as the first garden in our member's garden ramble so was really pleased to have them over to visit - I had a busy tidy up before they came of course!

Paula one of the newer members took home some cuttings and it was fun just talking about plants. I didn't know Paula was going to enthuse about the ones that grow like weeds at my place - mugwort, applemint, watsonia... The ladies were also puzzled over dad's weather station. No it wasn't a beehive! I showed them what it had inside - thermometers and that the land was earmarked for recording the weather which was why I can only have a little garden in the backyard and no tall trees. 

Then we went to Bev's place and her garden was just so beautiful a flower and plant lovers paradise. She had a little octagonal gazebo/potting shed full of plants on the shelves and a cosy place to sit, so many hanging baskets, flowers all around many levels from pots to planters to raised beds, some trained up the wall, some trailing to the ground, and no weeds whatsever, they didn't stand a chance! The only thing she complained about was a big melia tree in the backyard that was shading out some of her vege garden but I gave it a hug as I thought it was beautiful and shouldn't be cut down - the vege garden should just be moved to the sunnier spot where the sheds were. 

Garden club members next to the melia.

Bev gifted us some potted colour so I chose a marigold and a verbena that she'd placed under her potted Christmas tree already decorated outside. Yes it is now that time of year. I hadn't even thought of decorating any trees yet. 

Just up the next street was Barbara's place in Wairata Road which had a stunning view of the creek and out to the harbour. Barbara had commandered the land that belonged to the council and had started gardening it so it was all seamless right up to the walking track that leads up to Roberts Road. So many beautiful flowers, carpets of arctosis and healthy stands of lush red cannas, sweet peas, succulents and shrub borders completed the picture. Barbara's house was quite a big home - her late husband was a builder, and so it was all built to take advantage of the site and nestled into the land. His ashes were buried near the vege patch so it's not likely she will ever leave his final resting place. 

One of Barbara's gorgeous hydrangeas - I loved the blue/purple shade on this one.

We had a morning tea and scones and a good chat. Barbara wished us a Merry Christmas on her ukelele which she had been practising and Jeanette won a prize in the raffle - gardening soap!

The final garden in our mini ramble was newcomer Paula's - she'd told hubby to take the dog out for a walk while we humans roamed her patch. Paula's place in Tirimoana is down a long driveway and backs on to a gully where the creek is. She's got many trees and bromeliads, succulents and the prized tall astromerias (I took a tuber) She also has quirky hobbit holes - she's a real plant lover too and we all found something to ooh and ah over. Am so glad Paula decided to join our Garden Club as membership is falling - its the same everywhere I suspect. People don't have time for gardens anymore and its harder and harder to find places with room enough for one. 

Unfortunately it was then that my hayfever decided to make itself known and I had to drop into the pharmacy on the way back for a remedy!

In other news Pat and Sheryl had entered the AHC Flower show. Pat won as per usual!  Karen and I went to gawk at the entries and I adopted some more mini irises. 

Two of the entries I liked were these: 

Sand art mandala

Piano with roses - see entries all lined up in the background

The champion bloom was a bearded iris, and Karen mused that it wouldn't take much for us to enter next year, since we already had experience making mandalas in our floral foraging frenzy, so we shall see! 

Te Henga Garden Ramble

 Last Saturday Louise and I went on the Te Henga Garden Ramble, which was raising money for West Auckland Hospice. We saw five of the eight beautiful gardens who all had the fortune of being sited in the wonderful ridges overlooking the West Coast out to Bethell's Beach. 

This is where the cabbage trees come into their own!

Of all the gardens, my special favourite was the Butterfly Garden on Bethells Road, surrounding an old farm cottage/villa where the flowers were left to bloom and make food for the honey bees on a north facing, sheltered slope. It looked like a magical fairy land in the midst of an enchanted native forest. The gardener kindly let me have a tuber of yellow astromeria - they had plants and books for sale as well. 

Another garden named Kokako Grove had a chook house called 'Cluckingham Palace' and had set their own house on the ridge overlooking the wetland and hills. I was impressed with their groundcover which I have been trying to source - anyone got Silver Carpet dymondia margaretae? And their native  clematis, which had lovely furry seedheads. They had a fenced off vege garden, many of the vege gardens out at Bethell had to be walled/enclosed to keep out the chickens and pukekos, or dogs and possums, and netted. Because Bethells is out near the West Coast near the bush, it is not on town water supply and cellphone coverage can be patchy because of the hills. And since there is only one road, out if it's blocked or the weather is bad it can be quite remote. It's not like the shops are within walking distance! Many of the properties were up steep, windy long driveways too, and the prevailing wind and rain can be ferocious. Try mowing the grass on a steep slope with a ride on! 

However for those who can afford it, they wouldn't live anywhere else. It is their little patch of paradise. One retired  expat American built his dream earth brick home nestled on top of the ridge, it really felt like he was King of the Castle. For a valley dweller like me, with no views of anything but the neighbours and whatever I grow in my own garden, its another world, and a taste of the high life! 

He had built two summer cabins overlooking the valley for his friends and family to come stay. He even had a rocking chair bench to take in the views and seemed very chuff to show off his bounty to everyone. His dogs were very happy to run around his garden - he was an ex-Texan rancher, so I can imagine that living in a green land like Aotearoa was quite a sea change. 

All in all we had a wonderful day out and I now have my coveted tall yellow astromerias. Perhaps next year we can go visit the other gardens we missed. 

Garden re-visits

 The previous Saturday our garden club visited Chris Ballantyne's garden. It was a revisit for me (see blog entry for May 2019  We're just dropping in your garden Chris... !)  Things have changed a little - there are now two greenhouses for tropical plants in the backyard and the entire vege patch is now caged because of the pukekos. Chris showed us his bubbler - his comfrey tea/compost brew that hooks up to his roof stormwater AND his neighbours. He also mows his next door neighbours lawn in return for some land to grow his native plants. Luckily his neighbour doesn't mind and is also his brother-in-law! Everyone was very impressed and interested in all the plants and they were happy they did not have to trek too far to see a garden as he lives on Te Atatu Peninsula. 

This Saturday we had another garden visit to Puriri Lane.  It's a bit further out  in Drury and is a beautiful English woodland style perennial garden - now in full bloom. All the trees are underplanted with an amazing variety of perennials that the owners initially had to source from England as they couldn't buy them here. Now they have so many they operate a mail order/online nursery for keen gardeners and you are able to visit on certain days but you need to book as it's a private garden. There's ponds, a cure little shepherds hut shed, a gardenware boutique, plants for sale, borders full of flowers of every kind in drifts. It's been here for 40 years but only in the last 7 has it been planted up to what it is today, initially nothing but trees with grass underneath. I suspect that's how most country gardens start out as bare paddocks. We paid $10 entrance free but recouped this buy buying some plants - I bought a lady's mantle and a hair's tail ornamental grass. Karen went a bit all out and bought herself a designer bee and butterfly bath and several plants she had her eye on. I was going to buy a moon calendar - one of those round turn the wheel ones but it was $12 and I figured I could just easily make one myself...

Then on the way back we dropped into Roger's Garden Centre. Where I saw the famed Roger, still at the till, giving garden advice to all customers, while his cat was guarding the money. I didn't buy anything but Jeanette queued up for some plants while Bev whizzed us around giving a guided tour among the narrow paths absolutely crammed with plants at a bargain price. Perhaps next time when we have more time Bev will take me AND I'll come with a list to fill a pink wheelbarrow with plants. On one side is an amazing gully where Roger dumps all his unwanted plants and it has now grown wild with orange morning glory all over and it looks pretty spectacular (or a nightmare depending on which way you look at it) like the plants have taken over the zombies and won. Everyone looked pretty happy with their bargains on their way out, except Jeannette accidentally bumped her nose on the carboot as she was putting the plants in the back so was a bit sore on the way home. 

Karen was very happy to drive us as she'd discovered the garden in the first place online when she went to buy tulips. I must say Karen is a bit of a connoisseur gardener and likes to source her plants from far away places and thinks nothing of driving to get there. She's also been to the Taranaki Garden Festival twice and is booked to go to the Cambridge Garden Festival as well. I'm just happy if I get to tag along! 

One of my must-dos this spring is a visit to Barbara's garden which is just down the road from Bev's garden. Barbara says its best in spring to visit so hopefully next Monday she's home and I can pop in, like when mum and I visited Pat's garden. 

One of Chris' feijoa trees - perfectly pruned.

Puriri Lane had many flowers I'd never seen before - this pale blue one behind the euphorbia intrigued me. Does anyone know it's name??

Petal Power

 Results are in--!

            Jan's Floral Fireworks

Linda's Floral Circle

Carmen Miranda? Or Miss Blush?

The Little Mermaid...

My Mandala Magic

Lavender Butterflies

Floral teapot

Geisha Girl

Koru Klub

Singing budgie

Karen's Hairy Caterpillar

Winged Wonders

Cenny's Purple Reign

Flower Foraging Fiesta

 Or Frenzy?

Tomorrow we are having a Flower Foraging Fiesta at the Garden Club. We will make pictures and mandalas out of the flowers and leaves. What art will our flower gardeners come up with??

Karen and I made  some already. I'd like to show you when I get my pics though - seemed like my old ipad doesn't want to play ball. However, I have pics of flowers currently blooming. I just say dad look at my flowers and he hurries outside to take a photo of it. 

tiger lillies

Silene

pelargonium

    
Wouldn't you know it mum came down with covid and so dad and I have been testing everyday. So far so negative. Today I spent much of my time in the garden doing a tidy up and weeding the applemint. I need to do a big pick tomorrow - hopefully weather stays fine.