The story of gardening

I am reading a big coffee table book called The story of Gardening. The book is very heavy and I've only managed to read a few chapters. Gardening can sometimes feel like an endless battle with nature or an all consuming passion that can never be quenched. Chapter 11 was about Gardens in China, under the various dynasties. It turns out the humble administrators garden was not that he liked gardening a small patch but that he just needed somewhere to escape the daily grind of work and write poetry. One of the Empresses constructed a huge pleasure garden, called a Summer Palace, the pinnacle of which was a stone ship, on a fake sea. It was so expensive that all the funds that were meant to go into maintaining a defence force or army (or REAL ships) for the kingdom all went into the Empress's garden instead. The dynasty then fell apart from typical govt overspending on luxury holiday junkets and foreign invaders, who might have been expected to gasp at the beautiful gardens but they were not exactly that type of well-heeled tourist. 

 I have had a real think about the wealth gap in this country and I wonder if I'm in danger of falling into the chasm where all failed gardens go. Although have they really failed? Well if they've been bulldozed and ripped out for houses maybe.

 It was a bright sunny day when garden club met up again at Thera's who had survived a flood and half her garden falling into the neighbouring gully. We all had a tour and I must say I'm impressed with what she's done, despite living next to a substation and having bambook creep into her property. There were so many plants (obviously garden club trades) and her trademark ceramics and everything looked lush (maybe thanks to a lot more water!) and cared for. She also didn't really have to contend with a non-gardener whacking her plants to submission, because he was always off at car rallies. The price to pay for having a boy-racer fiance? I noticed go-kart tires as planting pots, which we also have in the community garden even though now I'm a bit dubious of growing edible things in petroleum.

 On the following Sunday checked out the Sunflower Farm in Waikmauku. Its open Fridays to Sundays to the public when the sunflowers are in bloom, and you can cut them for $3 a stem. There's also a cover charge to enter, as I'm supposing they don't want hordes decimating their crop as has what's happened to the blueberry growers. There was a sort of maze you could enter, but otherwise its masses of sunflowers and bees in one big block of land. Monoculture of course. Behind the bamboo hedge, row open row of celery was growing with sprinklers, and another field beyond lay fallow, the brown earth ready for a late summer sowing of something. Not like sunflowers just growing by the fence, these were in their thousands as far as the eye could see. As we'd had the ride in the middle of the day of course it was super sunny, and my friend/driver Shar was wilting in the heat. 

I'm a suburbanite and not used to mass farms, and get a bit antsy when driving out to the countryside and seeing fields upon fields of grassland and haybales and no trees. I keep thinking wow to have so much land is a gift, but I'm under no illusion that horticultural and agricultural production is a cut-throat business, hard work, noisy and often monotonous. Strawberry fields present the same, another friend said she'd hated picking strawberries as it was endless picking picking picking, bending down and picking, then weighing and packing, but that's only because some capitalist has decided that to sell them and make some money for a supermarket contract is better than to have them in growers hands. Consequently trays and trays of unripe strawberries for sale in said supermarkets.

 It should be more fun going to a supermarket and seeing the array of vegetables and fruit from all around the world shipped and stored and already picked for you and waiting to be plastic bagged (or finally, paper bagged) and then taken home to sit in your fruit bowl but I've become a bit desensistised to it all. You aren't allowed to taste them there, and who knows what sprays have got them to that point. After you've grown your own, it's all a bit disconcerting to see them all wrapped and barcoded and on shelves under florescent lights. Fruit picking, like fishing is just not the same when it's  done in a supermarket.

Garden Sabbath

 No rant today. Dad does take photos of my flowers (and not of me anymore, as I hate having photos taken) and Dusty, and also buses and trains. 

The gardenia has blossomed and I'm picking fresh ones everyday. I have a Judith Hindel Sarracena - a carnivorous pitcher plant that eats flies. Sometimes I catch them by my fly swat in the kitchen,  and stick them inside the pitchers. This plant resides in a glazed pot behind this computer. 

Gardenias trinity

Dad also a bit obsessed with my apples which are looking very fruitful this year. Well our street was a former apple orchard, so they should do well anyway. They are crimson spire.

At least they have been spared the chop. One Manuka was not so lucky. It's just trees can take a long time to grow, and then be cut down in a minute. I suppose that's a metaphor for life.

Today has been wet, it poured down, then  suddenly weather has changed and the sun is out. It's not really been much summer - haven't heard any cicadas yet, though I've managed to thwart a few wasps nests. 

I met a fellow gardener who came from Christchurch who had taken time out to pot up natives for the Christchurch Botanic gardens. Gardening for the Council is labour intensive for sure and pays minimum wage but it's a job that doesn't require too much brainpower apparently. I think to take away the tediousness of it gardening bosses come up with little games like who can weed the most in the fastest time so they can pay someone less. At least thats what its like gardening full time and then the rest of the time you can just have smoko for hours. 

I don't really garden that way though its different when its someone else's garden but I have put that behind me now. This year is precious time to spend with mum and time to appreciate New Gardenland because it's been what, more than 7 years and I feel I deserve a Sabbath break. My brother is back from Australia and has hinted big plans for his place (Grand Orangerie, Palace of Versailles replica) and Sis is bringing back her Pilea plant from London, and *gulp* may be coming back to stay....permanently! 

Am gardening..Do not disturb

 Dad pulled out my pumpkins that were just about to flower. I went out for a day and then came back and found they disappeared and all the plants under the tangelo tree which included catmint, tomatoes, coriander, onions and other special herbs.

I was mad because they were all growing so healthy. Now theres nothing but bare compost but at least the grass around the tree is one centimetre. I don't care about the grass, the way people hack it and scalp it and it just grows back more and I don't know why dad is so obsessed with it. I can't eat grass. 

I also hate landscapers and weedmat and not being able to garden through a pile of matted plastic. I hate that I can't garden and grow things in my own home, because of the lawn taking up everything and I hate that I can't grow anything anywhere else without people getting upset and angry with me for wanting to grow things. I hate that people want me to pull out GOOD plants and leave dead useless plants that are leggy and need cutting back. I hate that people grow roses and want me to prune them and I get poked or they leave dead roses stalks unpruned with black scaly spot on them and a tangle of thorns. Why do people plant roses. They are ugly things when not in flower. 

Otherwise I'm ok. Maybe its the shock of it and I'll just get over it but there will be no giant pumpkins this year. My wildflower plot is growing...but who knows if it will just get ripped out again by someone else. But we need flowers for the bees to pollinate the orchard.

I remember when one of the gardening bosses told my supervisor to prune all the plumbago that was just about to flower beautiful blue flowers down to knee height when he had been growing it for years and it had never flowered. My supevisor cried. It was a crime against the plumbago. 

I also recall when weeds were growing all through a bush and trying to weed underneath a bushy leggy perennial meant cutting it right back so it could grow again but leaving it left a gap and so it wasn't 'tidy' and my boss did  not speak to me for days. Because he did want it TIDY. I can't tidy without moving things around. 

Anyway its all a work in progress and nothing will be perfect but I am just a bit over it cos everything I do just seems to make things worse for everyone else like I can't even make an omelette without breaking eggs or do something without telling someone else. But this is what you do because otherwise how would you live? I sometimes wish I could just do my own garden without having to run around tidying other peoples, but then  I shouldn't have taken anything on and said I could do it when most people don't really want a garden at all. Trying to convince a non gardener that weedmat and suffocating soil and plants is NOT a good idea won't wash. 

My dad would just be happy with bare square of grass and nothing else for his weather station which records the temperature and rainfall. But why then can't that be done near a rugby field? My brother clicked his tongue and said Dad should just live in an apartment. 

Happy New Gardenland Year 2024

 It's a Leap Year, so we have extra days in Feb this year. The rain fell and the sun rose...another day in paradise aka Riverpark, or a little rectangular section of it. 

Dusty, the new resident cat, has given the birdlife a run for its money, and scared the living daylights out of numerous lizards/skinks. She originally came with a bell but, she shrugged those (both of them) including her engraved name tag with my phone number on it. Dusty, you supposed to catch rodents! Instead she follows me round when I trail grasses and flowers. I'm training her for the cat circus. I figure once she gets good enough she can go on Shortland Street as the clinic cat. 

I am considering also auditioning, as palliative care nurse (sorry there's nothing more we can do for you) or florist since my handwriting isn't bad enough to be a doctor and my latin only extends to plant names. Having a herbalist on Shortland Street would not do, they only use synthetic chemical drugs and 3M products. Well actually they use placebos and the blood is just watered down strawberry jam. In an ideal world there would be an acupuncturist at the clinic sticking pins into people. When you have acupuncture, all the secrets and traumas come out, it's almost as good as having a confessional/lie detector test. 

Sorry. I am rambling again. Plants! Yes they are now decorated in solar lights. Thank you Warehouse sale. My tomatoes are bearing fruit and pumpkins are flowering. I put in dusty miller which should be able to cope with the summer sun. Lobelia and helichrysum for edging.  Kings Plants Barn are bombarding me with emails nearly everyday saying I must come in and spend lots of money and take home all their plants. I think its nice they think their customers have endless streams of money to spend all on plants. 

Workloads increasing

 As the sun shines we make more and more hay. 

It's the way of the seasons, everyone frustrated they can't garden when its wet, but then with more daylight hours you can't garden enough. Weeds grow, get pulled out then grow again. 

Gardeners get stressed too, worrying that they can't do enough. But its not like I don't have my own garden to tend, which, if I was doing everyone else's, means my own is neglected. I don't feel ownership or kaitaiki of the whenua if I'm constantly being harangued about it or not allowed to do this or that. I thought about this as I stepped into the community garden and given the not so subtle message that I wasn't around enough. Well try looking after someone who may be terminally ill and caring for anyone outside your family just takes second place, I'm sorry and there are not two of me. Oh to be born a twin.

This is why I don't judge other peoples gardens. They do the best they can with the time they have. If it's not in their own backyard, there's the cost of time and fuel to get to the garden, tools, and other resources. Don't make a rod for your back is what I say as I pulled out the remaining broccoli and sprinkled what were meant to be wildflowers in the empty plot. A bit late. The wildflowers came with a dense A4 page of instructions that only rivaled the mushroom kit in complexity. 

I thought you just scattered the wildflowers wildly around and flowers grew up wild. Why did they need lime and coddling and raking and scattering medium and 4-6 weeks of moisture AND roundup spray before hand?? That wasn't really the definition of wild. They should rename them something like farmflowers or certified bee pollination centres. 

I'd been given a seed bomb and chucked it in my garden curious to find out when it would go off. The best seed bombs are tomatoes and citrus, particularly lemons. Why does gardening have to feel like hard work and drudgery, when instead it could be a seed throwing party? I would love to throw tomatoes and citrus around or squash grapes with my barefeet. Potato harvesting can be a treasure hunt, and weeding can also be a hide and seek game. With a machete. 

But no within the norms of straight lines and machinery, crop circles are just aberrations. I feel this is what machines do, take all the fun out of it, until its just a mindless job requiring headphones and steel rulers and weed mat pins. Inputs and outputs. Thanks to primary industry and fake christmas trees. We have all these wilding pines, and we import fake christmas trees from China, who must wonder what crazy people buy this junk. Its ok I was once a crazy person too but after given too many paper (and chocolate) roses I just wanted the real thing. 

Growing up

 Like my lilies?

They've suddenly burst into flower and lend the corner of the deck an exuberant touch and it's not Mother's Day either. 

I found putting my foot down worked and good news is, I may actually have some REAL garden work over the next few months (apart from my own garden that is) which may keep widows happy. I have dealt with both kinds of widow, the genuine widows who need help with their gardens, and the other kind I sometimes want to run a mile from  - black widows who are never happy with anything you do. 

Thankfully I've come across more genuine widows than black widows and Lord knows fewer and fewer have daughters that will help them if they haven't all run away and/or married off themselves. I've learned to accept this in life and never bothered by criticism because its almost universal that mothers dislike their daughters and don't get along with them. The Queen after all, could never get away from HER mother. Her palace(s) was so huge that she wanted to be close to her because living in a 250 room house it seems a bit strange to just move to another apartment just so you can be alone, it's not as if she needed the extra space. 

My counselor looked at me with pity in her eyes. Is there anything you struggle with? I go, oh no not really. Mum's always complained about me and to me and in front of everyone else as well its nothing new and nothing I can do anything about. 

I think she was secretly wondering if I was going to move out (where to?) and throw in the towel as well as cart mum off to a rest home/retirement village. I'd worked in those before and knew they were good for some people and hell for everyone else. It was always eerie in those places (palaces?) though because I would be the youngest person there. And it was sort of like Downton Abbey. Except the people you were servants to were just the elderly. 

No I said, I have my own room (library) and my garden and I don't really need anything else. But a massage would be nice. 

Spray and walk away/get cancer

 Gardening for other people isn't the joy its cracked out to be - especially if the people you are gardening for aren't actually gardeners - they hate gardens and would never do it themselves, so what they are really asking is you do all the dirty work for them and NOT have a garden at all.

I've often come across this attitude that for some people, gardening involves spraying herbicides to kill all plant life that's in the way. So I've decided to say no to anyone who asks me to do that. I am quite happy to hand weed so that you can enjoy your garden of the plants you DO have, but to ask me to expose myself to harmful chemicals and kill whatever is growing on your property just because you are unable to get down on your hands and knees or that it will take too much time to do, is like asking me to go to war with napalm.

I conscentiously object. 

And I'm sorry I am not sacrificing my life so your 'garden' can look 'tidy'. 

I am quite happy to do pruning, or a bit of weeding, hedge clipping, mulching, watering or even shock horror...propagating which involves actual growing of plants. But please don't ask me or even think about getting me hooked up with a backpack sprayer with a lethal chemical.

I have known too many people who've died of exposure and inevitable cancer to toxic chemicals (and it can happen very quickly) to want to do something so stupid. 

So there have said that as a public declaration. 

I don't have a 'gro safe' (they can't even spell) certification nor would I consider getting one. I would not ever sell Roundup to anyone. I have enough problems being exposed to petrol fumes everytime I get behind the wheel of a car on the Auckland motorway (headaches, brain fog) and not exercising my legs so that they atrophy from underuse. So whether its lung or lymphoma cancer I'm a bit risk averse and want to keep my life thank you very much.