Bounty from the garden

 

We got grapes, one apple and the naked lady lilies are flowering. 

We had a respite from lockdown for 2 weeks back to work but then last night it was announced Auckland would have 7 more days of lockdown so I might be able to extend the garden at home after all. 

Certainly everyone seems to expect that I have more time for gardening (and to do theirs) down at Woodside on Monday evenings but I can't promise I will bring ten sacks of compost, weed the entire plot or even do any extreme makeovers - I just will be there, in case anyone needs any help wondering what this or that plant is. Maybe I will just pick the flowers. Certainly they do need picking! Though it doesn't seem likely now because it's level 3 right and we all need to stay home. 

I've got Peruvian lilies that need planting and a few dahlia tubers, but otherwise, the weather has been summery, so it's generally just long days of watching figs and feijoas ripen and watering the pot plants in the cool of the evening. 

Some might have assumed that I do floral displays and such but I have to disabuse them of that notion that I am any kind of floral artist. My floral arrangements are mostly bunches to put in a vase, or posies in a jar. I dry flowers but I don't make any pictures or wreaths or garlands. 

Nor am I any kind of writer, dancer, musician or illustrator. I have no ambition to be published or have my name in lights or any of the things that people commonly assume about me. 

Marcus Tuillius Cicero famously said -  If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. 

My own garden is admittedly small, and so is my library, but I have both and its true I have everything I need. So don't worry about me over lockdown. 

Homestay

 Ah, home sweet home. 

Thanks to Level 3 lockdowns, we get to stay at home in Auckland for at least 3 days. It's my third Monday in a row I've had off. 

But that's ok as the rain has started and the humidity is up. We ate all the peaches Golden Queen provided this year, before the worms got to them.

My courgette has fruited and is bursting, though I made a horrible mistake of caging it (to prevent being dug up by Martha) and now its kinda being strangled by the cage when I forgot to remove it. 

As you can tell Martha is a bit oblivious to any damage she does to plants and believes she is 'helping' Her plant ID is not that great! 

Aside from that, I've weeded the driveway garden and removed most of the spider plants. Swan plants are rapidly sprouting. At school, the spider plants did survive and perked up after a drink of water. 

I visited Kings Plant Barn on the weekend looking for a Kaffir Lime but they didn't have any in stock, neither did Mitre 10. I want to grow one in a pot and harvest the leaves for my new-found interest in Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. For that I need ingredients like chilis, lemon grass, galangal and thai basil. Mum is rather skeptical about me learning any cooking, but how can I reasonably make anything without having the proper ingredients? 

For some strange reason, just because I'm female, I'm meant to magically know how to cook a perfect meal from absolutely nothing, when I have never been trained as a chef or had any experience in the kitchen. Now, if I had been given say $100 and been directed to go buy a weeks worth of food with it and my own kitchen and tools to mess around in and use, maybe I might actually be interested in learning and creating. But Mum always jealously guards her kitchen like a hawk and resents any time I attempt to make anything. She won't eat anything I make either, without a whole barrage of complaints, so I've just learned to live on mousetraps and instant noodles when she's not around. 

It's Chinese New Year and my lucky red packet money IS burning a hole in my pocket. No crayfish and no kaffir limes on sale, so I'm saving for a rainy day I guess. Or the Woodside Road garage sale which is apparently this Saturday.

I don't know if we'll go back to work though with the Covid still making the rounds. I'm not too worried though, as the vaccine roll out is just around the corner. 

I saw one of my naked ladies flowers made an appearance down the back, maybe it was Mother Nature giving me a Valentines flower, though I also had two droopy roses and lots of catnip enough for a bouquet. My moon calendar indicates its the best time to plant, so, if we have a few more days in lockdown I might be able to create another garden. 

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.