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.

Christmas Cactus

Too early for Christmas?

But it's Christmas Cactus season, already!!

I had my first Christmas Card, sent by a corporate yesterday and already have my olive tree decorated with new Christmas ormaments. I bought Christmas lights for the Garden Club raffle, and have packed of shoeboxes to somewhere on the planet full of toothbrushes and pens and notepads. Apparently everyone wants toothbrushes for Christmas for some strange reason, though I've tried to include a few tiny squishmallows (that you can't eat). Though banned from decorating the house I can at least do the garden...and so I will sure to have Christmas lilies and Christmas potatoes and Christmas strawberries this year.

But its only November, I hear you say. Yes well, best to get in early before the exhaustion sets in from seasonal confusion overload. I am still recovering from both Covid round 2 (thanks mum) and hayfever. 

Otherwise I have been tres busy doing garden since daylight saving means we get more hours in the day to do the garden - that's what its there for right? I must have been gardening in my sleep as I get up, garden, nap, garden, then eat, then garden and garden some more. I have put in my tomatoes (more) and potted up the capsicums, emptied and refilled the water tank, and Dusty has been catching lizards. Why I don't know as lizard soup isn't that appetising, but maybe she wants me to catch some fish if using lizards for bait?

That is if we are even allowed to go fishing anymore thanks to increasing pollution. I swear I thought it was going to be the end of the world when I realised I can't even go fishing in the creek anymore and die of giardia/bacteria/virus from drinking the water. 

So much for 'eco-city', what was that again? 

Thoughts of death and dying have been hovering around recently as the sun has climbed higher in the sky, making white people anxious that they cannot survive the climate change to tropical paradise while the dark people never complained about the ice age..they just adapted. But its not that, it's when school caretakers take to spraying roundup on their school fields and children run around barefoot and get poisoned that I'm sometimes feel like saying something but you know what...baby boomers never listen to a Gen Yer what do I know? 

Oh and we also have a change in government to the 3 wise men or the 3 bullies take your pick depending on your perspective, so its likely I won't have a job anytime soon thanks to ....the monkeys on the computers. However, I can still garden while I can and if it were not such an expensive hobby I can do it on the smell of oily rags as everything run by the govt is. After all I need food on the table without having to buy it from Pak N' Save. The Stick Man really needs more food, as I contemplate  working at Pak N'Save may be my next job. They have all this empty space that needs gardening in front of the carpark...

 

 

Urban Floral Farmlet

 The Garden Club members embarked on a local visit to the Urban Floral Farmlet in Te Atatu Peninsula where grower Marisa had turned her backyard into a floral enterprise. It was part of our 'garden trip' for club members now we were no longer travelling vast distances en masse to exotic locations (outside of Aucks) and haunting  RSAs. 

Marisa had spoken at one of our club nights on the joys of working from home, meaning quitting your corporate job to invest in your own backyard, and all the things she learned along the way. Being a complete novice, she learned plenty and was passionate about each and every seedling. 

We encountered beds of cottage flowers grown to make stunning bouquets, of particular note were statice and billy buttons. Then we were treated to a tulip goody bag, and dahlia tubers on sale. It was sort of like exit through the gift shop. 

Afterwards everyone mosied on down to Woodside. I was not going to give any long talk explaining all the trials and tribulations and consequences of NOT working at the community garden since I'd hardly any time at all down there and the ladies could see for themselves but Jacqui took the reigns and spoke about slug control and other such things to the rapt audience while I caught up with Karyn and her new dog that I'd never met. Cute. I wonder if Dusty could come along to the garden too. 

I was asked one question though 'Can you plant anything you like or do you have to check in with others first'? I wanted to give an honest answer because this was never my private garden but even at home its seems like I have to ask permission to even breathe so I wasn't sure what to say. Don't get caught? Within reason? You have to fill out a form...

The ladies were hungry after that and we repaired to Mitre 10 cafe for much needed sustenance and possibly shop at the Garden Centre. 

I reflected that I couldn't possibly turn my own backyard into an urban floral farmlet and make a profit selling flowers when its enough just to even attempt to have a garden on hard clay. But good on Marisa for making a go of it. 

My dahlia is called 'Rocco' and its pompom purple, so I will be putting that in along with two kinds of potatoes (Agria and Jersey Benne) in a few days. The rain has come, I'd emptied the barrel with seaweed fertiliser and now it's full up again. 

I've a list of things to buy now the growing season is here and things to do. Please don't ask me to do any extra things round November/December. It's gardening time. My job is cut out for me in my own garden that its likely that I can't do anyone else's jobs outside of home for a while yet. Post Covid, people always talk about working from home, but they never talk about working from the garden which is where the real labour of love is. 

Labour

 I missed my calling to be a botanist. They don't really have that specialty in New Zealand, where horticulture is relegated to the Primary Industries and gardeners are seen as The Help, paid to mow your lawns and keep the rugby fields looking green. Was thinking on this yesterday as on Labour Weekend, which is the traditional time of year to plant tomatoes, Bev, Cenny and I snuck off to have a look at the Auckland Botanic Gardens.

It was a lovely mid spring stroll, with many flowers out. Falun Dafa had taken over and set up booths everywhere extolling the virtues of traditional Chinese arts and crafts, which had been supressed in Communist/Athiest China. There were colourful displays of lotus lanterns and spring festivities, lion dances, and flowy garments. I forgot that I wasn't Chinese enough and seemingly blended in. I learned about Chinese traditional herbal medicine, that surely was another calling I missed too. I can't really explain how I ended up born in Auckland, it just happened. I like to blame my parents for that. 

Unlike Hamilton Gardens, Auckland Botanic Gardens doesn't have themed gardens, so there is actually no Chinese garden as such. I saw the makings of a Japanese garden near the magnolias, where some Japanese people were doing impromptu Karaoke, but so far, no bamboo, rice paddies and interesting rocks that make up a Chinese Garden. Despite having the largest Chinese population in NZ. Instead Auckland has a Children's garden, a South African garden, a Rose Garden and an English cottage garden. There's an Endangered Native species Garden (Maori garden? Mara?) and a herb garden and a perennial garden. 

In bloom and stood out were clivias under the shade of camellias and redwoods, and banksia yellow roses on the trellises. There was also a geranium looking pink flower pom pom looking plant that I quizzed Bev on - she reckons its a verbena bonasoreriss or something, but I reckon it's a geranium (the leaves) or lynchis (the flowers) . It had no tag or label though everything else had which was annoying. The one plant you want! 

There were eels in the pond, and we didn't really get round everything, as its park like grounds are extensive and you really need a sun hat and maybe a buggy if you want to see everything. There is a library and a cafe, but its enough to look at all the plants and not be tempted to take cuttings. 

I got back home to put my tomatoes in (Grosse Lise and Oxheart) and in general get ready for the growing season. Next Saturday the garden club are descending on the community garden at Woodside and I haven't even been to do any gardening! Arrgh. They will soon see there's a lot to do. Wonder if this a sneaky way to get recruits in. Probably not as it takes a lot of effort and labour to have a productive vege-kitchen garden especially if you don't live on site. 

Yes it would be my dream job to work in the Botanic gardens (I claim the herb garden) but since I live out West, there is not a chance I can get there in time thanks to Auckland traffic which takes at least 40 minutes to 2 hours on a good day. And you have to do gardening EVERY day. Not just five minutes on the weekend or on Labour Day!