Yippee! The weekend!
Yippee! The weekend! I love starting a new journal page for the weekend. Every possible gardening verb will have a chance in the action - weeding, shredding, chain-sawing, digging, mowing, planting, mulching, dead-heading, pruning...
Calendula
Saturday 15th December
First, a leisurely cup of coffee, and an assembly of gardening thoughts. It's more than a question of what to do first - just how creative do I feel like being? I do have plants to plant, and a little garden area to enlarge - but I could easily create this with thick newspaper and freshly chipped shreddings, rather than digging. Hmm...
+5
Rusty the naked dog is back from the dog-groomer, minus his fur. Oh dear - he looks funny! It's hard on his dog self-esteem. Humans in the Moosey household laugh out loud when he appears, and Fluff-Fluff doesn't recognise him and transforms into a Halloween cat - huge eyes, enormous fur spikes, growl, hiss... Poor Rusty! Fluff-Fluff was his friend...
Right. We are going shredding first, before the sun gets too hot. Ha! I have a pair of green safety ear-muffs, and am wearing my natural hemp green gardening shirt. I should blend in nicely with the pine tree branches!
Compassion Roses
Monday 17th December, Early...
Q. So what did you get up to this weekend?
A. Gardening.
I was right about those gardening verbs (see above), but I missed out one, namely the reading of a gardening book. Both days ended with a cold beer on the house patio underneath the Compassion roses, feet up on a chair, dreaming about hiring several manly garden helpers and paying them to do the heavy work. Then a rush of pride - I do it all myself. If I ever wrote a gardening book (heaven forbid!), how would I ever make it sound interesting and creative?
It's that trick where the owner-gardener seems to do absolutely everything AND write about it. Then they still have the time, energy, and drive to go off on long botanical tours of e.g. China's rhododendrons and pop up at the Chelsea Flower Show. And here's the trick - meanwhile, back at the garden-face, a trusty team of hired helpers are digging, and shifting, and sawing, and turning the compost, and raking, and burning, and ...
Weeds
I met so many weeds in the weekend - I'm shocked and embarrassed. What a popular place my borders by the water race are! I'm still pulling out forget-me-nots, and foxgloves, and trimming aquilegias. These flowers grow everywhere, and I love them.
Out, Out, Damned Foxglove!
There are patches of Lychnises in all the borders, too - and the yellow Verbascums are just starting to flower. Finally there are more yellow and red roses to balance all the peachy-pinks. The lady in my gardening book has an 'impeccable dead-heading' programme (but someone else does it). I do random dead-heading at dusk, when the flower colours look so beautiful.
Garden Lasagne
Much shredding was done - I now have a huge pile of chipped pine, which I can use to make garden lasagne behind the pond. I refer to the layers - first horse manure, newspaper, water, and finally the pine mulch like a thick layer of parmesan cheese - which add organic matter and rejuvenate tired, dead soil. It's my own recipe, using what's free!
Rusty
Hairless Dog
Rusty the hairless dog still looks strange to me - he's rather pink, and I can pat his skin! Fluff-Fluff the cat still isn't sure of his dog-identity, and approaches with caution. I'm surprised - I expected a cat to use physical catty-senses, like smell, to identify the house dog, not just be put off because he's a different shape.
Right. Today is easy. Swim, play piano, write, read, and garden. I'll just do a bit of everything. That's the secret of life, really!
Lunchtime...
I am the Mistress of the modular. My wheelbarrow has been full of pinecones, then horse manure, then old foxgloves (two times), then pelargoniums and potting mix. I have wandered here there and everywhere in the blazing sunshine. It's time to retreat to the shade.
A Beige Bathtub Frog
I am quite shocked - finally I 'saw' my bathtub frog, while scooping out a bucket of water. He was nothing like I'd imagined - he's quite small, and almost beige in colour. A beige frog - no wonder he makes such a peculiar noise! I have tentatively identified him as a Brown Tree frog - Litoria ewingii, though he's very much a bathtub frog in my garden! The scary thing is that he could easy get scooped out in the watering bucket and not be noticed.
Right. I will put the air conditioning on and do some piano practice during my gardening lunch break.
Later...
I am such a legend. I dragged out a pile of gum tree rubbish from the end of the Hump and raked the ground clean. So many little Pittosporums survived the tree-felling and are doing rather well, considering! Tomorrow I will organise a sensible watering plan.
Green Astelias
Wednesday 19th December
It's good to have a whole day off gardening, even in the summer season. So today I am absolutely full of resolutions - I feel really, really busy. I'm suddenly 'making' calendars for my friends for Christmas again. This year they can choose from the following: roses, flowers, other New Zealand gardens, New Zealand plants, assorted cats (including a cats-snoozing series photographed by lovely son-in-law), and dogs. Except the dog calendar only features Rusty, so it could become a bit boring - he has the same facial expression in each photograph!
I Miss B-Puss
Beautiful B-Puss
As I was collecting up photographs I found at least five hundred of much-loved B-Puss - now there was a cat with an emotional face! He could pose for the camera and convey any mood - playful, dorky, cautious, thoughtful, happy... Seeing all these images of B-Puss in good health has cheered my memory up!
I'm also busy in my piano playing programme, which has expanded to include NPG. He who loves being organised in the garden ( yeah right?) is also being organised to play his violin in three Beethoven piano-violin sonatas. Christmas Beethoven, to feature between the barbecue and the mince-pies...
Today I'm going biking for three hours without my dog - sorry, Rusty! And my singing friend has given me the hugest bag of chook food - my goodness, I've never seen so many packets of mould-spotted buns and loaves! I'm thinking penicillin here - my hens should really enjoy pecking and poking through everything. There's nothing like an over-ripe tomato to get a big striped hen excited.
Huge Gardening Plans
I have huge gardening plans for today as well. Plus Rusty needs to go for a walk. Plus I have website work to do. I have written the most boring article ever about the felling of the big trees. But any gardener who's experienced this, and who's elected (foolishly) to do the clean-up afterwards will understand...
One final, silly thought before I start doing stuff - don't junk e-mail spammers have the most interesting, intriguing names? Aargh!