Happy New Year
Violas
Good morning, 2020. Welcome to my gardening world. Please be kind to my garden, all year, if that's OK with you. New Year's resolutions seldom last, so I won't list any specific ones. In fact, I won't list any!
Just do my best...
As in everything, I'll try and do my best every day. I'll try and keep the house patio and decking nicely swept and tidy. And I'll be nice to my dogs (that's easy) and my cats (ditto).
The year of the potato...
For me, 2020 has started off as the Year of the Potato. Any available space in the Hump Garden has a line (or curve) of potatoes, ready for harvesting (and gifting to friends and family). Cliff's Kidneys, Agria (divine in the roasting dish), Purple Passions (yeay) and Waiporoporos (purple skin, a good size, and a delightful nutty flavour). Countless self-seeded plants grow in all the spaces. Luckily I love cooking with potatoes. Yum.
Waiporoporo Potato Flowers
It's also started off as the year of the bee. My garden is full of buzzy honey bees and hovering bumbles. Some parts of the garden are quite noisy!
Busy bees...
Their flower food (my garden is very flowery at the moment) is varied - the bumbles adore the tiny red Scrophularia flowers, and the honey bees enjoy the flowering Hebes. Shoes on when walking on the lawn - the clover patches are flowering. I have to watch the dogs, who take great delight snapping at the swooping bumble bees. Silly dogs!
But it is not the Year of the Moth. Not yet, anyway. Windows can be open at night, and hardly any flying things come in. Very odd.
Later...
A strange day - smoke in our atmosphere (we can smell it), blown over the Tasman Sea. The sky overcast and hazy, with the palest of red suns, a weird red light over the garden. Thoughts for the folk and firemen battling the bushfires in Australia - what a rotten welcome to 2020. My friends and I have made a small donation to the Red Cross. What else can we do?
I've taken lots of flowery photographs (see above), had the hoses on, wandered around the garden, but done very little of substance. This is definitely not how I mean the new gardening year to continue. Oops.