7th January 2006

I've been abed or a-snuffling for almost 3 weeks with a flu/cold/lurgy kind of a thing, and have only just in the past few days been able to do anything other than rise out of the chair without getting breathless.

The garden is doing well. As you can see from the pic to the right one of the angel trumpets is out - what a beautiful flower! Over the past 36 hours we have had 47 mm of rain! Wonderful! That's when the angel trumpet decided to flower.

I have been busying myself unpotting the meadow saffron bulbs and am slowly replanting them through the garden - I need to do this fairly fast as they're going to flower in late summer or very early autumn.

As for the rest of the garden - much of it is just simply ... wow. Suddenly the garden has blossomed, quite literally. The herbaceous borders are thick and luscious and brilliant with flower. The woodland garden is just looking superb - the foxgloves are now in flower. I have taken some photos, and I will get them up, but somehow too much for me right now. I can do a bit, but not much. The brain just won't get quite into gear.

Weeding ... ah, the weeding. I actually got around to starting to clear the side patio today, which I have just let go this past year. The weeds! I wish I had a flame thrower ... but it is as well that I don't as I'd likely take the entire house out.

And the powdery mildew. Some of the rose I bought in are thick with it, and they've infected many of the other roses. Am not happy.

I had a European goldfinch, a pair, actually, in the garden yesterday - what a beautiful bird!

Now I am off to sit on the verandah and have a wine, and watch the late afternoon thunderstorms roll in.

 

13th January 2006

The cockies are here! The cockies are here! Back to pinch the walnuts. I don't mind, I love them, although they can get terribly raucus. This was taken with a telephoto lens right at the top of Great Wal, the walnut tree, just before a somewhat pitiful thunderstorm hit.

Making off with the booty.

And a closeup of one of the handsome laddies.

 

Sunday 21st January:

OK, so here's the deal. I have a skip for a few more days and that means I need to get as much weeding done as possible in order to get it disposed of easily (very seedy and rooty, no way is this crap going into the compost).

Today is meant to be a big weeding day - and oh, some of the weeds. Early this morning I tackled a massive thorny thistle, 5 feet tall, about 4 in diameter, that had spikes on it the length of my finger. It is out and gone. Now I am hacking my way through the bog garden.

Let me digress and tell you about the weather - it is warm and it is currently 98% humidity - has been for hours. No rain (well, brief shower when I thought God had smiled on me and I wouldn't have to weed any more). I am in the bog garden up to my ankles in bog - water and decomposing plant material that stinks (oh yeah, and I have discovered that the last time I had a skip I tossed out my wellies - why why why why? - so I have to do this in ordinary and now ruined gardening shoes). I am half blinded by sweat. I have hacked my way through a portion of the bog garden only to be confronted with a massive thistle twice the size of the one I took out at dawn. Oh God, I'll have to cope with it when I go back out.

Fortunately I have just filled my builder's wheelbarrow with weeds, so that means I can come inside, half a drink, some panadeine for the throbbing headache, and a whine. LOL Soon I'll have to go outside and start on another wheelbarrow load. I am covered in mud save for my face and hands which I have just washed. I keep brushing off ants which are crawling all over me and one of them has died and got stuck under the 'a' on my keyboard, so the damn thing keeps sticking. Once I go back out again, if any passerby stops and congratulates me on the glorious garden, my dear! I'll hack into them with my weeding hook.

As I hack my way deeper into the bog I am breaking off great heads of Russell Lupin seeds and spreading them everywhere - all I want is for a gigantic dense thicket of lupins to develop so I won't ever have to do this again.

Anyone wanna come help???

 

27th January 2006

Weeding done and in the skip - after I wrote that last entry we had an absolute torrent of rain fall - 77 mm in 6 hours, and 40 mm of that in just over half an hour. One gravel path washed away but otherwise no damage and the garden had a terrific watering.

This week has been harvest time. Onions, shallots and carrots pulled, half the beetroot crop came up a couple of weeks ago and was preserved, the other half soon to come up for chutneys and relishes. The carrots have gone into storage, the onions and shallots are drying prior to being strung up to go into the dark pantry.

You can say an awful lot about growing your own food - how wonderful it is to grow organically, to know what is (or, rather, what is not) in your crop, and about how wonderful all that fresh air and exercise is. In the end, though, it comes down to the absolute satisfaction in growing your own food. I simply don't know a better feeling than being able to stand back and look at the rack of onions drying and think, That's my food, and I grew it.

The onion bed has now been cleared, dug over, and a load of compost and manure dug in. It should have a bit of a rest, but I think I may be able to get a crop of leeks out of it, or even some more beets and onions.

The flower garden is looking terrific (I know, I know, pictures soon!), and even the front garden is coming along with the shrubs finally started to look ... shrubby. Even the side garden which has been strawed over to kill the lawn has a line of Lavatera flowering madly and is looking really pretty.

There was a winter chill in the air this morning. A reminder that even though we have a long and glorious autumn before us, winter is a-waiting.

 

Sunday 28th January:

New crops of onions (red and brown) and leeks are in. Pumpkins are coming along nicely.

Also planted out a pittosporum hedge to replace the tree gardenis hedge which died! Every last shred of it! I can't think why save it might have been too cool for it down here.