The Good Life

My garden is one of my favourite things. I like nothing more than to wander around it at the end of the day, wine in hand, Basil at my feet, checking all the growth and mentally noting all the horrible heavy chores I can get Richard to do in the weekend.
I garden purely by guesswork and logic. If it's wilting, water it. If it's boggy, don't. Feed it with sheep pellets because they're cheap and I like the smell when they mush down into the soil. Sun and shelter and Robert's your father's brother. This way, I've managed to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli and zucchini (although if you can't grow zucchini, you should back away from the garden and go play with your plastic blocks). I've destroyed a tamarillo (not well staked) and a raspberry bush (not enough sun).
It's very satisfying. But this year we're taking it to another level. We've had a composting area built. 2 big wooden pens built right next to each other. You fill one, let it decompose whilst filling the other. And so on.
Who knew that rotting food could be so riveting?
We put all our veggie and fruit scraps in our container in the kitchen, along with loo rolls, paper towels and other organic matter. I'm a little bit obsessed with this container. I've found myself chopping a broccoli up and going, one bit for the pot, one for the compost. Perfectly good broccoli. Richard made an enormous veggie soup the other day, and all I could think of was, the off cuts are going to be perfect for the compost! I may even buy far too many fruit and veg from the supermarket with the thought that if we don't eat it, the compost will.
Anyhoo. Each day I tip the scraps over the heap and rake them in. The rich loamy smell is intoxicating, and the sight of all the wriggly worms is hypnotic. I often stand for 15 minutes at a time, just watching. A new idea for a TV channel - compost heaps.
Soon we'll cover the heap over with newspapers and let it rot for the winter, and we'll start on the next bin. We discussed moving house the other day, and when weighing up the pros and cons, I thought, no, because I won't get to use ALL MY COMPOST.
How sad is that?

A spot of gardening

One of the best things about moving back home is always having something to do. Back in Dorkland, Richard and I would have to leave home to create our fun, which usually meant spending money, or screaming at each other in traffic jams over which way we SHOULD have gone. But here in Tauranga, I have a list a mile on that keeps me happy at home. At the top are always gardening tasks, because I would rather have a tidy garden than a tidy home (I WIN OVER NATURE).

Anyhoo we have a lovely guy Ian Dickie do our lawns (our lawn mower being a fire hazard). He noticed that we had a lot of oxalis poking its head up through our flowerbeds. This oxalis only showed up after we mulched using pea straw. WEED FREE EXPENSIVE pea straw. Hum. Anyway, he gave us a tip that, at this time of year, oxalis creates a bulb way down deep, and all you have to do is dig it up. So today, I did.

Let me tell you, finding these pointy pink knobs deep in the dirt was like popping a huge pimple, or extracting a stubborn ingrown hair. Disgusting but oh so satisfying. The whole garden only took me 30 mins and so long as I'm onto it, we should be oxalis free.


This is my raised veggie patch. I've got, from bottom up, broccoli, brussel sprouts and beetroot. All Rich's favourites. At the top is some late-summer cos lettuce. We have a white moth infestation at the moment so I have to derris dust every day. Not so sure how good it is because I have seen the moths landing directly on top of the dust and there's still tiny eggs on the leaves. Will just have to be vigilant I guess. Looking forward to the brussel sprouts, I was watching Jamie Oliver grow them and they look fantastic, big knobbly stalks. Hopefully we get a couple of good frosts this winter to make them extra sweet. Otherwise they just taste like farts.

The grape vine was left to grow wild while we were away, which means it's a big mess of canes and weeds. Hasn't harmed the grapes any though, and I probably eat an entire bunch a day. They are the most delicious things in the world. Grapes from a supermarket don't taste anything like these. Why is that? Anyone?

This half-wine barrel was the subject of my previous post. Look closely on the ground and you'll see lots of annoying white balls. It looks great on the corner of our deck and the pansies are coming up nicely. Although the "red" pansy is coming up severely yellow/orange. If I wanted ginga, I would have asked for it.

Richard was given this drinks bath as a present in his younger years. When I laid eyes on it, I said "we're too old for parties anyway." Half a bag of potting mix and a few drill holes later, I have all my favourite herbs close by (basil, rosemary, sage, thyme and mint). Plus I can move it around to sit in the different sunny spots according to the seasons. How Martha is that?

This is my edible Thai area, with a lime and chili plant. The lime we took with us from Auckland. It's grown more in one month here than it ever did there - needed full sun, which we didn't get. Unfortunately we'll get no fruit this season but am sure that next year it'll be chockers. The chili has also taken off and is still flowering. Tonight I'm making Thai beef salad with rice noodles and one of these puppies will be chopped into a tangy lime and fish sauce dressing.

And there you go. Send me tips, advice or kudos!

Idiocy

Richard and I spent the weekend breaking our backs in the garden, getting everything back to how we like it, which to me, is not a blade of grass out of place, and to Rich, is somewhere he can sit and drink a beer.
Last year we bought half a wine barrel for the absurdly cheap price of $30, and it's been sitting doing nothing since then. Finally we put it in the corner of the deck. I decided I wanted it to be full of lovely flowers. So rustic and charming! Anyhoo it's very large, and would cost a lot to fill with potting mix, all for some shallow-rooting flowers. Rich pipes up.
"I saw this thing on a gardening show once, where they filled the bottom of the pot with beanbag beans, and then put the soil on the top to save space and allow for drainage!"
Makes sense to me. Off we potter to Bunnings to buy said beans and also lots of potting mix. Keep in mind we'd been gardening all day, it was 28 deg, and we had fairly bad hangovers from too much wine the night before. Brains were not fully engaged.
Getting home, we pour the beans into the wine barrel. They fill it halfway. So far, so good. We break open a bag of potting mix and start to shovel it on top of the beans. Flump. The dirt immediately sinks to the bottom. We try again. Flump.
Brows are furrowed. Turns out we'd forgotten about the laws of gravity and density. By now, the tiny beans are dotted around the deck and are sticking to our clothing and hands. I have the incredibly bright idea to water them down with the hose.
A good 5 mins later, I realise that the beans aren't spongey, and therefore are merely floating on top of the water. We now have dirty bean soup.
We still don't give up, and try laying plastic sheeting over the top of the beans. We dump more dirt onto the sheeting. Flump. It disappears under the sea of beans.
By now we are giggling like school kids. The beans are floating all over the place, and it looks like it's been snowing.
Finally we give up, and scoop out the beans with a bucket and into a rubbish bag. We are totally covered in the little fuckers and get maybe half into the bag. The rest fly off into the ether.
We end up doing what we should have done all along and filled the entire barrel with potting mix. 120 litres. Ah well. I planted red, white and blue pansies which hopefully will make an appearance in a couple of weeks. It looks rull pruddy.
The white beans are everywhere however and hopefully get munched in the lawnmower. Sorry environment.
Later on, I say to Richard: this gardening show. They used 1 cm of beans with a very small pot didn't they?
There is a pause.
Yes, he says.
Ah well. God loves a trier!