Book swapping and zen-ness

 

This weekend has been wet wet wet.  So no digging going on here.  Or even walking around the site, half the site sticks to your gumboots, and after a couple of steps you have half a ton of clay stuck to the bottom.  Its been lovely rain though.

 

So, in the interests of trying to live well, I tackled a tiny bit of the junk in the lounge in an effort to create a bit of calm and space.  Unfortunately, our inorganic collection of junk was last week, so this newly found rubbish will have to go in the rubbish bin and recycling bin. 

Although I have just discovered these wonderful boxes where you can put unwanted books (and who actually wants to read most books more than one time?) and others can come and take them home.  How cool is that?  They aren't very big, so I will have to visit a few times over the next few weeks, to get rid of all the books that were double layered on my shelves.  But I am feeling very pleased with myself to have discovered them.

 

 

More Autumn Flowers

 

 

I've started noticing what is actually flowering in my garden - all those plants (and there aren't many plants at all in my garden) that I must just be taking for granted, that have been there for so long I no longer appreciate them.

 

One of my favourites is rosemary.  A lovely winter cooking herb, with a nice lamb roast, or especially on roast veges, kumara and pumpkin.  But also lovely and fragrant in its own right, and those beautiful blue flowers!

 

 

I've picked some to put on my desk while I work.  I know the outside is not far away, but every little reminder of 'outside' helps, when your bottom feels like it has been glued to the chair for too long!

 

Winter Planting part one

 

 

 

 

It is going to be quite some time before I have the backyard 'proper' garden vegetable area done.  But I still want to have something growing over the winter.  So I have pressed the tiny area in the front of my house into service again.  I've got lettuces here (under the climbing stand that held the tomato plant).

 

 

 

And a little punnet of beetroot plants.  Had A LOT of seedlings in it, so that was a good bargain!

 

 

I got the seedlings from the Clevedon market, an all-round excellent place for a Sunday morning stroll.

 

I reckon I could squeeze another, say, packet of broadbeans, and maybe some more leafy things in this tiny strip.  Gardening in a small section does mean you are comfortable with close quarters for your plants.  No tidy rows here!

 

 

More autumn 'weeds'

 

 

 

 

Most plants flower in spring and summer, so in autumn there isn't all that much with colour.  Lots of dead seed heads and dying foliage but no actual flowers. 

 

But I have got 2 indestructible flowering plants on the go right now.  The red one is pineapple sage.  I first grew this from a cutting from a friend 25 years ago, and it has been transplanted all over the garden.  It does tend to get very bushy and quite large.  When my kids were little they liked to pick the flowers and suck the nectar at the base of the flower.  Can't say I have tried it though.  Its a herb, so can be used for a pineapple-y taste too.

 

 

And this one is a Japanese anemone.  Completely indestructible, even if you want to remove it, so needs to be introduced with care.  Very sweet and lovely flowers though (no, no scent), and makes a really good ground cover - in a tall kind of way.

 

Studies show simple things make you the most happy

 

 

No really!  They do.  Sometimes just doing the most relaxing and easy thing is the absolute best for a gorgeous and well-lived life. 

 

On Friday, after a week of work, I went to my friend's place for a chat and a debrief of our week.  She lit her little outdoor fireplace, and we sat on deck chairs with a rug each on our knees, and a drink in hand.  Her cats wandered around, maybe just a bit too close to the fire for comfort, but nothing obvious was singed.

 

That's it.  That was all the entertainment there was, but it was absolutely splendid, in a totally life-affirming way.  Would beat enlightenment any day, in my book.

 

Bees and Honey

 

This weekend, as a change of pace from only digging clay (although there was a considerable amount of that too), I helped a friend put honey into jars.

 

It was our first time, so we had to experiment a bit.  We ended up with a bain-marie of hot water and 2 small pots of honey melting over it.  The one at the front being stirred is nearly melted, and the one at the back is just getting going.  The honey needed to be strained to get rid of all the impurities (um, that would be bees legs and such :-/ ). We didn't want to heat the honey too much as I think heat destroys some of the essential goodnesses in raw honey.

 

 

We made quite a few pots of honey too - lovely dark, strong and healthy manuka honey.  When we had finished we gave the pots and utensils back to the bees for them to lick clean.  Assuming my friend's dog didn't get to them first.  And then had a sourdough and honey sandwich.  Of course!

 

 

So you want messy, in-tune-with-nature then?

 

My only operational garden at the moment is the tiny strip out the front of my house, between the house and the little hedge by the footpath.  In spring I planted it with everything I could squeeze in - 2 tomatoes, beans, sugar snap peas, capsicum, 2 types of basil, 2 types of thyme, radishes (didn't do at all well though), Lebanese cucumber, apple cucumber, lettuces.  Looked gorgeous for a while. Then everything grew, and it looked abundant and luscious..

 

 

 

Now it is autumn, and it looks .. well .. autumny. All the beans and peas have finished, the 'wild' stuff is taking over.  You can still see a couple of tomatoes.  Things are starting to die back.  And flower.  And go to seed.  So, this is how a garden looks, for real, in autumn.  Wouldn't win any House and Garden shows.  People on a garden tour would not be impressed.  If I had uppity neighbours (I don't, my neighbours are lovely) they would be leaning over the fence tutting.  I think that autumn messiness is all part of nature's cycles, part of setting seeds in the ground for next year.

 

 

One of the most prolific 'weeds' I have in my front garden is this pretty flower.  It arrived on its own probably 20 years ago, and has never left, reliably pops up every autumn.  It is a native NZ hibiscus, quite small and very lovely.  An excellent reason not to weed until it has finished flowering.

Chickens

 

The thing that I am most excited about in my new-to-be garden is CHICKENS!  I'm planning to have 3.  They'll need to be fully grown, or my cats might decide they are called breakfast.  And I was thinking of names like Mrs Cluckcluck, or Lavinia.

 

 

These chickens in the picture live down the road from me.  I was walking past a couple of weeks ago and stopped and chatted to the lovely lady who owns them. She showed me how she fed them - the pellets and chicken mash.  And the step-on feeders and other bits.  Chickens seems so friendly and companionable.

 

I keep wandering around my clay patch envisaging 'chicken run here' or 'chicken run there'.  Do I put them tucked away in the back corner?  Or plonk in the middle where I can see them?  But I think, as one of my friends said last night, they will be my pets, more than egg production units, so plonk in the middle I'm thinking, where I can see them from my kitchen window.

But Why?

All the new gardens in this trendy suburb that I live in, are 'developer specials'. Swathes of pristine grass, some black planters, mass plantings of 1 type of ornamental leafy plant, a hedge - hedge plants are highly fashion dictated - they used to be big-leafed green, now are smaller reddy leafed.  Plus the obligatory entertainment area for the barbeque and 'indoor outdoor flow'.

But I want to live well in the world, not just fashionably. I need something much more primal than just looks. So, growing my own food, having a place for animals. Somewhere a bit wild and untamed, that shows the seasons, makes you feel really connected to nature. Somewhere that will connect with our souls, where we can relax and be ourselves.  A bit messy, but vital and alive.

The Quarry

This lovely circular area used to be my vegetable garden. It has 20 years of compost under all this.  But alas, the digger driver decided to dump all the waste crumbly concrete from the 100 year old wall on to it. We've (boys) got rid of a lot of the really big chunks - some had to be broken up with a kanga hammer - I even paid Hire-a-Hubby to cart some away.

 

Now we are sieving the remainder through a chicken wire mesh on a little frame. The stuff that falls through is lovely soil - mainly the old garden compost I guess. The rocks that fall on the outside will be just right for fill behind the new little retaining wall by the patio.  Slow slow slow work though, although very satisfying - you take a pile of rubbish and throw it at the sieve, and get 2 piles of excellently useful stuff.

 

Clay Progress

 

Last weekend I moved dirt from 1 heap to another heap. I spread some of the top soil around a bit. But mainly I attacked the 'Clay Mountain'.

 

I'm using it to build up the high side of my (future) lawn, so the water can run away rather than pool - which happened a lot last winter.

 

 

The white stuff is clay breaker - gypsum - to break down the clay and turn it into lovely soil - or so the propaganda goes, we shall see.  I'm in experimental mode with this at the moment.  This tiny skinny strip was 1/2 a bucket full, so might need to buy a truck load of the stuff rather than a bag. Incredibly heavy stuff though!

 

Along the wall is a little strip of all the good dirt I'm excavating.  This will become a small strip of planting, I'm thinking passionfruit and grapes and climbing roses and maybe a tecomanthe speciosa.

Weekend work in the rain?

Well, this weekend looks like it might be wet.  Which will make the ramp too slippery to be able to push wheelbarrows up to a skip. So here is the plan of things to do that will take me forward, without doing all the heavy clay moving:

- move (tiny) pile of top soil to the edge, where the new strip garden will be
- dig some of the clay mountain that is a slightly more top soil than clay, and use it to level the area that will be lawn.
- spread some clay breaker lime
- continue delving for bigger rocks in 'The Quarry' - more on this later

We'll see how far that goes!  Might be really wet, in which case maybe I'll drink coffee and read the paper and draw up a plan of where the sun is on my section.

What to do with all the dirt?

So where is all this huge hole going to go?  The boys are digging through clay, a bit of top soil, and gravel from under a 100 year old path.  They need to pick axe it to loosen it, spade it away then load it into a wheel barrow.  I toyed with the idea at one stage of putting it into the bottom of planters, but have decided that in the long run, that would not produce happy plants. 

 

So then they push it up the ramp to the street level and dump it in a rubbish skip.

 

 

 

So we (me in supervision mode) have done 4 skips worth.  I tried a bit, was on wheelbarrow filling duty, but only managed a few spoonfuls to their complete barrow load.  I do, as a result though, have full appreciation for the impossibly hardness of the task - seems like super human effort in only 2 weeks to me.

 

Below is The Clay Mountain.  This is the next pile of clay to go, also to be barrowed up the ramp.  Looks like enough clay to build an entire subdivision.  Looks quite tiny in the photo though, will have to get my cat to pose next to it!