Morning meditations

Morning is my favourite time for browsing about the garden.

I get out of bed when the chooks are asking for breakfast at sunrise (just after 7 am at the moment). With a jersey zipped up over my pyjamas, and gumboots on my feet, I put out their mash and sprinkle some wheat before cleaning out their houses. Then I get the newspaper from the gate, and wander about the garden. It’s a lovely gentle way to start the day.

It’s autumn, but there’s plenty of new life despite that. The roses are clearly not done yet.

The New Zealand myrtle,rōhutu, is covered in berries.

The blueberry is simultaneously fruiting – for a second time – and losing its leaves.

The autumn raspberries just keep on going.

I look at work I have done to tidy up the tired late-summer growth – bulbs and winter colour in pots – and note new growth on the tomatoes, a fox glove stubbornly emerging from the side of a barrel, and buds on the camellia (it is flowering on the other side).

The tomato plants in a hanging basket (another of the many strategies to protect plants from the chooks) are still producing flowers and fruit.

Chrysanthemums and broad beans among the rainbow chard are flowering. The bean plants popped up all by themselves when I followed advice to ‘chop and drop’ the old, finished plants. Another of many examples of plants in the garden with the will to flourish.

I hope for winter harvest of spinach, kale, pak choi, and salad greens from the plants in the green house and the vertical garden.

My morning meditations on the energy and beauty of living things helps get the day off to a good start. I have become tolerant of the ‘chaos’ of nature too, because we now know it’s meant to be. Even chooks’ dust baths in the ‘lawn’, giving more of a farmyard look than a manicured one, make me happy.

To top off this morning’s garden browsing, a bellbird, korimako, burst into song above me as I reached into the nesting box to retrieve a warm brown egg.

Thank you, bellbird. Thank you, Betty.

POST SCRIPT: Since we’re on the subject of new growth despite the time of year, here’s another example. This is my brother’s new little puppy visiting us last week.