Some people prefer all hard surfaces in the garden, with pots and raised beds. I like a bit of green lawn too but no more than is manageable with a small hand mower. I tried the new mower yesterday and inspected the result this morning.
It’s a little unevenly mowed in places – where the dogs used to dig and the chooks had dust baths. When I had chooks I didn’t mow much at all so they could enjoy being up to their feathery bums in grass. Grass and weeds I should say. It is still quite weedy in places, which doesn’t bother me.
The new mower was quite a different experience from the old one. It felt as if you didn’t have to make any effort at all – and I do like to feel that I am getting exercise as I mow. The mower purrs along nicely not making a loud clacking as I feared it might.
However, the new mower seemed to make no impression on the lawn at all! For a panicked moment I regretted leaving the dear old Meteor at the shop. Luckily, you don’t have to muck about with spanners to lower the blades on the new mower. There are huge wingnut screws on each side. Even then, the catcher was barely half full when I finished mowing. Still, it looks tidy enough – especially with the edges done.
Here’s Felix, getting a bird’s eye view from the cabbage tree.
Lately, he’s been racing to the very top of the trees. Sometimes he chases his tail up there while I hold my breath down below.
Optimism is needed when you grow your own food. I bought a pack of six ‘Moneymaker’ tomato plants when it was really too late in the season, but my garden rotation diagram suggested tomatoes were good to plant after the beans had finished and, generally, I’m optimistic. It was the last pack in the garden centre, and the stems of the plants were bent sideways. Warning signs. However, I planted them with stakes and the plants straightened up in a few days and grew quickly.
By the end of summer, there were large trusses of fruit – all green and showing only slight signs of ripening. Since then we’ve had several frosts. I’ve been picking the tomatoes which are beginning to look yellow and putting them on the kitchen window sill. Many have ripened: good to use in casseroles and soups and in the frittata I made yesterday.
Frittata is a great way to use garden produce. This one has kale, spinach and silver beet from the garden as well as sliced (formerly green) tomatoes.
The stems of the tomato plants have turned to mush almost – as I expected the tomatoes would too – after all, it’s Winter Solstice and the shortest day tomorrow. Many tomatoes were on the ground before I rescued them today and put them on the windowsill.
These tomatoes remain after I picked up the ones on the ground.
Intermittently, over the next hour or so, we began to hear little thuds. Some of the tomatoes were rolling off the windowsill onto the bench, into the sink and one made it as far as the floor. And they’re not the variety called ‘Tumbling Tom’!
“I can manage that myself,” I told the arborist when he offered to trim this pittosporum six months ago. Then birds nested in it. Before I knew it, it was heading for the power lines again. It was an effort to trim from the top of a wobbly ladder, with my arms at full stretch holding heavy hedge clippers. Some bits I couldn’t reach, so it looked as if it had a lopsided mohawk. I shoved the clippings under a camellia.
Today, I had another go. I planned to head straight through with loppers, getting the large branches as I went. I climbed down from the ladder to inspect my efforts. What a mess! Stark cut branches stuck up at the top and a pile of branches was half way up the ladder. And I was hot, sweaty and scratched. I rang the arborist.
I am usually overwhelmed with courgettes, but this year…no such luck. The plants look healthy, but the fruit is minute and often rots at the end. Gardening seems to be a mix of triumph and disappointment.
I overheard someone describe my garden as ‘overgrown’ which sent me into a frenzy of tidying last week. It just is that kind of garden, though, as I posted earlier about being ‘hands off’.
Flowers for the bees, including flowering broccoli. Ready to eat: beans, tomatoes, rhubarb, broccoli, silver beet, spring onions, potatoes. Just planted: more broad beans.
While I’m far from self-sufficient in the garden, it’s lovely to bring what you have grown in to the kitchen. Today I was pleased to find the first potatoes I’ve grown in this garden, and to add them to this ‘still life’.
And then to use the produce in a nutritious meal.
At the garden centre today, the assistant suggested there might be too much nitrogen in the soil where the courgettes are growing, as it’s where my compost bins used to be. Knowing more about the soil is something I could work on.
While at the garden centre, I was intrigued by a sign which made me look worriedly about my feet. Fortunately, I hadn’t stood on any monarch caterpillars, and I could see them on the swan plants.
Monarchs often flit about my garden, and I’ve seen a few yellow admirals this year – and lots of white butterflies. The egg chair is a good place to sit and watch what’s going on.
Being retired felt sparkly and new; full of promise. But now that we’re all retired, more or less, the shine has gone off it. After three months, and with winter approaching, would it have seemed less of an adventure anyway?
I was excited about my daily craft book, was ready to get my paperwork in order – such as renewing my driver’s licence – and had begun to keep a journal to record the turmoil of retirement. All of these have pretty much lapsed.
I promised myself the delights of movies and tv shows I’d missed while working and have enjoyed some of these on Kanopy (some funny French movies) and TVNZ OnDemand (Girlfriends – very exciting and funny), but mostly I prefer to watch tv shows about gardening or house restoration on Living and QI on UKTV.
Diverting, occasionally, but not a main event.
Radio has proved to be a good companion. Favourites include Jim Mora’s Sunday morning show and Jesse Mulligan’s Afternoons. The BBC Friday Comedy is a podcast I have followed for some time. It’s especially apt at the moment, recorded from the comedians’ homes and with no studio audience laughing at every joke. I like to listen to In Our Time or Woman’s Hour to occupy my mind while cleaning the bathroom or doing other mundane tasks.
I seem to have drifted into playing Patience. On my phone and ipad to start with, until I found the cool smooth crispness of real cards far more relaxing. No annoying infomercials for miracle bras, no hints about the next move, no promises of weird rewards, no disturbing messages giving you the percentage of people you have beaten.
The online Solitaire gave me the impression that the deal was manipulated to keep you playing, to tease you along, to advertise things it has worked out you need, and that it was being judgemental about your mental acuity.
I’m using a pack of cards which features Shakespeare’s flowers and each card has a quotation from the play in which the flower is mentioned. Charming. I can play the game while I look at the garden, the sunset, passersby, the tv, or the little spider with the stripy legs which lives somewhere around my desk.
Solitaire – “the last resource of the vacant mind” according to Myrtle Reed in A Weaver of Dreams (1911). She also concluded that it is not immoral to cheat when playing this game.
Mornings are spent with my back in the sun, reading the paper and doing the code cracker.
Mental acuity not great here: I mixed up the two given letters – and I never attempt the cryptic crossword.
My favourite indoor (sometimes outdoor in a sunny spot) pastime is reading. Occasionally, I’ll add a book to my ebook library, but prefer reading “real” books (and they don’t run out of battery). That said, I still become absorbed in the e versions.
On the cards (haha) are pursuits I would like to do more. When I heard my 13 year old nephew had taken up juggling during lockdown, I remembered I had some juggling balls and dug them out. They’re a bit the worse for wear, as my dog would be poised ready to grab them if they fell – which was often. The teethmarks and duct tape repair are evidence of his enthusiasm to join in. This time round, it’s possible I may get no further than the exercise on the first page of the instruction book.
The other pursuit is playing the piano. The piano has become a piece of furniture for family photos, boxes of cutlery too good to use and delicate tea cups. I have lost the muscle memory of many of the pieces I used to rattle off (I’m talking about music – the tea cups don’t rattle at all, surprisingly), but others I can stumble through. Fittingly, Beethoven’s Farewell to the Piano is manageable. He’s a bit of a show-off though, old Beethoven, not even easing up in a final piece. There are some big stretches for normal hands and the middle section has four flats and lots of accidentals. The inscription inside the book of music is: “Christmas 1971” signed by my music teacher, Mrs I M Lennon.
Best of all, perhaps, I enjoy my garden. The chooks keep me company out there, inspecting sweepings for tasty bugs.
Sometimes the light on plants is just right and I get a photo like this one to share, use as a screen saver and blog about. This chrysanthemum, which I won in a Friday raffle at work last year, was in a small pot and not looking very promising, so I popped it into the edge of the vegetable plot just a few weeks ago. It grew like crazy and had to be staked and tied to keep it from flopping over the little lime tree beside it.
This previously unassuming plant could be a metaphor for things to come when there is a time to step out of our confining bounds, flourish in fertile ground, grow and shine.
Every two or three days I pick sweet peas. I have two varieties, and the one with the thicker stems and more flowers has performed best, lasting well when picked.
The vase of sweet peas on the left was picked some days ago.
They smell gorgeous and look pretty amazing too.
More recently, the honeysuckle has begun to flower and the bumble bees seem to like it.
On a smaller scale, tiny caterpillars are beginning to appear on the swan plants. I put two more plants in as the wee critters look as if they need fattening up. This one looks large enough in the photo, but is only about one centimetre long.
In Alice in Wonderland the Caterpillar asks Alice, “What size do you want to be?”
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