I wish...
I wish that the fire ban would be lifted and I can start burning all my mess. Then I wish that a kind garden fairy would magically (and lovingly) spread mulch on all my weed-prone garden borders. Yet another gardening fairy could pay for a trailer-load of path mulch and spread it around, too.
But before this all happens a fourth fairy has raked up all the gum tree leaves and wheeled them barrow-load after barrow-load to the burning heap. And this takes us rather cyclically back to the fire ban...
Bright Yellow Autumn Leaves
Wednesday 21st April
I am a goose. While walking on the peninsula yesterday I had a momentous moment of utter clarity and blazing lucidity. My friend and I were philosophising about everything and nothing, and suddenly I knew. It was so easy! 'That' was why I was a gardener.
Except that now, back home, I can't for the life of me remember what 'that' actually was, or is. Oh dear... I can spend the next twenty years weeding and raking, trying to remember why I'm doing so. Alternatively I can tramp that tussock path every day, forever searching for the gardener's meaning of life. But then my gardening wouldn't get done... Hmm - it might be better to forget all about it.
Himalayan Honeysuckle :- The track into Charming Creek on the West Coast is smothered with this plant.
Something a lot more down to earth - I met a Himalayan Honeysuckle while out hiking. I've seen this beautiful autumn flowering shrub in West Coast forest - it's a 'bush weed', a pest under surveillance. I've incorrectly called it a wineberry. Phew - glad that's cleared up!
Right. Today - what to do first? I'm picking up some daylilies later this afternoon - they're going in a gap in the Stables Garden. I can't spend all day waiting to pick up daylilies. perhaps I need to take my dog for a brisk walk, then slurp a hot cup of coffee.
Lunchtime...
I've weeded the edge of the Wattle Woods Garden, where I planted a host of new irises. I'm dealing to the Phormiums in the middle of the middle (so to speak) of this garden, and I have piles of gum and dead flax leaves ready for the bonfire. I feel a bit moochy - what better place to mooch around than a beautiful garden covered in grumbling gum tree leaves, which is gradually being cleaned up for the winter? Aargh!
Autumn Along the Water Race
Fluff-Fluff is an odd cat. He is huge, with the biggest feet and the meanest amber eyes. Yet he has the most pathetic cat-voice - it's a sad, squeaky little howl, used whenever he's left behind in the garden. Dear cat! And I have left him behind, lying underneath an Umbrella grass.
+10
+10Oh dear! Little Minimus is in there too. She too is a squeaky cat, but she's tiny, and so her cat-voice fits the body. Minimus is such a great gardening cat, when she's in the mood! While Lilli-Puss, ever random, is today trying out being a house-cat. She's lolling upstairs on the bed, smelling beautifully of pine needles.
Blue Annual Salvias
So now I'm off to get a few loads of mulch and spread them on the Glass-House Garden, in lieu of finding that a fairy has done it for me. And then I'll collect the largest and the smallest of my cats, and my daylilies, and finally Non-Gardening Partner (who hopefully is coming home today). Yippee!
Thursday 22nd April
My three daylily clumps are huge! Hee hee. So the first thing I'll do today is plant them in the Stables Garden, without further ado (what an oddly ancient phrase that is). My cats love me to bits - it's fresh pet meat day.
Percy :- Naturally Percy has his very own cat page.
Fresh pet meat day is extremely exciting. Percy my beautiful ginger gentleman can recognise the dull clunk of his plastic pet bowl being put into the microwave from two rooms away. How does he do that? The meat is frozen, so surely he can't smell it. As soon as he catapults himself into the kitchen the others know something's up, and immediately I have cat chaos (oops).
The Nerines are Flowering
Talking of Paving Stones...
And Non-Gardening Partner is home and happy, and he has even talked to me about sizes of paving stones for the path around my vegetable garden. This is good...
Later...
I've had a great autumn day. All the daylilies are planted, as is a Jack Frost Brunnera and a Helianthemum from the Easter nursery sale. I've re-opened a blocked path in the Wattle Woods, raked gum leaves etc. off the surrounding garden and put the hoses on to water the soil. It's desperately dry in here! But the Agapanthus I planted some months ago looks cheerful and green, and there is space for more - memo to self, and to self's hiking friend, who has promised me another carload.
I scooped out seven towering barrowfuls of rubbish and dumped them by the fence, I've trimmed Phormiums, and made new cuttings of Renga Renga. I've done lots of good gardening work in the autumn sunshine...
+10Kaya my black beauty cat is temporarily? lost - where can she be? I've wandered around all her usual haunts calling, fresh pet meat in hand (avoiding Percy, who has a slightly anti-social attitude to Kaya - he chases her). Oh dear - there always seems to be one lost cat in my animal household. Tracking devices on cat-collars would be interesting, so I could see how far away from home they go. I'd probably be horrified!
Night-time...
Phew. Kaya has turned up and has eaten a three course meal. We offer a gourmet cat menu here at Moosey's...