Website People

The Moosey website is about four P's - Plants, Pets, Places, and People. Relatives, friends, and other gardeners (much more famous than the Head Gardener will ever be) are often mentioned.

Occasionally a reader must be perplexed - who exactly is this 'walking friend'? And who is this David Austin? Some man who has all these 'beauties'?

Relatively Speaking...

Relatives of Moosey are usually given their proper family title - namely Daughter of Moosey, Younger Son of Moosey, and Elder Son of Moosey, AKA Web-Master. Partner of Moosey is given various descriptive names - Lawn-Mower Man and Resident Engineer being two of the most commonly used. It all depends on what he's supposed to be doing at the time of writing. Chain-Saw Man is common, after a winter storm.

Relatives are taken rather for granted, and are rarely pictured in any of the website sections. After all, family life is supposed to be private...

Human Friends :

Human friends play a huge part of a gardener's life. And now that the Head Gardener is retired she has more time to be a nice friend in return!

So here is a glossary of VIFs (very important friends) and VIGs (very important gardeners) who feature in other pages on the Moosey web-site. Some might be seen shyly posing in a photograph, while others are allowed to retain their anonymity - a lot of very private people end up in this very public place!

Very Important Friends

Friends have their anonymity shyly protected - and so you'll read about Moosey's 'walking friend', 'singing friend', 'swimming friend', and so on. These friends (if they know they feature at all) graciously allow themselves to be mentioned in web pages.

Judith :

Judith still works part-time in the office at the local high school, and helps in her husband's contracting business. Her house has a number of its own cats, as well as foster-kittens rescued from the colony.

My Friend Judith

In 2007, being retired and having some spare time, I asked my friend Judith if I could help with her Trap-Neuter-Return programme for controlling a colony of wild cats.

Judith has been feeding the cats and kittens every day for over four years. She's just an ordinary animal lover who's doing something small yet significant in her neighbourhood. Trap-Neuter-Return is a well documented humane way of dealing with a feral cat population.

Astrid, AKA My Swimming Friend, My Sea-Side Gardening Friend

Astrid is my oldest friend, and gardens in a micro-climate by the sea in Christchurch, New Zealand. She prefers not to have a relationship with computers - so she knows nothing of my web-site, or my journals. Yet she was my inspiration for starting a paper gardening journal all those years ago!

Astrid introduced me to mulch, and daylilies. Thanks, my friend!

Sherryn, AKA My Walking Friend, My Singing Friend

Sherryn supplies me with 'chook cook' - frozen bags of vegetable peelings, which I boil up for the hens. Being an alto, she is a woman with a trailerful of down-to-earth common sense. She instincively understands why I keep needing her old newspapers.

Very Important Gardeners

Then there are some official characters - grand gardeners Moosey has never met but is inspired by. Such celebrities will often be tossed into the turbulent waters of the Moosey journal, to bob along in the current of words for a week or so, and then float off under Rooster Bridge off the property.

David Austin

Actually David Austin is a VIRB - a very important rose breeder. Millions of Older-Lady Gardeners (OLGAs) have filled their rose gardens with his romantic English roses.

He has a great philosophy, wanting to combine the health and vigour of the modern rose with the fragrance and form of the old-fashioned. It seems to me the the perfect compromise between old and new.

Sam McGredy

Sam McGredy's another VIRB. There are a few Sam McGredys - the most junior one is a well-known rose breeder who emigrated from Ireland to New Zealand in the 1970s. There are three pages of Sam McGredy's roses in my New zealand roses section.

Sam is the breeder who defied tradition and called one of his roses Sexy Rexy. Important warning - promise that you will never, ever do a google search for this rose by name!

Beth Chatto

Beth Chatto is a VIG - an English lady gardener who has an open garden, and also writes inspiring books. Her dry gravel garden (which used to be a carpark) is famous, though I've never been myself to see it. One day soon...

Penelope Hobhouse

I know little about this Very Important Grand English Lady Gardener, except that she designed a perennial border in all the colours of the rainbow for Sir Elton John. I hope it lasts longer than a real rainbow does!