Alison's Garden Blog

When making breakfast this morning I found at the back of the fridge a jar of homemade plum jam.  A real treat as I thought we had finished them all.

We live on a section that has become a rarity in suburban Auckland.  900 square metres containing a single dwelling and a large garden.  Previous owners had planted a range of fruiting trees and thanks to them we enjoy lemons, mandarins, feijoas, plums, loquats and apples.  Of course this can also create the dilemma of what to do with all the fruit (a terrible problem I know).

This summer I managed, for the first time, to make edible jam.  My previous efforts are memories that hubby and I will laugh about for years to come.  There’s the mandarin and orange marmalade that set like concrete and the next year the mandarin and grapefruit marmalade that never set at all.   This is despite standing at the stove for what I’m sure was hours of stirring simmering syrups while talking to my mum on the phone trying to clarify what a setting point looks like.

Mum used to make all sorts of jams and marmalades when were where young and had many tips to share but unfortunately I could never get the setting right.  Until I tried Jam Setting Sugar from Chelsea Sugar.  All I had to do was add the packet of sugar and setting agents to chopped up plums and boil then simmer the mixture for the times stated on the packet.  By hokey the resulting jam was so tasty and just the right consistency.

 I ended up with six jars.  Two went to my parents, much to my father’s delight and we have enjoyed the others.  Well I thought we had until this morning!

They are Watkins’ WF Massey Dwarf Peas and according to the packet “a very popular dwarf variety.  Early cropping with lots of sweet green peas in attractive pointed pods.  Ready to harvest in 10 weeks”.  Only growing to a height of 45cm they apparently don’t need staking so certainly less fuss.  Can’t say I’m growing them to supply our dinner table as frozen peas aren’t that expensive but I thought they could be a good snack for the children (and hubby and I).   Also it utilises this bed through winter but they will be finished in time for spring salad planting.  It will be interesting to see how they grow.

Unfortunately we have a large number of neighbourhood cats that love to hang out in our garden, up to eight on a sunny day.   This normally doesn’t worry me but they do have a habit of using my freshly dug over veggie patch as a personal toilet, destroying any seeds and seedlings in their way.  Two in particular like my veggie patch.  Hubby’s persian/tortoiseshell KittyKat and the neighbour’s jet black Salem can often be found curled up under the shade of the large rhubarb leaves or warming themselves in the hot house.  

To get around this problem I have tried to grow seeds in punnets on the back door step but I kept forgetting to water them.  An upturned plant tray worked well for both the carrot and weed seeds and I couldn’t tell the difference between the two when they needed to be weeded and thinned!  I did find plastic fruit juice bottles great protection for new seedlings but I am still experimenting with keeping the cats off my seeds!   With the peas I have decided to try a promising new technique which worked well out the front recently.

Sticks.  Sharp pointy sticks.  I know it sounds cruel but they are only thin kebabs sticks so shouldn’t do any damage to a moggy but hopefully deter them from digging and squatting.  At first I placed them where I planted each pea seed but realised this left lovely areas in between the rows for the cats to dig so I went crazy and ‘planted’ sticks everywhere.  I’m not sure how this will go as we did see a set of paw prints weaving their way through the bed the next morning but hey it’s worth a try.

New Plot Beside The Dalek

 

Peas Seeds With Cat Protection

Today I am housebound with the littlies due to our first lot of real winter weather. 

The sky is solid grey and the wind is up.  While I sat at the dining room table having lunch I gazed out of the window into the back garden, mesmerised by the trees as they danced and swayed with the wind knowing that tomorrow the ground will be littered with dead leaves and twigs.  Nothing like a bit of wild wind to clean out the trees!

The rain is coming in waves.  One minute it’s the lightest drizzle the next it’s heavy and horizontal.  My daughter keeps running over to the ranch-slider excitedly telling us what the weather is doing at any given moment.

I couldn’t be happier.  Auckland has been in drought this summer and the garden is in dire need of a good downpour.  We have cracks in the back lawn so big Hubby can put his whole hand inside them (I’m not willing as I don’t know what creepy crawlies might be down there).  I have been using the hose to keep things going but hose water just isn’t the same as rain.

So the morning was spent doing Play-Dough, presently the daughter is watching Disney’s Cinderella while the son is having his nap and then this afternoon we will be doing drawing and colouring in.  Not a bad way to spend the day!

Well, we had the back garden looking neat and tidy with the sandpit up and running, a soccer goal with various balls for the toddlers and an umbrella ready to shade the mums and babies.  Invites to our son’s first birthday had been sent and I had started to prepare the party food when, the morning before the party, both children woke up with raging temps.  They had both come down with flu!  So on doctors orders the party was cancelled.  We were gutted.

The only upside was that the garden was looking fabulous with its dark mulch covering and had become an inviting place for children to play in.  As we have put aside the back of our property for the children this ‘edged garden’ is set up for little people to play in and around.  We found quite of few tree stumps (various shapes and sizes) and have left them exposed, as our daughter and her friends find them interesting to investigate, especially the star shaped Phoenix Palm stump that I told her was a fairy’s picnic table!   River stones taken from the front flower beds have been used to create a winding path and together with the old stumps and plants they make for a garden just begging to be explored by little people. There are also odd shaped rocks left in strange places by previous owners which could be an attempt at contemporary landscaping but I suspect they may be markers.

Before the Paper Bark Gum and Phoenix Palms were removed

Trees out, remainder pruned, sandpit in. 

Children’s Play Garden…..

When I started this blog I had hoped to gain a couple of readers somewhere out there in cyberspace but without a ‘view counter’ or any posted comments I thought that no one was interested in my gardening tales.  Then our lives took a stressful turn and my blogging fell by the wayside. 

Hubby’s work was beyond awful with him being made redundant yet called on to work harder while the factory slowly closes down around him.  His wonderful work ethic meant up to 60 hours of mixed up shift work each week.  At the same time both my little one’s decided to catch every cough and cold bug they possibly could leading to a four month long string of illness going around and around the four of us.  We were lucky if we got four days break between infections.  Their birthday parties were cancelled and family outings were rare.  As a result I had become sleep deprived, housebound and slightly stir crazy!!!

Then three months after my first post I got a notification from Word Press, a comment had been posted (thanks Dennis!).  Then another notification came and another…. people are reading my blogs!  Initially I felt so excited then feelings of guilt crept in as I just couldn’t find the time to respond.  So please, accept my apology, explanation and grateful thanks for taking the time to post a few words on my blog.

We were lucky that the children hadn’t developed a really serious illness and yes there are folk out there dealing with a lot worse yet while I found these last few months really hard my saving grace was my garden.  I occasionally managed to take a little bit of time for me, popping outside to harvest a few summer veggies and even plant up a new front garden. 

The family has been bug-free for 27 days now (yes I am counting!!!) and my evenings are becoming free again.  This is a good thing because I have a few stories to share……

Well the last couple of weeks have gone by in a blur of birthday party and Christmas preparations (I won’t mention the Santa Photo lark).  I’ve managed a bit of weeding in the veggie patch and hubby and I continue to slowly sort out the back garden.  It is coming along slowly but in our defence whenever we find ourselves with the time to get out there is has been raining! 

Yesterday we had a load of mulch delivered and today I am going to pick up the last of the fallen Cabbage tree leaves before we start to spread it.  I am really looking forward to getting the mulch down, with its lovely dark reddish brown colour it will instantly tidy up a very large area.

I have my eye on a few shrubs around the property that I want to transplant down to the back.  A couple of struggling Daphne bushes from the front garden and miniature pohutakawa bushes from pots on the deck will have to wait until after the son’s birthday (19^th December) and Christmas.  I just need the back garden tidy and usable for the 10 toddlers, 6 babies and 16 adults coming next weekend!

Yesterday we had a drizzly morning that developed into a gorgeous, sunny but cool afternoon so off into the front garden I went.  The assistant gardener was at crèche and the little lad was having his afternoon nap so with the baby monitor nestled in the flower bed I started to prune my roses.  A small but thoroughly enjoyable job that took about 30 minutes. 

This is my ideal of gardening, wandering around with gloves and secateurs, a little snip here and a little snip there.  I even listened to the hum of the bees as they cruised around the flowers and stopped for a moment to enjoy the perfume coming from the Graham Thomas rose.

Nothing like the major weed and cut back of a month ago that produced eight rubbish bags of garden waste from the two overgrown and unkempt flower beds.  That was hard, sweaty work spread over four days.  I wore my ‘gardening clothes,’ my oldest scruffiest clothing and I emerged from the beds filthy with hands that still smelt of crushed weeds despite hot soapy water and hand cream!

No, I much prefer just pottering.

The veggie patch and front garden both need weeding but the weather let me down this weekend.  It would have been perfect with hubby home to watch bubs and the assistant gardener could have stayed with him or come out and played in the garden with me.  But no, we had just enough drizzle of the weekend to make it impossible to get out there. 

Very annoying as the weeds are at that stage where it would be an easy ‘potter’ in the garden to tidy everything up but by next weekend they will have grown that much more and turned the job into a bigger deal.  Gosh you really notice how things grow so quickly in early Summer.

Oh well the weekend wasn’t a total loss …. we went and picked up a sandbox that we bought off TradeMe for the bargin price of $86.  Where would we be without TradeMe!  Being 2m x 2m it is a wonderful size for both children to play in and room for a couple of friends.  I can’t wait to see it set up ….. photo’s to follow …..

About a month ago we had a short period of sunny weather and I decided to make the most of it and planted a few Tomato plants in the recently dug over and composted plots.   Well I rushed up to Mitre 10 and purchased a punnet of six roma seedlings and one large beefsteak seedling.  Roma are my favourite eating tomatoes and beefsteak are great for sandwiches.  That afternoon they were safely planted, the beefsteak within a triangular frame and the romas individually staked.

Over the next week we had heavy rain and the temperature plummeted.  Gotta love Auckland in Spring!  I watched helplessly from the deck as my little seedlings drowned.

Two weeks later the weather was a bit more settled when I purchased and planted two more roma seedlings.  Yesterday, after picking strawberries with the assistant gardener, I plucked off their laterals.  They seem to be doing well so here’s hoping we are eating home grown tomatoes real soon.

While I pulled the overgrown weeds from the veggie patch my young daughter busied herself digging in the freshly turned soil.  Examining the odd leaf and stone she squealed with delight when she came across a snake. 

Now some of you may be aware that New Zealand doesn’t have snakes, neither native or imported but according to my assistant gardener we had snakes in the veggie patch!  Of course she got my immediate interest and very excitedly showed me her find.  There wriggling amongst the dirt were two of the longest, largest worms I have ever seen.  I tried to explain the difference but she was not having it.  They were snakes and that was that.