A Year In My garden # 9

My Whole garden is a construction site !!!!!!

The good thing is that daylight savings kicks in next weekend and then it will be light to around 7pm - a little more if the twilight counts ...... So the work can now kick up a pace and things can get done ....

This weekend, well this Saturday, was the Mum-in-Law birthday..So we decided to take the day off, pack our cameras and make the two hour drive to Palmerston North .... As usual of course we are in bleary eyed disarray. Dogs, clothes, cameras, keys, petrol, you name it, we went through it ..where's this, are you taking that ... No Petrol !! ....ugghg

McD's Daughter S is also in Palmerston North. At the university there..So we picked her up first ....

Of course there had to be The One Thing we were sposed to remember on such a day ...yep the birthday present .... This year McD had chosen a terracotta strawberry planter all planted with about 8 or so healthy strawberry plants that had stood in the sun for a couple of weeks in the yard, the strawberry plants loving it ....

But McD forgot it !!

"So give her an IOU" I helpfully suggest ....

"I do have a picture of it if that helps" I offered ....

So there we were hunting down garden centres in Palmerston North and then finding a terracotta strawberry planter that was empty, we then bought strawberry plants and potting soil and off to M-in-L's house S in the back seat ...

So there we were just around the corner from M-in-Ls house and I've parked and S is sent off to steal stones from the imaculately presented houses around us ...And I'm filling the pot up with soil, stones in place around the hole at the bottom to prevent clogging and the whole thing is planted in a few minutes and then S holds the pot as we make our way the 100 metres to the house ...

She liked it ....S gave her the pot and it was formally positioned in the sun in the front beside the door...

"You may want to water it" I say helpfully but totall ignored ..

Of course

And so the day went on ... the 3 generations of one family women rabbiting on over lunch at a restaurant... Me not really listening (too much baby and cousins I've never met and probably not heard of before type talk )...

And then a slow drive through the park there to see the Cherry Blossom trees in full bloom along the driveway ... An awesome sight for sure ...I'll leave those photos for McD to show ....

But to day I've had a bad back. I'm sore and my body is tired ...But up we get and do 3 or 4 hours work this morning and then in for a salmon omlette for lunch that McD made, 1/2 hours sleep and back out we go planting Dahlia tubers ...Which were the ones we had the good sense to dig out and not rely on jim the gardener to do ...

Despite our request jim the gardener decided not to dig all the tubers up ...in fact none of the tubers in the main round borded we have in the front of the house .... 167% more rain this winter than the average and hundreds of dollars of dahlia tubers had rotted ......

So we've divided the tubers we have and we have too many really ..but so many old friends in flower size shape and colours are gone and we won't see them this year ...and as I suspect a lot were self sown crossbreds we may never see them again ....

Back breaking work ...I've been in pain all day from my back and will struggle to sleep from it tonight ...

I know - Wingeing Pom :O)

The vegetable garden has been a bit of a mess as we've left things lying around , newspapers soggy from rain, plastic planters from the strawberries we've put in the beds ..Builders plastic , tools, compost and lots of mud ....... McD did a tidy up this morning but after I'd taken these shots ....

The construction site - It can only get better

The front yard is a mess too ... Fence that I've only painted half of needs completing ..We've had soil and pebble mounds on the tarmac for the past 4 or 5 months ... The aim now is to clear that and get a skip in and empty the garage and the rubbish about the property (like rusted BBQs) and get the place looking OK again ....

The construction site - Mud everywhere from the rain..grass and weeds taking hold again.

Then there's the house to decorate ......

It never ends eh......

So after all that work McD and I start seed planting ... McD documenting everything we've planted cause she knows i'm not good at that ...

Peas to the left, Radish, carrots and pak choi cabbage to the right .

So Pumkin, Eggplant, Cucumber, winter melon, are all planted in bio-degradeable coffee cups. then a large selection of Chili pepers and bell peppers have been planted into a seed tray row by row ..all documened from cayenne peppers to habeneros and bulgarian carrot chillis ....

Mostly cabbages but at the back celery, silverbeet, leeks, spinach .

Strawberry plants looking good.

Broad beans to the left, "mini-cabbages" in the middle, then egyption onion, garlic and strawberries to the right ...

A square foot garden in the making

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We now pick up discarded tyres from the road side and grow rhubarb in them.. Well one of them anyway

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This was the original vegetable plot.. We did rescue some mint plants and lemon balm plants from here ...Now it has a dozen Jersey Benne potatoes planted in it .

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The view from my seat at the top of the plot ...

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vegetable garden, potager garden, allotment, square foot,