Dry

Roses from the garden


Yes, it's been nearly two months... It's been a busy time - prepping for our next orchestral concert, getting back into study (having passed my Level 4 foundation diploma in purchasing and supply, I'm now into the Level 5 study and exams), out twice a week with different sci-fi activities, and hockey has started again, so my writing has suffered a wee bit.

It is immensely surreal at the moment to imagine the UK in the grip of snow, with my father in law taking four hours to do a half hour journey, and my brother taking 12 hours to do a 2 hour journey (7 of those were stationary). Here, we have the opposite problem. Very little rain has fallen since January, and we are in the middle of an officially declared drought, a total fire ban, a total outdoor water ban, and could potentially see water rationing (still only a possibility, but enough for our local papers to do a scare story on it...)

We're doing our bit - conserving water from the cooking pot so that I can put it on the veggies, and I'm looking at getting a rainwater butt installed so that we don't have the same problem this time next year. Sadly, though, it looks like I'll lose the last of my beans, and the silverbeet seedlings that have just started to take off - there's not enough of the grey water to go round, and I've spent too much time on my tomatoes to lose them now!

Fortunately, there is some rain forcast for this weekend, so I'm waiting with all of my pots and pans ready to catch as much as possible when it does come.

And, the silver lining is that with the total fire ban, we've been asked not to use motor mowers (for fear that sparks or the heat may catch the grass), so, what a shame, I can (for once) not feel guilty about my grass (and the dandelions) getting knee high...

Golden harvest

The garden is still flourishing, and we are still enjoying the fruits of my labours (even if it sometimes feels that those labours were simply to put a seed into the ground and watch what grew...)

I panned for edible gold this weekend, digging into the second of my potato grow bags. Whilst there were only a few large potatoes (large here being defined as big enough to cut in half and still be visible in a roasting tin), there were enough middling sized ones to fill my collecting bowl, and we should get four meals out of them. There is something deeply satisfying in burrowing into soft soil (made nicer by the fact that, as they are in grow bags, I know that I'm not going to be digging down into an ants' nest, as I did when I grew potatoes on my allotment) and sifting out the glowing nuggets from the darkness. The largest of the potatoes made up part of our Sunday roast, along with peas, mangetout and the first of the runner beans. The flavouring on the chicken was also from the garden - my thyme bush which was on the verge of giving up the ghost a few weeks back has now bounced back into life.

The weather has been a bit topsy turvy over the last few weeks - torrential rain, followed by days of glorious sunshine and temperatures well into the twenties. My tomatoes are adoring this, and have exploded with fruit, to the extent that I've had to tie up outlying branches, as they have been tipping the pots over with their weight. It's also been nice for me - I've had a few days off from wandering round the garden with my watering can, and has the added bonus that I get nice surprises the next time I'm out when I see how much has grown in my absence.

Some of the surprises which greeted me this weekend have been the flowers which have sprung up. Mainly weeds, but a few deliberately planted as well - principally the sweet peas. They have been so plentiful that I have had a vase full constantly since Christmas, giving the room a subtle fragrance. Today, I was able to add to the vase: pink geraniums, purple lavendar, white Japanese anenomes and the stunningly orange crocosmia (I still can't really accept that a flower that beautiful is a weed, and my heart breaks a little every time I pull up a stem complete with bulbs at the end. But, if I don't want it swamping every thing else in the garden, I have to control it somehow!)

Whilst the nights are drawing in, and we are sending the sun back over to the northern hemisphere, it is still Summer here, and my garden is giving me great pleasure.

New Year

2012 has passed by in a flash. When I look back, it amazes me how much we managed to fit in to what seemed to be such a short space of time.

Both family and friends have come to visit, and we have done some more exploring of our adopted country.

I've sat five professional exams, with good results from the three that I've received so far; the last lot will turn up at the beginning of Feb, and I then find out whether I've got the first professional qualification out of three. Work has had its ups and downs, but mainly ups, and I know that there are good things coming in the year ahead.

I've learnt a new instrument to a semi-decent standard; good enough to play Hall of the Mountain King, but I still have a long way to go to pick up the notes outside the central register. We had three concerts, two of them performed twice in different locations, plus Beethoven's 9th Symphony as a workshop, including choir.

I've played for the women's first team in hockey, though I don't know if I'll get asked again, as I certainly struggled over the whole season - I was improving by the end, but we narrowly missed relegation at the end of the season, as well as being relegated at the start. So, I won't complain if I'm playing for the seconds next year, but I won't say no if I get asked to play for the firsts again!

We've spent a lot of time with the different sci-fi groups, at least one, and quite often two evenings a week with friends from one or other. They've introduced me to films that I wouldn't ordinarily have watched, both old and new, some of which I've enjoyed, and some of which I haven't, but all worth it from an experience expanding basis. I've learnt a lot of new board games, all of which have been good fun; I've even won a couple over the last year! I've reviewed a good number of books for SFFANZ, again, most of which I've enjoyed, and a few I've had fun explaining exactly *why* I didn't like them!

We've had our first year in the new house, enjoying being homeowners - no need to ask when we need to put in a nail, no more flat inspections (now it's just the panic tidy and clean whenever we have friends over for an evening or to stay - which is happening more and more. I may have to do regular housework at this rate!).

I've spent very many hours in the garden, with varying success - the weed patches at the front don't look hugely different for the amount of time I spent pulling them up. I do vaguely justify letting the grass grow to seed on the basis that the sparrows and silvereyes enjoy eating it (and then they go and eat the caterpillars which are nomming their way through my potato leaves - obviously that which is poisonous to humans has no effect on insects!).

Though, when I do look at the changes that a few months have wrought, I can see that the work has had some effects (here come the photos!) - this was the front garden in February:

and this is it now:

with a close up of the roses, geraniums and lavender (and weeds. The problem with roses, particularly heavily scented, and therefore thorny ones, is that they discourage casual, walk past, weeding. Good quality, leather gloves, are needed to get at the area in and around the thorns with any measure of safety...)

This is the decking in Feb:

and this is it now... The green tubs contain the potatoes (nearly ready to be harvested) and the red ones should have contained my heritage tomatoes, but they have all died now. The basil in there is doing well, though - I made homemade pesto sauce for the pasta last night, with four different varieties of basil.

The grapes are liking their sunny wall, though I now have a book on fruit growing, and know that I need to redo the canes that they are up against - a bit of work once autumn comes. The fig tree persists at growing at an angle back into the bushes, no matter how hard I try to get it to bend back upright again. It is happy, though, and has put on 36 cm along its longest branch, 25 along the next (and this from a plant that didn't have any branches at all last year) - it has added an extra third to its height!

The tomatoes which have survived (those passed to me as ready grown seedlings by a friend) ended up on the grass - they were on the decking until some very high winds started to send them flying, and I was worried about losing the baby tomatoes that were growing on the plants.

The area that I am most proud of in terms of effort put in is along the back fence. In Feb, it was covered in a nasty weed called Bears Britches.

Now, it is home to my peas,which have been feeding us about once every three meals for a good month now, beans (which have just started to flower) and sweet peas (which have refused to use the bird netting or the bean poles to climb up, and which are instead using the feijoa...). I also spent a considerable amount of time clearing out eleven bags of weeds (mainly Wandering Willie) from around the compost bin and the kowhai tree, discovered the concrete that had already been laid down beneath it (which saved me a job and money - I was planning on putting down some form of tiling!), relocated the compost bin so that it is completely upright, and added a weedmat to try to keep the weeds down for a little while. I think I've gained about 20 sq foot of garden for the effort - now I just have to make sure that I keep it tidy...

The vege box is also being put to good use - here it is when I built it back in April:

Now I have three giant borage plants (mainly used for attracting the bees, but I have added a couple of the smaller leaves to salads), a whole host of spinach, five very happy asparagus plants (the fern like ones on the right of the picture - I'm not allowed to pick any this year or next, but in 2014, they should give us a meal or so every couple of days; and at $2 a bunch at the cheapest in the market, that will do me fine). There's also one lonesome salad pepper / capsicum plant, still cloched under a half coke bottle. The rest didn't make it, but I have silverbeet seeds ready to go where they stood, once I know that the final one is going to survive an onslaught of other plants!

My birdbath is still giving me great joy - only today, we had the birds queuing up to use it - first a blackbird, with a thrush waiting, then, when the thrush had a go, it was joined by a couple of sparrows, jostling for the best space (they managed to move the thrush over half way round the birdbath before they both got bored and flew away!)

All in all, 2012 has been a good year, and I am looking forward to seeing what 2013 will bring.

Christmas thoughts

Christmas evening in the garden. The sun has dropped low enough that I don't fear burning. Around me, summer lives in all its glory. The family game of cricket in the distance, hearing the whoops as an uncle or father is caught and bowled. The birds sit and chirp in the rustling trees, tui, kakariki, sparrows and blackbirds, occasionally swooping overhead, flashes of black, brown, green and red filling the air. Our neighbours garden, running the hosepipe over the parched plants, and pruning back the roses. Smells waft over in the breeze; roses, sweet peas, tomato plants and the roast lamb in the oven. The wind is cooling on my skin after the heat of the day.

This is so different to the traditional northern hemisphere Christmas with its dark evenings, frosts and sharp air. Since moving, I have found a different feel to the festival; Christmas is no longer an anticipation of the Earth turning, coming out of the darknes and towards Spring, but a joyful celebration of life around us in all of its glory. It is a reminder that we should not spend all of our time planning and looking forward to the future, but, every so often, take the time to enjoy the here and now.

This is something that I, a pathological planner by nature, am inherently bad at doing. So, my New Year's resolution, made sitting with a glass of wine, and finding the moment, is at least once a day to enjoy the present. What sprang to mind which illustrates this the best are the two verses that I first heard on the Divine Comedy album Promenade:
Happy the man and happy he alone,
Who in all honesty can call today his own;
He who has life and strength enough to say:
“Yesterday’s dead and gone.
I’m gonna live today.”
(from Booklovers)

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
he who can call today his own:
he who, secure within, can say,
"Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today."
(the end of the album, taken from Horace)

Now, if you'll excuse me, there is a glass of wine and a summer evening to enjoy.

Suddenly... food!

Whilst I was busy, not only did Spring sprung, but Summer a came in (no cuckoos, but plenty of tui, blackbirds, silvereyes and thrushes...). Without a huge amount of effort on my part, the various seeds that I scattered have started to produce food. We've had a couple of meals of spinach, plus enough for me to have in my salad at work every day this last week. We've also had a couple of meals with mangetout in them, and a couple of good size handfuls of strawberries. nothing that would allow us to be self sufficient by a very long way, but incredibly satisfying none the less.

The tomatoes are flowering (though I am using the seedlings that a friend passed over - I only have one surviving heritage seedling left of each of the tomatoes and the capsicum/salad pepper - I wasn't able to get the good balance between too much water and too little. Better luck next year!), the potatoes are growing, and the beans seem to be springing upwards even as I watch. The blackbird loves the amount of weeding that I've been doing - as soon as I'm safely out of the way, he flutters down to see what insects I've overturned this time. He even helps by pecking out the little weed seedlings that I've missed in his haste to find even more bugs. Though he isn't always helpful - he has also eaten a good number of strawberries (bird netting and silver foil didn't deter him, though stringing up old cassette tape looks like it has done the trick), and appears to have attacked some of the potatoes in my planter (they are leaning sideways, with quite a good hole dug down the side of the planter; I don't think it is the neighbourhood cat...).

Our fruit plants, in the main, are doing well - the grape vines have doubled in height since I planted them (though I've now got a book on growing fruit, and realise that I need to do a heck of a lot of pruning with both them and the kiwi when autumn comes), the lemon tree is covered in blossom and baby lemons, and the chilean cranberry has a host of delicate pink flowers all over. Even the olive has joined in, with little white flowers and tiny fruit developing. The feijoa is stubbornly refusing to flower, though it, too, has put on a huge amount of growth since being planted in the soil. I'm hoping the fact that it is planted at the end of the bed that has the peas and beans will help it for next year (and in the meantime, we've been offered plenty from a friend when his tree, currently covered in flowers, fruits)

The flowery areas of the garden are also starting to show their colours; the roses have bloomed, and really loved being dead headed - as soon as I cut the dying blooms, they both put on an extra couple of inches all round, and doubled the number of flower buds! The pansies haven't stopped flowering since I put them in in the winter, the geraniums are just starting to show their pink buds, and, of course, the weeds are all coming out in hosts of different colours; pinks, purples and oranges. It makes it so much harder to pull them up when they are all pretty!

I'm very much looking forward to the Christmas break - it will give me two weeks to relax, and really get into some of the weedier corners of the garden (of particular interest is the point where the compost bin currently is - the weeds have sprung up around it so much that the bin is actually on a tilt from where it is being pushed over!). And maybe even just the chance to sit outside on the lawn and enjoy the fruits of my labours...

Just Resting...

I know it's been two months - life has been spinning out busy. I have two exams next week (if I pass those, then I have the first qualification sewn up), two orchestral concerts - the same programme (including Hall of the Mountain King - just a little bit nerve wracking to have an opening solo in one of the most well known classical music pieces!), work is even more full on than ever (if that is even possible), the garden is calling out for attention (I am that lawn owner that everyone else looks at and tuts about - most of the other houses in the drive have lawns where the grass does not get above an inch long - mine is knee high at the moment and housing small tribes... I do have another garden post planned - whether it ever sees the light of day, I don't know) and I have a reading pile that is threatening to topple, including one review book which has been guilt-calling me for a month (no non-exam serious reading allowed until the end of next week...). And breathe...

I do *think* about this blog a lot, though - I am constantly composing posts in my head - I just need someone to come up with a way of extracting that whilst I'm on the move without me actually having to type it out!

On a small side note - sorry, WWW, but I'm going to have to put the Captcha back on - I'm getting over 100 spam comments a day. Whilst Blogger does dump them before they hit the live posts, I get emails for each one. I don't want to block anonymous posting (as I have friends who don't have blogger accounts), but I do need to do something!

Where do you come from?

We had some friends to stay for a week recently; it's the first time we've seen them for three years, and it was wonderful to be able to show off the country we've adopted, both locally, and also on a road trip up the country to Rotorua. Whilst the weather wasn't as sunny as I'd hoped (it's always nice to see the country in the sun and under blue skies), but we weren't washed out as badly as it could have been given that we are coming out of winter.

We took our friends to see the various tourist attractions, both natural (including getting within a few paces of seals at the Red Rocks colony, who hadn't read the signs saying that seals and humans had to be 20m apart, and insisted on sleeping across the path!), free (we love going round Te Papa - there is something new every time we go; this time, there was an exhibition on Maori cloaks which was fascinating), and paid (both a Maori cultural evening, and Wai O Tapu, which we went round when my parents were here, and was equally good for a second viewing).

A question which gets asked a lot when going round tourist attractions (as well as by people who hear our accents) is "Where do you come from?", and this is a question which has recently given me a lot of pause for thought. Whilst I'm very happy to say that I come from England originally, I now find that I have to qualify it by saying that I live in New Zealand (or near Wellington, or Upper Hutt, depending on who is asking and how well they know the region).

The question was compounded when I was asked to fill out a survey on behalf of a PhD student investigating the way that immigrants settle into New Zealand, particularly (gauging from the questions) looking at the way that culture and values affect how easily people settle and integrate. I feel very lucky in that we've not had to learn a new language to come here, and there has not been a huge culture shift in terms of values or behaviours, but the survey did give me a lot to think about in terms of where my "home" identity lies.

Settling in hasn't really been a huge problem for us (see most of the rest of the blog for examples...), but it does mean that I feel a certain tearing of loyalties when asked where I come from. This particularly came to the front during the Olympics, when the NZ women's hockey team, the Black Sticks were in the Bronze medal playoff against the UK. I wasn't able to watch the match (nasty timezone difference!), but if I had, the question of who to cheer for would not have been an easy one to answer. In the end, the match wasn't particularly a good one, compared to how well the Black Sticks had played for the rest of the tournament, and England won deservedly, but I found that I was disappointed that the Black Sticks didn't get their medal after doing so well against the best in the world in previous matches. England is where I come from originally, but New Zealand is where I come from now.

The word "home" also has similar conflicts; does it mean the house we have bought, where we are paying our mortgage, and where I'm enjoying pottering in the garden (my back is not speaking to me today...), or does it mean where my family and UK friends live? It depends on context, but it raises mixed pictures and emotions when the word gets mentioned.

I suspect that the conflicting loyalties around home and where I come from will remain for a long while to come; the longer we are here and the more we settle, the easier it becomes to say that New Zealand is home, but I think also the larger the emotional split will become when I think about everyone and everything we have left behind.