COVID ups and downs

My blog has had few posts since Covid  made travel difficult but I just read my post from November last year and realised that I should be post a bit more often, if just to help remember our  progress through this pandemic. Also, Musk has just bought twitter, so who knows what happens to that site if he fires as many people as he has threatened to do. We may all return to blogging.

Australia is at the end of a Covid wave but as the epidemiologist Prof Crab points out, the baseline prevalence of virus is still high. There is a lot out there so I am not the only one with friends suddenly sick. 

In the meantime people are adapting. I bought an air purifier when a trip to the dentist became unavoidable but the reaction of the dental assistant (not the dentist) was to mock me. I went back for a second appointment this week and there was no hint of mocking, so either they have decided they will lose customers if they mock them or they have become better informed. I imagine it is the former because you have to seek out Covid information if you want to know it's prevalence. 

It is extraordinary how we have adapted to a high and continuing death rate and long Covid is not yet getting the attention it deserves. Australia is not dodging it though so one day we will be forced to pay attention to the increasing numbers of Australians who are now too sick to work. Maybe after the coming NSW and Victorian State elections? 

In the meantime spring has sprung and since I have replaced almost all the small lawn patch with flowers, my garden is even more colourful than last year.

Spring garden colour

Spring has sprung and the garden is a riot of flowers, at least as much as a garden can be that is on slowly-improving soil. Thankfully the builder here put a layer of earth over the clay ground many years ago when the place was built, but it has previously only hosted grass and needs a bit more compost to be really friable. 

 

Tomatoes

My skills at growing vegetables seems to be rather less than growing catnip and yellow lantana. I bught a tomato plant in spring and another late in spring, but neither flourished.

The garden does what it wants though and a large robust plant has grown up beside the compost bin. I carefully bagged some of the flowers on this plant as tomatoes here tend to get insect eggs laid into them early which cause the tomatoes to rot just before you want to pick them. Later I discovered that this verdant getting-enormous plant has tiny tomatoes, the type that are not bitten by bugs, so I took off the bags. Now I am wondering how to encourage more fruit and less foliage.

Garden rescue in covid times

I have lived here over a year now. When I arrived the garden was lawn and the patch of ground between fence and path was weeds. 

Early very morning I walked down the hill and back up. At the bottom of the hill I discovered a pretty garden with a yellow-flowered bush growing right over the path. When I saw the house occupant there one morning I asked if I could take a slip. She turned out to be an avid gardener and said: 

"Why yes, take a big piece, or several, so it grows. It will grow in difficult ground so councils plant it. It is a type of Lantana, but not the one that takes over."

So I took slips and stuck them in pots over summer to see if they would take. 

They all survived and I planted them in the inhospitable soil between fence and path. They are thriving there and now I have yellow flowers right along the fence. 

On the other side of the fence the lawn is slowly being replaced by flowering plants, two blueberry bushes and  last week, a rhubarb plant. Gardens are a marvelous tonic in Covid times.

(The bush in the photo is a Hibiscus, the only plant in the garden when I arrived.)

Contentment

The garden today

Sometimes Mother Nature sends a perfect day. Today is one of those.

The sun is shining but it is not too hot, the air is gentle with just a slight mumour of movement in the lemongrass leaves to show we are not living in a vacuum, the bees are buzzing, Sasanqua flowers drop onto the lawn and a little bird just flew down to suck the nectar from a flower on the little bottle brush bush I planted a couple of years ago as bird feed.

I just hung out the washing feeling a sense of deep contentment.

Hidden treasure: sculptures in Wanganui

Figures at a gate : Sculpture s at the Wintergarden

I had a Christmas picnic in the Virginia Lake Wintergarden, a magical spot you could so easily overlook  as it is hidden behind the building at the top of the hill. It is definately worth a visit if you are in the area. There is an art school in Wanganui and it is leaving it's mark on the town. The walls at the local backpackers are hung with local artwork and I am sure many others are as well.

Face sculpture

Pukekos and ducks forage in the 'swamp' area at Virginia Lake

Springtime in my Mother's garden

Irises on the day of my Mother's farewell

At the end of September winter gardens begin to stir in Taihape. The first daffodils flower but leaves are still furled and the dominant colour is still green/brown. Then in October gardens burst into flower with an unexpected abundance. I had been in my mother's garden in October when it was showing the first signs of life; the very first daffodil was out and the tulips were growing. Three weeks later I was there again to bid my Mother farewell (previous post) and the change in her garden was astonishing. Huge irises, luscious cherry blossom, flowers of all shapes and sizes. Suddenly I realised I had not been there in spring before.

Springtime in my Mother's garden, 1 November 2013.

Cherry blossom on the day of my Mother's farewell

My Mother

Frances Ruth Gordon, 1920 - 2013

My mother Frances Ruth Gordon died last Thursday aged 93.  She was a passionate gardener and left behind a trail of wonderful gardens, dug from virgin soil. Her first garden was under the Ruahine Ranges on a Taihape farm that Dad and Grandpa created by clearing native bush (so close are our colonial roots).

Mother and Dad moved closer to town 30 years ago and again she created an extraordinary garden. At 84, mourning the loss of my father, she moved into a town section with an empty back yard and from that she once again fashioned the most beautiful garden. At her farewell on Sunday her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren chose flowers from her lovely springtime garden to lay on her coffin. Vale dear Mother.

My mother's rocking chair in her last garden

Mother's Hydrangeas

Tiny potatoes from the no-dig garden

In August shortly before leaving home for 5 weeks I created a no-dig garden (newspaper laid on the grass covered by some compost and blood and bone, then lots of mulch) behind my garage and planted some potatoes. Early in October when I got back home I was pleased and rather surprised to see that the potatoes had sprouted and were still alive despite the drought.

Tiny potatoes .. smaller than they look here

I had not had much compost so they were growing on whatever the worms could create for them under their mulch blanket. Some plants died early and today I gathered up the tiny baby potatoes that had formed under one of those plants so I could plant some lettuce seedlings. I cooked these tiny potatoes, some only a couple of cm long and as I peeled them I thought how only the very wealthy or the home gardener would get to eat such tiny-potato deliciousness.

"If you have a garden you are never lonely," says my mother.
She spent a lifetime on an isolated farm, so she should know. At 84 she moved into a new house in town with no garden at all. Now, 8 years later, her garden is credit to her skills. 
Parsnips flourish and ...

...the pear treee is laden with fruit. 

Under the pear tree her favorite little whistling boy stands with his hands in his pockets.

It is no surprise that her children and her grandchildren are garden enthusiasts.

Garden dancers

A little bit of fun from the ceramics workshop.
These dancers ....

now dance on the old BBQ in the garden.

Beer in the garden

How nice to be home ...

... and (finally) recovered from jetlag.