Garden Journal 2007
Happenings January
Plopped another water lily in the pond. We shall see if this one survives.
January 6 - Mowed orchard, lime trees and around maple garden and planes. Huge thistle there, oops. Need more newspapers and mulch for all these gardens.
January 8 - Spent 6 hours weeding around fruit trees and composting them. Sky is very dark and the wind has been blowing and increasing in strength all day, very humid.
January 9 - No gardening today. Wet, windy and humid, horrible weather. Baking instead. Work tomorrow.
January 10-13 - Back to work, no gardening. Wicked weather, very stormy gale force winds. Too scared to go look at the garden.
Happenings April
Planted 2 Viburnum mariesii by pond and a Norway maple by liquidambers.
April 8 - Mowed. Went to 'Kings' Easter sale. Boring! Not much of a sale. Bought compost, hydrangea, pink anenomies, some punnets of poppies and stock for some colour.
April 9 - Planted pots from potager into new area of MG. Cercis 'forest pansy', a Christmas gift, Barbary, wegielia, roses, hydrangeas and Daisy 'hot lips'. Also planted in the original part of the MG, a varigated hydrangea, anenome pink, lavender, stock, foxgloves and poppies above.
Noticed the first bulb showing leaves in the MG, already! Weed around fejoas and Guavas and water. Added bag of donkey doo bought at market last week. Made crabapple jelly!
Happenings July
July 10 - Storm! Gale force winds and quite scarey. Roof tiles lifted and some flew off. Old pine tree has been up-rooted, went over to see, very sad. It has been wrenched out of the ground.
Everything with softish leaves has been burned black by the wind. Very depressing.
Walked around garden to survey the damage from the storm. In the MG the little blue hebe has been torn out of the ground and destroyed. The two Eugenias we re-sited last year have been toppled.
July 27 - Have spent the last week plodding occassionaly in the garden. Bought some new roses yesterday from the warehouse! 4 for $20. Will be interesting to see how will they grow. Planted them in the MG today. Two are 'Pascali' described as large flowering classic white hybrid tea. The other two are 'Heritage' a pink Austin english rose. I have had this one planted at our last house and it is lovely. These roses have been machine dug and are bare-rooted. They actually have very little in the way of roots which is probably why they were so cheap. We will see how they go :) Planted 2 potfulls of fresia bulbs, very late but they might grow. Hung up a new sunflower for the birds.
Happenings September
This week I have sprayed the edges of most gardens and trees. Yesterday I went and got a truckload of living earth garden mix. Weeded, trimmed and mulched wisterias with the garden mix. I
hope they bloom well this year. I must remember to water them throughout the Summer.
Today I have built a little garden beside the pond, to the side of the willows and edged it with old bricks. I have planted the first native in here. It is yellow flowering to tie into how I would like this area to look. Yellow, cream and white with maybe a bit of blue for contrast. The plant is called 'Metrosideros' fulgens Gold. Apparently propagated from the scrambling rata. Hope it grows to the 1x1 mtr suggested on the label. Next to this I have planted some Queen Annes lace plants. They are lovely and flimsy looking so will be pretty below the birdhouse and behind the white aggies.
Planted the native 'Chionochloa' flavicans Miniature Toetoe in two little grey urns, surrounded them with apricot coloured pansys and put them on either side of the house driveway. Bet I forget to water them!
in the MG I have dug over an area and planted 10 Glorie de jonge roses, finally! Planted red lobelia behind Just Joey roses which are in front of the burgandy smoke bush. Weeded and added garden mix on top of newspaper to part of MG.
September 22 - Bought climbing roses Compassion and Westerland, weigela and a bearded iris.