October’s equinoxial gales have transported me back about 10 years to the mid 90s when I could sit at the back door and watch the newly planted vege garden heading north under the tender ministrations of a southerly gale. If I had been more quick-witted, I could’ve grabbed some of the plants back a couple of days later as they hurtled by on their way to the South Pole in a northerly gale.
Spring is definitely in the air, although the thermometer locally has been something of a juggernaut during this past week as we dodged the odd hailstone, and lawns gurgled amiably to themselves as they tried to soak up the rain. The rain gauge at Tawa clocked a metre of rain for the year on Tuesday.
Despite the wild weather, the weeds in various garden plots have been rampantly partying like herbal bogans over the past few weeks.
The late Bee Baldwin’s “The Home Vegetable Garden” is off the bookshelf and has had its spring dust-off. The thoroughly battered volume has been leafed through for springtime garden ideas.
The heady scent of ti kouka, cordyline australis, fills the air as the scruffy white flowers burst out of the crowns of the cabbage trees attracting the attention of the early bimbly bees.
This year, my sloth has been rewarded – well I’m trying to convince myself that it has as I hear the wails of early vege gardeners wafting up from the Vale of Tawa as they discover their battered and broken seedlings.
It must be springtime in the windy isles.
Now – time to swap the keyboard for a weeding fork for an assault on those pesky weeds. Pity I don’t have a flamethrower – but hand-weeding is good for the soul, they say.