Gardening

It might not be the best idea to call a blog post 'gardening' ... because that is my life now. Gardening. It would be like calling a blog post 'going to work' or 'having lunch'. But, at the moment, every bit of the gardening is new and interesting. And more than a little bit overwhelming.

I kind of weeded half of this garden bed. I say 'kind of' because I dug up the big clumps of grass and oxalis but the bed is absolutely riddled with runners and it is not weeded in any meaningful sense of the word. My husband went down to the building / gardening supply place and ordered two cubic metres of mulch, which arrived via truck guy a couple of hours later. It was meant to be tomorrow but truck guy had something else he wanted to do and it's $50 cash on delivery regardless ... small towns. 

Anyway truck guy used to be a paramedic and remembered our place because he got called out to an older lady who had died hanging out the washing. Apparently her family hadn't heard from her for a while and called the ambulance, who found her at the line. Truck guy thought it wasn't a bad way to go really. We are taking it with a grain of salt because all the ladies who have lived here since 1986 are definitely still alive ... but I am taking my phone with me when I hang out the washing now. Just in case.

This is my first spaded edge. I am thinking they will get more expert as I do more? We sprinkled the weeded patches with blood and bone to discourage the rabbits (too strong smelling apparently) and will get the mulch on it pronto.

Though that will wait until after we've mowed the five acres, because it is looking a bit shaggy. The ride-on mower is good fun, although it's quite a contemplative experience. The mower will only go so fast, so you potter in ever decreasing circles, watching out for rocks. We have no idea how to do it efficiently yet so some patches get mowed eight times and some get missed entirely as we make unnecessary parallelograms. It doesn't have much of a turning circle. 

We went to our first Gardening Club event last Thursday which was really good - visiting three gardens further up our road. It's only fifteen minutes but feels incredibly remote, and certainly places we would never have visited on our own (it's not a through road, and full of tucked away bits). Three gardens that were created from paddocks - from the 1970s through to just a couple of years ago - and it was wonderful to see the vision and the reality. I am just awestruck, I don't think I could do it. Even though it's only up the road, the sky feels a lot bigger than in our shady gully.

There were about twenty or so people, all very friendly and welcoming, all very knowledgeable about gardens and we absolutely pumped them for all the local knowledge we could. We had morning tea at the first place, picnic lunch at the third, and it was just lovely. They do these once a month so we'll definitely trot along as often as we can.