Thursday, September 10, 2015

criminal minds

There's a couple of new things happening in the garden at the minute.
Partners in crime, here they are high-tailing it to a freshly dug patch of ground. They don't realise at all that they are pets livestock and have a mad intent to get inside. They hang around the back door in the mornings pecking to be let in, and should you or I  leave the front door open, then they are strolling the red carpet.
I'm trying to think of suitable whimsical names but whimsy arrives sideways, it isn't planned or worked out, it is bestowed.  


That's a seed potato in the foreground: my Christmas investment, a dozen red king seed potatoes.
The liberal pine needle bed is  some protection from wire-worm, and chickens ought to help with that too, eventually, when we target their browsing. I'm leaving the flowering broccoli in for wind shelter and bee forage. Yes, the weeds are part of the plan.


Nobody remembers it as a great winter but apart from the flooding, there were lots of dry, clear days.
The first morning that B borrowed a concrete drill and began to work on the garage-door footings was also the morning that our neighbour got in from A and E at 7 am after a grueling night and was trying to sleep.
It was school holidays so we cut work,  managed to unplug a teenage boy from his computer, and went to the beach.
The little barbecue has just enough oomph to boil the coffee pot after the sausages are done, very well done today....


Long Beach in winter, it could easily be summer, never a crowd.


5 comments:

  1. Oh how I miss Dunedin. I wish I had been at Long Beach having a cup of tea and a sausage, and helping you collect pine needles to keep the wire worm at bay. The chickens are nothing short of handsome!

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    1. Yes we dress warmly all year round, huddle around the little fire, hair smells of smoke, walk down the beach to the cave and back again, drive around the settlement to look at the houses (!) and go home and light the fire. But it's always great to get a day out at the beach.

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  2. oh I look at this and my childhood begins all over again - except my particular memory of long beach is staying in the van the whole time because it was too cold to get out... we have started a little garden up here - I have no idea what I am doing but I am hoping that won't matter too much...

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    1. Not to mention wearing the picnic rug for warmth before capitulating and packing up and seeking out shelter inside somewhere. I've sent you a cookbook for your birthday, hope you like, the one I'm enjoying at the moment is out of print, its 'Cook Simple' by Sarah Bowman. Got good pictures.
      Knowing nothing is always a good place to start. there is a lot of pleasure to be had in a garden.

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  3. there is a great Chinese proverb about gardening;

    if you want to be happy for a week kill a pig and eat it
    if you want to be happy for six months get married
    if you want to be happy forever be a gardener.

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