It was a perfect day, begun in chaos, finished in chaos, but in the middle was much lying around on the lawn in the sunshine, climbing trees, eating party food (homemade too!), reading books, playing with friends, digging in the sandpit, tallking and laughing.
I wasn’t as organised as I could have been. I left stuff to the last minute again. Important stuff like doing the dishes so I could bake bread and ice cup cakes in a clean kitchen. I cleaned the rest of the house the day before but then got sidetracked (story of my life) by this weird urge to make something. Not that it’s weird to make stuff, just that it’s weird for me to want to make stuff. I used to, before the children turned up and disrupted my sleeping patterns. So instead of cleaning up my kitchen and organising the party food the night before like any sensible mother would have, I made bunting from scraps of fabric I’ve had in a box since before my five year old son was born. It gave me such a thrill to make something that cost nothing and can be used again and again and, although my son will probably be sick of these little flags by his twenty-first, he appreciated it too.
I’ve decided that one of my main goals this year is to make more stuff. I think that is the key to everything.
I love summer. I’m so happy every day when I’m down in my garden. Oh, except this morning. I was sad this morning when I found one of my nicest sunflowers had been ripped out by the wind (which is the big hazard when gardening in Wellington…) This one in the picture is an heirloom variety from Koanga Gardens. I wish I could remember exactly what type but I didn’t write it down. Bad gardener… I have three different garden journals now too, so no excuse really.
So, progress. I think it’s looking pretty good. A bit of a hodgepodge, but I’m learning a lot as I go. We’ve cleared almost all the rubbish now. Well, I thought so and then my husband found a rusty set of hedge clippers this afternoon - left under the hedge where a previous gardender had obviously been defeated.
This is what it all looks like now:
p.s. The way to get my small children to eat my garden produce is to grate it up and hide it in chocolate cake. And not gloat about it when they eat it. Within their hearing range.
I was enjoying my toast with plum jam when younger son came through to the kitchen. His eyes lit up at the sight of the sugary goodness in my hands and he reached out for it with his most winning smile. I held my breath as he took a large bite, then another.
“mmm”, he said. “I like jam toast.”
Jumping for joy (on the inside) I said: “y’know, that’s the jam that I made” (and now I’m dancing on the inside because a child of mine is actually eating something that I made from something that grew in the garden!).
And that, obviously, was my error. Because he looked up, handed the toast back and said: “Don’t like plum jam”.
I suppose I should be thankful that he finished the mouthful rather than immediately spitting it on the floor. But seriously, what is wrong with my children? The garden is full of strawberries, peas that are so sweet they’re almost fruit and beautiful carrots - all of which the kids love to pick, just not eat. These are all things that they have eaten in the past mind you. Elder son ate carrots yesterday. Just not our carrots. Today when he asked for carrots he quickly followed with: “carrots from the supermarket”. What’s wrong with my carrots? If anything, I think mine taste nicer, I know they’re full of carroty goodness and they even come out of the ground looking like “real” carrots - you know, right colour, right size, not twisted or oddly shaped or filled with insect holes. I bet I could take my organic, homegrown carrots down to the farmers’ market on Saturday and sell them for an exorbitant price and yet, for some reason, they aren’t good enough for my little princes. So far, nothing I’ve grown has been.
If cooking plums with their equal weight in sugar won’t work, what will?
From this:
to this: (in just three weeks)
I’ve just come home from a ten-day holiday and I’m a little amazed. Nothing that grew in my garden last year even came close to this. In fact, it’s because everything I grew last year was so stunted that I ignored all the spacing guidelines in my books and crammed everthing in like this. In my head, as I was planting, I was thinking “no way is that book right, this (hands spaced as wide as a stunted cherry tomato plant) is how much space a tomato plant needs”. How was I to know that a combination of good soil, lots of sun, careful watering and liquid seaweed feed would produce this jungle? You can’t even tell what’s in there.
If I were a more experienced gardener I’d know what to do about this mess, but I don’t. Know, that is. I think I’ll just leave it and see what happens. At the very least there will be enough for a nice compost pile in the Autumn. However, now I that I do know the wrong way to do it, I’ll be much more organised next year and plant everything properly spaced and according to the planting plan I will design.
No, really.
