`The autumn garden is a garden of second chances. Moonlight returns with a flush of bigger roses, bright and white and the scent, oh the scent. Musk. A spicy sweetness. And Autumn Delight is giving me one exquisite white flower at a time. Queen of the Musks, on the other hand, is pink and floriferous. She wasn’t meant to be - pink that is. I stuck her in with the white roses and she’s anything but. I can live with this. As a lover of happy accidents and curated chaos, a pink rose amongst the whites is just what’s needed. And she has lovely old fashioned looking flowers, and, what’s more, she’s flowered on an off since late spring.

Moonlight (1913) and Autumn Delight (1933) are both Pemberton roses, Queen of the Musks (1913) was bred by G. Paul. They’re all English roses and evoke a sort of Jane Marple world of vicars, quaint villages, nasty secrets and hollyhocks all in a row. My nana and dad, Welsh and English respectively (though my dad considered himself Welsh thanks to a Welsh childhood), gave me a steady supply of countryside nostalgia. Simple not grand. Hedgerows, meadows, babbling brooks, deciduous trees and forget-me-nots.

Late autumn is here. Little acorns are scattered under the oak, amongst the brown leaves. The dogs roll in the leaves and the leaves stick to their fur and they shake them off in the house. Oak leaves get attached to chairs and coats and tucked away in drawers. Some people hate fallen leaves. They complain about messy paths and messy lawns, not me. Fallen leaves are so useful. They cover the bare soil. They fill the potholes in the lawn, dug out by the dogs who love digging for treasure. Eventually I rake them up and sweep them up, and dump them in my leaf bin, which isn’t a bin at all. I made a cylinder out of chicken wire and tied it to 3 stakes.

There are so many flowers. I expected the garden to reflect this new Covid world. I expected it to be a grim colourless place of bare stems. But it isn’t. It’s full of life. Seed heads are plentiful. Autumn is the time to collect and store for spring. Autumn is the season of promise.

I’ve finally got the hang of it. Living in this strange parallel world. A world where long term planning is impossible. Day by day, that’s how it’s done. Enjoying the morning sun on the orange salvia, the much-too-late tithonias I grew from seed - miniature orange sunsets. The front garden is a morning garden. Full of yellow. My favourite yellow dahlia, Golden Spectre, is a King Midas gold for sure. Then there are the small nubs of yellow-green flowers on the Ajania pacifica before they turn a vibrant mustard. Achillea filipendulina ‘Parker’s Gold’ is still flowering. I love it so much, its feathery leaves and gold side-plate sized flowers on long stalks. I love it so much that I’ve grown a lot more from seed and planted them out beside the adult ones. And because I needed even more I’ve bought 2 more packets of seeds.

Salvia subrotunda. — *Salvia subrotunda*.

Achillea filipendulina ‘Parker’s Gold’. — *Achillea filipendulina* ‘Parker’s Gold’.

While I was weeding and removing spent plants in the front garden I rediscovered a plant that I’d forgotten about. An inter-generic hybrid between Aster and Soldiago. A perfect marriage if you ask me. Meet Solidaster x Luteus.

I had a hand in making this beautiful flower. I grew it from seed. It’s another one of the plants in the front garden. One of the joys of being a novice gardener are the surprises. My Aquilegia ‘Tequila Sunrise’ was one of these surprises. Such delicate detail in its flowers from its hat of orange to its chandelier of filaments and anthers. And the stylish way its stems curve and twist are worth a close study. Who can resist a flower named after a song that summarises a perfect time in a person’s childhood. Not me.

Lockdown is over. New Zealand has now moved into Level 2. Schools go back. Work goes back. Gatherings of a maximum of 10 people are permitted. New Zealanders can now socialise freely with family and friends but must keep 2 metres distance from strangers on the street. Travel anywhere within NZ is allowed.

New Zealanders have emerged from lockdown, from a mind altering hibernation and found they now inhabit a parallel world. A world that is at once familiar and unsettlingly strange. A world where epidemiologists argue about the right way to survive a pandemic.

I’m done with making flowers. I showed you some of these early flowers, cut out of Nespresso capsules and glued to the front fence. One for every day of lockdown. 7 weeks and 49 days.

Let’s return to the front garden one last time. I want to tell you about Mother’s Day and a griselinia.

Mother’s Day was last Sunday. We don’t make a big deal about it in my house. Usually, my son makes me a card and my husband buys a bath bomb or a small box of chocolates which he gives to my son to give to me. That happened this year. My son drew a flower on my card, he also drew one of those round spiky Covid balls. One of my roses flowered on Mother’s Day, a little Austin rose called ‘Happy Child’.

I have a large Griselinia littoralis growing in my front garden, or should I say had. It was covered in a black sooty mould thing. I’ve seen lots of griselinias inflicted with the same thing. Once my griselinia started started spreading this black sooty mould thing to all the plants under and near it it had to go.

The front garden after the removal of the griselina tree. You can see the rose Moonshine at the top and middle of the photo.

I was listening to an interview with a NZ author on the radio. I forget his name. He’d owned a bar, or maybe it was a restaurant, before he took up writing. He shared some advice he’d been told, advice about working out what to do with your life. No easy matter. This wise person told him to ‘travel towards to the mountain.’ The mountain represents where you want to go or what you want to be or what you want to do. So long as the mountain is always in your sight and you’re moving towards it then you can relax.

It’s a piece of wisdom that came at the right time. Like many people, lockdown was a time for me to think about where my life was heading. I won’t bore you with the details. Let’s just say I was heading in the direction of the wrong mountain, a mountain called ‘Things I Ought to Do’. I was supposed to be a famous writer. I spent the first 5 weeks of lockdown trying to work on a novel that I’d been working on for the last few years. Then I realised that the mountain I really want to go to is one called ‘Things I Love Doing’ and what I love doing is gardening.

And to make sure I kept my mountain isn sight I started an online course called ‘The RHS Level 2 Certificate in Principles of Horticulture’ or something like that. It’s bloody brilliant. I feel like l’m back in 6th form Horticulture with my friend Ali, growing loofahs and pinching out the lateral growth on tomato plants. My current novel and all the other ones I’ve started over the years have been put into hibernation. You could say I was on my way to Mount Everest but changed my mind. Instead, I’m ambling along in the direction of the nameless hill I can see from my lounge window.

On Friday I watched a zoom video at 6am. It was all about growing fruit and vegetables in pots at Great Dixter. It was presented by a gardener and writer called Aaron Bertelsen, and was based on his book of the same title. I have this book and have read it and continue to refer to it. I appreciate a garden writer who has a sense of humour, which Aaron B has. He grows mint for his mojitos and rhubarb for his gin (or was it vodka). He hates chillies and thinks they ruin a good meal and only grows them because they look attractive. He was a big fan of curly leaved parsley and reckoned that a cold winter makes it taste better.

Here’s my container fruit and veggie garden, in part inspired by AB’s book. My friend Paul built me another planter a week ago. It’s hiding behind the half wine barrels. I need to buy some more soil for the planter, which is easy now we’re in level 2. Thanks to Aaron Bertelsen I know what’s been eating my kale leaves - white butterfly caterpillars. I need to buy some netting along with the soil. I could do with a little hand fork and some blood and bone too. And while I’m at the hardware store I could get some sheep pellets (not actual sheep but their droppings) and some more twine and stretchy black cotton string and maybe another begonia for the front porch.

The driveway fruit and veggie container garden.

And here I am at the end of this blog. I’m going to publish them fortnightly. Next week I’ll be working on my orchard rose garden, which is a mess. My sister and her partner gave me a garden voucher for my birthday. I’ll use it to buy some dwarf fruit trees for the orchard rose garden. I also want to make an edible hedge for this area, a short one. I don’t know if such a thing is possible but I’m obsessed with making a hedgerow. See you in 14 days.