Recently, days have felt like years. That’s lockdown for you. Everyday is much like the day before. The garden has looked half-dead for the longest time (apart from the weeds). And then, without ceremony or fanfare or fireworks it arrived. It’d probably been arriving, like an incoming tide in slow motion, for weeks. Only I didn’t see it.

There are green leaves on the oak tree, the native clematis is flowering and there are green shoots on the rugosa roses. The self-seeded honeyworts, which have ended up in odd places, have started to flower. It’s the same story with the honesty. And there are white flower buds on the lilac (which is marooned at the corner of the dogs sprint track - with only a broken garden chair to protect it).

There are two plants (a shrub and a tree - from the bargain bin) tucked under the canopy of the oak tree. I can’t remember their exact names, ones a viburnum and the other is like a magnolia but not a magnolia (and the not knowing their names is a whole other story). These two plants have flower buds too, pale with shell pink smudges. Right beside them is a persicaria, which my friend Sophie gave me ( she grew it from a cutting) - it looks incredible with the morning sun hitting it from the side.

I started photographing all these changes in the garden and I grew excited. So much was happening. The only reason I was noticing the new growth was because I was looking up and crouching down. Of course the weeds had a head start on the proper plants, they were everywhere: creeping over and up and through the half-asleep perennials and beating the seedlings to the light.

And so, I started weeding every day (it’s rained a lot - so the soil is damp and soft and weeds slide out easily). Weeding is a great activity to calm a busy mind. Although, I worry about all the topsoil I’m losing. If I were a much better gardener I’d be composting the annual weeds (the ones that haven’t set seed) and putting the pernicious perennials into a sack, which is then submerged in a bin of water (to make weed tea). But I’m not yet that superior sort of gardener (although I’ve tried to be from time to time).

Proper hand weeding, crouching down between the plants, is a fine task for many reasons. It’s meditative, It’s a great way of ordering and planning garden tasks and it allows the cottage gardener (who prefers a wilder sort of landscape) a chance to find all the new plants. There are many tender tips (herbaceous perennials and bulbs) pushing up through the soil as well as the thousands of seedlings, cast far and wide from their long-dead or randy parents. I poke bamboo stakes around all these new comers so that my clumsy feet don’t squash them.

A long ago mother’s day pot plant winning the battle with the weeds.

I’d forgotten I had this variegated day lily.

My pink chrysanthemum has self-seeded all around itself.

Now back to the story about forgetting the names of plants. I’m one of those sorts of people who forgets the names of plants - I always have. One minute I can tell you the Latin name for honesty or honeywort and the next minute it’s gone, like $50 at a farmers market.

I used to keep all my plant labels. I started off by sticking them in blank journals (each area of the garden had a special section), but then I ran out of journals (or maybe I couldn't be bothered) and so I threw all the labels into a box (and then that box became several boxes). I’ll get straight to the point, I threw out the journals and boxes of labels In February this year. Why did I do this? Well, there are 2 reasons. I’m a messy person and I collect things. We’ve been trying to declutter our house and I was so overwhelmed by all the clutter (my clutter) that I binned a lot of stuff. Most of the stuff I chucked out needed to be chucked out. I regret throwing away all my plant labels. And now I don’t know what anything is. On the upside, I don’t have to spend hours trying to find the name of a particular plant.

So why are we decluttering the house? That’s easy to answer. We decided that at some point in the nearish future we’ll move away from Wellington and up to the Kapiti Coast. At some point in the nearish future we’ll sell our house, which is old and big and stuffed-to-bursting full of clutter. We’re in the process of buying a house up the coast (not easy during a lockdown). Once that’s finalised I can write about it with authority. For a while I’ll have 2 gardens: one on clay and one on sand.

It’s that time of the year when I rearrange bits of the garden. I move plants and reassign garden beds. I want to grow more food. One of my flower beds in the back garden is going to make way for fruit trees and veggies. As a devout cottage gardener I see no problem with mixing up flowers, fruit and veggies.

My long flower garden on the western side of the house is where most of the flowers (from the back garden) will end up. I dug up a huge leggy cistus a couple of weeks ago and this has left a big gap (and a lot more available sun). The death or forced death of a plant, while sometimes sad, is a garden opportunity.

A wallflower in the side-western garden.

A thalictrum that is flowering too early, in the side-western garden.

I was on a Zoom call with one of the school’s I teach at. We were making a video for the children, taking it in turns to answer questions. One of the questions was ‘what would you be if you weren’t a teacher?’ I had a lot of trouble answering this. There are so may things I’d like to be - so I listed all of them. One of those things was a painter. Not a house painter but a picture painter. I went to art school and chose photography when I should’ve chosen painting. I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say I should’ve been braver. Gardening is a way of combining both - painting (painting with plants instead of oils) and photography (which is painting with light).

That’s a round-about way of saying that I love playing with colour in the garden. While I’m a big risk taker (all rules are meant to be broken), I’m also quite particular. The side-western garden is full of plants that are in shades of dark red and purple, with a few pinks thrown in. I’m moving a lot of pink flowering plants from my back garden into this side garden. Blue-pinks are welcome but the wishy-washy browny-pinks are not (I haven’t worked out where I’ll put them).

The trouble with a long thin suburban garden surrounded by fences and hills (with a long thin house plonked in the middle) is that there are lots of low light places. A lot of my plants are pushed to their absolute light limits (as in they don’t get enough).

Some pulmonaria in the front garden - not the pink one that went missing.

I’m sad to announce that a beautiful pulmonaria (Raspberry Splash I think) has gone missing. I dug it up from its home in the back garden and transferred it in a tub (along with lots of geraniums) to the side-western garden. When I came to plant it, it had gone. Did I drop it during transit or did one of the dogs get it? I searched many times for this much loved pulmonaria. I retraced my steps (many times). I visited all the places the dogs would’ve taken the plant. I even closely studied the plants I’d transplanted in case I’d planted the pulmonaria without realising it. I’ve come to the conclusion that I have a portal or a miniature black hole in my garden. There is no other explanation (when you have a global pandemic caused by an invisible disease then anything is possible).

A pile of green waste in the front garden.

And so I come to the important issue of green waste (this doesn’t include weeds because I’ve already said more than enough about them). All those pruned branches and dead plants and Christmas trees (not roses or anything that’s diseased mind you) have to go somewhere, especially when the gardener doesn’t own one of those machines that shreds and chips or does own one but it’s broken. So where do they go? They go to the back of the garden or behind trees and shrubs and they stay there for a very long time until they start to rot and the pile slowly sinks. Every garden needs 2 or 3 of these hiding places. Eventually you get a pile of wonderful humus.

Here’s quick interlude, while I go and make a fresh cup of tea. 3 photos of just 3 of my many euphorbias (I’m very fond of this group of plants which seem to function as a flowering plant and a foliage plant.)

It’s time to finish (although not quite - I have another paragraph under the seeds). And I’ll finish where I started. Feeling a bit glum. A bit ho-hum. Because I have been from time to time. Lockdown isn’t very fun. It isn’t a cocktail party that’s for sure. It forces a person to think small and incrementally and local.

I’ve discovered that small and incremental isn’t such a bad thing. Lockdown, while taking tedium to new lows, really forces a person to step off their normal conveyer belt life and step into a parallel world. For me that parallel world is gardening. Now that I’m right back into ‘it’ my world feels a lot bigger. It’s as if I’m in a science fiction movie (oh I forgot - we’re all already in one) and I’ve been shrunk to the size of a bee. My garden has become the Amazon Rainforest.

I bought a whole lot of seeds online, lots for eating, lots for looking at. Seeds are cheap. And now I’m excited. I’ve got lots of different heirloom tomatoes and potatoes to grow. I have 3 different kinds of lettuce. Spring is here and there’s so much to do, so much to look at. It’s the most fleeting of seasons, with its fresh green shoots and sweet flowers, and then, like a wisp of smoke, it’s gone.

See you in a couple of weeks.