It’s been a week of nice surprises. The fencing guy turned up and started work. I potted up some seedlings I’d grown, discovered bulbs growing in my forgotten about flower boxes and finished my rewrite of chapter 3.

It’s been raining a lot this week. What gardener in their right mind doesn’t like rain. I only wish I’d got my rain barrels sorted, especially if we have a hot dry summer like the Northern Hemisphere. I only wish it had rained the week before last or the week after next, because while it was great that the fencing guy started he also had to stop.

Scabiosa atropurpurea ‘Fragrant Dwarf’ Doubles’ in the greenhouse.

One of my favourite flowers, is Scabiosa atropurpurea ‘Fragrant Dwarf’ Doubles’. I planted some scabiosa seeds a few weeks ago. This week I potted up half of them. I don’t know why they’re called dwarves because they’re not. I’d call a plant that grows to a maximum height of 10cm a dwarf. Think alpine plants. Gypsophila cerastioides grows to a top height of 5cm.

Scabiosa ‘FDD’s grow to 40 - 50cm tall. That’s the smaller side of average if you ask me. I grew them accidentally in the summer of 20/21 in Wellington. I was given a free packet with a large seed order. I was put off by the word ‘dwarf’ and didn’t expect much.

From the minute the leaves emerged I was besotted with them. They were beautiful. Everything you’d want from a cottage garden flower. They’re long flowering and the flowers are becoming at every stage. They start out as green buttons dusted in pink, then they flower (a pinky lilac) and finally the petals fall off and you have these biscuit coloured seed heads.

Last year I built 3 flower boxes and planted them with daffodils and tulips. When we moved house early this year they were a scrappy box of leaves. The spring flowers had long gone.

We didn’t have any fencing in the front garden so I put up some temporary fencing. I used waratahs and chicken wire and anything else that came to hand. The dogs soon learnt to burrow under the fence and escape. I used these 3 flower boxes (along with our old Christmas tree, roofing iron, garden chairs, branches and bags of potting mix) to block up the bottom of the fence.

Now that the fencer has started work I’ve rediscovered these boxes. And to my great surprise the bulbs are starting to grow (along with a lot of self seeded weeds and a few other plants).

This is what they looked like 2 days ago.

This is what one of the flower boxes looked like in spring last year.

Here’s what the boxes look like after I weeded, fed and added potting mix. The weeds are going into my ‘weed tea’ bucket.

Heres an inventory of the self-seeders: 5-6 dandelions, 10 or more oxalis, 10 or more other weeds (names unknown), a hebe, a nasturtium, 1 calendula and a scabiosa ‘FDD’ (the flower box sat right next to the flower border where the scabiosa grew last summer).

Friday was a garden inspiration day. It started with a visit to my favourite bookshop in Wellington to buy my garden magazine. Naturally I had to see what else was on the shelves. 2 books I’d been thinking about just happened to be there.

After I bought 1 garden book, 1 garden journal and 1 garden magazine I went to a movie with my friend Sophie. We saw ‘The Gardener’. I went back to hers for lunch. I had a quick look at her garden from her lounge windows (it was too cold and wet to wander round). I admired her hellebores, hydrangea and wallflowers, which were all flowering. I admired a pile of garden books she’d got out of the library, especially the one by Arthur Parkinson. It was a day for admiring because I also admired Sophie’s chillies which she was growing in her dining room. I left her place with a packet of chilli seeds.

Francis Cabot was ‘The Gardener’ in the movie ‘The Gardener.’ His garden is called ‘Les Quatre Vents’ in Québec, Canada. What a garden and what a man! The highlight was listening to Francis Cabot talk about his garden, it’s worth watching the movie if only for that. Although his garden is world class too.

I made a compost bin today. I’ve got to the stage where I’m running out of bins because I compost all of our food waste. All of it. I also only use compost bins that are rodent proof. I have an irrational fear of rats. So all of my compost bins are small with very small holes - much too small for a rat to sneak in (a rat only needs a thumb-sized hole to get through thanks to their incredible collapsing ribs). I have 2 tumble bins, one 70s style partially buried rubbish bin and 4 bokashi bins (the bokashi compost needs to finish composting in a conventional compost bin). I thought it’d be a good idea to try making a ‘Trash Can Tumbler’. An alternative to the conventional compost tumble bin.

I followed the instructions on how to make a ‘Trash Can Tumbler’ in the book ‘No-Waste Composting’ by Michelle Balz. It was very easy and only cost $35. A heck of a lot cheaper than my other 2 compost tumblers (which also needed to be assembled). And the Trash Can Tumbler takes up a lot less space.

Heres how to do it. You buy or repurpose a plastic rubbish bin with a lid. You drill holes in the bottom and holes in the side. You secure the lid with a bungee cord. You fill up the compost bin with compostable stuff (1:3 ratio of green waste to brown waste). You roll it along the ground once a week (and keep doing it once it’s full - full is 3 quarters full). It will be ready to use in a few months after you stop adding to it.

My new Trash Can Tumbler to the left of my conventional tumble bin.

And so we come to chapter 3. The chapter I had to rewrite in my novel and couldn’t. But eventually did. I don’t want to tell you all about it. It’s bad luck, and anyway, I’ll probably change it again. All I’ll say is that it involves a girl and a boy and a goat and magic.

This photo of my dogs looking forlorn got more likes on instagram than anything else I’ve posted this year. I was in the greenhouse and they were outside. It was raining. They wanted to come into the greenhouse but I wouldn’t let them. I wouldn’t let them in because I was putting food into one of the bokashi bins. This involves tipping collected food scraps (including meat) into a bin and covering it with inoculated bran. I do all of this on the floor of the greenhouse. So yes, the dogs wanted to come into the greenhouse. They love eating rotten food and inoculated bran.

My tree of the week is māhoe, Melicytus ramiflorus. It grows plentifully in the forests near my old home in Wellington. The forests are dark and damp with a thick layer of humus over the clay soil. The trees soon end up covered in moss, with gnarled holey trunks. They look like enchanted trees in an ancient forest.

Here in QE2 Park the same trees look very different. Here they grow in a sunnier, drier climate and get blasted by the wind. The soil is sandy with very little in the way of humus. Once upon a time these māhoe would’ve been dwarfed by taller trees and part of a swamp forest but not any. more.

See you next Sunday.