Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding planning and working on a cutting garden incredibly hard. Especially when the cutting garden is actually 2 gardens, 50km apart. Especially when I have to fit it around my day job. I might be deluding myself, but I’m determined to make it work.

You’d think all I needed to do was read a few books, watch a few YouTube videos and get out a large sheet of paper and a pen. I could design a planting scheme and make a lot of plant lists.

If only it were that simple. A garden has 4 dimensions. The fourth being time and with that comes seasons: sun variation and changes in the weather. There’s a fifth dimension too - dogs. I don’t have enough land at Paekakariki to block off an area for the dogs, so all my gardens have to be dog-proof. Raised beds and beds with low fences work best.

Recent rookie errors:

I didn’t know that stock was a biennial.
planting hyacinths was a mistake. They flower at a time when little else does and I don’t have enough to make a bouquet.
using cocoa bean husks as a mulch for hyacinths was also a mistake. The husks leave brown marks on the flowers.
I forgot that honesty is a biennial.
I’m planning as I go. This might be my downfall or it could be the perfect solution.

Hyacinths pushing their way through all the cocoa bean husks.

Things I want to find out:

I have a bit of a thing for glass Avon bubblebath bottles that double as vases. Must be cause they remind me of my childhood (not that I ever had one of these bottles). And the bottles look great too. What I want to find out is how to clean them. They have narrow necks and lots of tricky compartments. I’ve tried the conventional method with vinegar and baking soda. I've fashioned tiny cleaning devices out of bamboo skewers, elastic bands and small bits of pot scrubber. It cleaned some of the grime but not in the hard-to-reach-bits. I need to find some heavy duty chemicals. I’m still searching.
How to make a round wreath out of vines.
What are some great vines (easy to find) to make wreaths out of?
I've started trialling compostable non-plastic pots when I pot-on some of my seedlings. I have to keep them moist. They’re able to be planted into the ground along with the seedling (great for plants that hate root disturbance). I want to find out how well they work compared to my plastic reusable pots.

A few random things I’m particularly pleased about:

Four Astrantia seedlings have germinated. I put the rest in the fridge for a few weeks.
I planted almost all of the sweet pea seedlings (I dug in sheep pellets, made teepees and tied in the stems).
I made 3 more raised beds in the shell courtyard. A few weeks ago I made two raised beds by the greenhouse.
Almost all my seedlings are doing very well in the mini-greenhouses (a snail ate all the nigella ‘Blackball’ seedlings but left all the other varieties. Another group of seedlings succumbed to the same snail, but I don’t know what they were - I can’t read my own writing on the tag).
All the seedlings in the greenhouse are watered with harvested water from the greenhouse roof. I store it in plastic milk bottles.
There’s a lot of other things but I’m so bone-weary exhausted that I can’t remember them.

Three new raised beds in the shell courtyard.

I bought a whole lot of crates at the tip shop. They’re for my flower stall.

Two weeks ago I chopped down a flax bush and an agapanthus growing through the Karori fence. I weeded all along it too.

My husband said I ought to use our dogs names in my blog. He reckoned it would make my blog more personal. I usually refer to them as ‘The Big Dog’ and the ‘The Small Dog.’ I do this in an attempt to maintain personal distance between me, the writer, and you, the reader.

Oversharing unfiltered, unedited stuff about yourself on social media ought to be the eighth deadly sin. Not because it’s evil, but because it’s so boring. Social media has unleashed this latent desire ‘to share’ in large swathes of the population. These ‘sharers’ believe they are giving us all a genuine gift.

In the spirit of ‘sharing’ here are the names of my dogs. The big dog is Scout. The little dog is Moussa.

Moussa taught Scout how to pick ripening strawberries off the strawberries in pots. Both of them try to eat the homemade compost that I dig into the raised beds.

Moussa being smaller and light-footed usually doesn’t cause any damage (although he’s very clever and often organises prison-breaks from the back garden), but Scout, she’s something else entirely. She’s a cross between a giant teddy bear with stuffing for brains and a scud missile with the wrong coordinates.

Here are a few photos which show you what I’ve been up to.

I made and planted up 2 new garden beds.

Some dried flowers I came across last week in Tauranga.

The desert road. not long before it snowed on Friday. It’s NZs only desert.

A rainbow photo taken on the back deck tby my husband.

It’s been a while since I posted. As I’ve just explained, I’m ridiculously busy, in a pointless panic-fuelled tail-chasing way. But I’m loving every moment. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard. It’s a great antidote to being an empty-nester.

See you in a week. I hope.