A lot has been happening in ‘real life’ and I temporarily forgot I had a garden blog or any gardening related plans at all.
That said, I have returned to Auckland to find a lot of the garden survived the dry summer in my absence. I also found a lot of broad beans.
It’s April now, and gardening is getting done haphazardly in brief disconnected moments while a toddler chases the ducks or forages for fruit.
Some days the weeds are winning, but I look at older photos and realise that everything is slowly improving.
A truckload of mulch has made things easier so far.
The garden is full of wildlife. Yesterday a kererū rested in the willow tree watching me as I picked up fallen feijoas. The ducklings have grown and moulted and some of the drakes are in their shining colours. There are insects everywhere, and at any given moment you can see or hear tui or pīwakwaka.
The grass is growing seemingly as fast as it does in springtime. Oranges are fattening slowly on the trees. Raspberries are eaten too quickly for their existence to be properly acknowledged.
I have been gifted a worm farm, and there are plenty wriggly worms in it. I feed most of the scraps to the chooks so it probably isn’t producing to its full potential, at some point I’ll get a second scrap bucket for the kitchen bench, and some kind of criteria for what goes to the chooks and what goes to the worms. At the moment trialing open compost that the chooks turn over. It breaks down fast and is also full of big healthy worms that the chooks are loving. A few too many flies though. But such is life, nothing is ever perfect and the numbers will hopefully drop when winter finally arrives.
So there is a brief update, still busy, work and baby, no sign of me finishing the calendar of book just yet. Here are a few pictures from the last few months.
A bumble bee with a tattered wing, harvesting nectar from a lavender flower.
