“When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden.” ― Minnie Aumonier
Sunday 14th January 2024
We are in January 2024, and it has been ten years (October 2014) since we lived here in the rural country of Eureka, Waikato. The first photo of the middle/centre garden showed what it was like. Fast forward to today, there have been a lot of challenges in planting shrubs, groundcover herbs, bulbs, several native small trees and one fruit tree.
There are two things I am dealing with: –
I am battling with one exasperating weed, Kikuyu grass, and they love drought and coastal. We are not in the coastal area because we live in a rural country. How does this Kikuyu grass come to New Zealand? Did you know that Kikuyu grass came from the native to the African countries of Burundi, Zaire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda? Kikuyu is named for the Kikuyu (Gikuyu) people of Kenya. It was introduced to New Zealand from Zimbabwe by the Department of Agriculture in the early 1920s.
Between 2016 and 2017, I got the diagnosis of my right side – neck, shoulder and down along the arm via elbow and hand, and it was called C4-C7 Cervical Disc Degeneration Radiculopathy. It had been a very long time since I had the nerve damage overnight without warning, and what caused the nerve damage back in 2006 in my previous second home without a partner. Every day, I take it easy when doing housework, gardening, driving around, studying University BA courses, cooking, communicating in sign language, and so on. In 2009, my partner came along and supported me until today. We shared the workloads, including the large garden and drove around, which helped me. My partner knows the garden is my joy and relaxation from work – Deaf community liaison/advocacy role. This symptom is my living experience through pain and recovery daily as the disability adds to my deafness.
Oh wow! The giant tree is the Golden Totara, which can withstand all seasons with the most brutal weather, from wind to drought. Many birds shelter there or make nests inside the Golden Totara. Of course, little furry animals such as rats, mice, possums, rabbits and critters and flying insects like bees, bumble bees, wasps, shanks, butterflies, and moths hovering over the garden or seeking food from flowers. Our dogs roam around the garden daily, seeking rabbits and other animals.
I pruned back the branches nearly three years ago, and today, it was time to tidy up the unwanted low-laying branches and trim around the trunks. Readers probably wonder what I do with all the cut and thick branches. I leave it to my partner as we use these branches for firewood through Winter.
Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden – in all the places. Frances Hodgson Burnett
Monday 15th January 2024
Ah, the rain softened this afternoon after a whole morning doing the garden job yesterday. Our dogs sleep inside while I take it easy on my first day working from home under the Social Service. Everywhere around New Zealand, there has been a bag of mixed weather such as flooding, drought, mild bushfires, humid and hot and, of course, rain. In Waikato, local farmers and agriculture workers are restricted by water from the Waikato River despite the Greater Acklanders taking water as they are outside the Waikato Regional Council region.
Note: When I was a young girl, my solo mother – Joan, asked me when I would do the weeding in the garden. I told her I did not want to get my hands dirty, but I definitely would do the garden when I have a home. Throughout three home ownerships in the past, I did the gardening, and Joan realised that I did the gardening after all. In the past years, from 2014 onward, I have loved collecting new plants and shrubs, even receiving plant gifts, and my partner often said no more plants/bulbs each time we went. He realises our large property has so much grass space that he has to use lawn mowing and little space for a flower garden. He enjoys seeing the sight of flowers, fruits and vegetables.
After all, have you considered garden therapy in your home, even at work??
Liberty Hyde Bailey: A garden requires patient labour and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfil good intentions; they thrive because someone expended effort on them.
Gertrude Jekyll: A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all, it teaches entire trust.
Carl Linnaeus: If a tree dies, plant another in its place.
Life in Eureka 