In a display of woefully inadequate gardening practices, the bamboo hoops I hoped would support my tomato plants for the season have been completely smothered by said tomato plants already and they have barely started flowering.

All this rain and sun and rain has sent them crazy and there’s shoots going off left right and centre and all places in between! Stop stop stop it now!

I am thinking that what I really need are some of these awesome cage whogeemeflips:

Now that’s what I’m talking about baby!

My vegetable garden is a little bit behind compared to most; I had to wait for the Other Harf to build the second bed (making sure it’s perfectly straight takes hours on its own) and then pootle into town in Dad’s ute two Saturdays in a row to get new topsoil.

But! Look at my babies grow! The tomato plants have tripled in size in two weeks; the corn is going great guns and as for the radishes – mere seeds two weeks ago and look at ‘em now! Bless!

I am feeling very glowy and proud.

Ahhh, glorious, delicious, cooling rain! Two hours’ worth of downpouring after two days of what has to be the most unbelievably stifling humidity and high temperatures. Northland is known for its humidity, but this was bloody riddickalus, especially for December.

No need to water gardens when we got home; we now have a satiated vege patch, soaked hanging baskets and lovely tasting rain water to balance out the fusty old bore water.

All is well with the world….

This afternoon I arrived home from work, changed out of my workclothes, folded two loads of washing, watered my hanging baskets and my vege garden, put on another load of washing, reminded Miss 10.2 that pushing clothes to one side of the room does not mean one has tidied one’s room then went to the study, fetched my camera and macro lens and went outside and took 98 photographs.

While I took the photographs I hummed away to myself. I was in my happy zone.

Agapanthus, alstomeria, lily, kangaroo paw, roses, hydrangeas, hebe, bottlebrush, poppy, tomato, jasmine.

In my garden.

In my camera.

And now, on my blog…

Sweet as.

Saturday afternoon, and I’ve spent most of the day in the garden, preparing and planting my new vegetable plot. The new plot has proper lovely jubbly brand new “garden mix” – topsoil with added compost and fertiliser; I have high hopes for the tomatoes (from the seeds sent to me by the wonderful Laura), capsicums and spring onions I planted!

As well as that I’ve caught up on at least three weeks’ worth of weeding. Weeds, weeds, weeds, WEEDS. All this delicious warm weather has made them go nutso.

And now it’s time went and I tarted myself up; it’s Bruvinlaw’s 40th birthday bash over at the Beige Barn today (2pm start!) and 3.48pm is still kind of early for partying, but I think I can make a special effort.

Enjoy your Saturday, wherever you are and whatever you do!

The first tomato flower

My gran’s garden was full of geraniums. Well, in actual fact, they were “pelargoniums”, not geraniums, if you were to get all David Bellamy-ish about it.

Granny’s flowers were never this dark, exotic shade of dark pink. They were either pale pink, candy pink or that apricot orange colour, and I can always remember the minty, cucumbery scent of them…

Our driveway is lined with flowering watsonia at the moment. I love that even though they’re the same species every single plant is a different shade – from creamy white blushing to delicate baby pink then all the way through to deepest fuschia.

Mother Nature, you do great work…

In late July I picked up a bag of daffodil bulbs in the bargain bin at The Warehouse. They cost $2 and almost all of them were dried up, dessicated little husks, which I optimistically planted in an empty bed, thinking if these grow it’ll be a flippin’ miracle.

Six weeks later there was no sign of any growth, and I thought to myself well, I’ll give it another couple of weeks, it wasn’t as though I was going to plant anything else in the bed until summer.

And secretly, I hoped that something might come from those miserable little bulbs…

Another couple of weeks later, tiny green buds appeared when all the daffodils in Northland were well over and done with. Leaves shot up and eventually around beginning of October we had one lonely flower. Not long after that, another replaced it, and then finally, this final flourish – our November daffodil.

Just goes to show if you give something a second chance, and wait long enough, it will eventually reward you.