Looking to the future

It is always the way – you just get to sink your teeth into an exciting project and something comes along and throws a spanner in the works.  We had a productive couple of days with the bulldozer sorting out my land.  Gone are the undulating lumps and bumps.  All but the merest hint of Kikuyu grass is gone and the base for my garden is clean sand.   Which is manageable at this point.  I just need to come up with a system to stop the inward grass encroachment from around the edges.

Nothing like a spot of kitchen gardening on a wet and wild day.

It was going so well and then we had an event that I think will be just part of our new normal.  There was another storm.  Nothing like that horrible one when the house was up on jacks, but still bad enough to have me up all night listening to the wind whistle through holes and gaps in the house that at that stage still hadn’t been repaired.  By my count this will have been the 6^th storm since we moved here on the 19^th January.   The only consolation is these storms aren’t isolated to our property and large swathes of the country are also experiencing traumatic weather events.  It isn’t me, it is you too!

Sometimes it is best to appreciate the wonder of nature of the warmth and comfort of indoors!

The wind is pretty wild and the ocean is as marbled as an expensive piece of wagu beef.  Sitting in the dark in the middle of the night watching the sky light up with a dramatic electrical storm out to sea, framed perfectly through the bay window, is no longer terrifying – it is spectacular!  Even in the worst weather I still love living here.  It makes you feel so alive.  However, it isn’t that conducive to getting things done outside.  The building work has loosened a lot of the land and exposed the sand (aside from my project which doesn’t count in this as it is my sand with a noble purpose) and once you get the wind behind that, it is like a brutal exfoliant or a sharp sand blast.  It is much better to just stay inside.

These fennel seedlings will be some of the first plants in my new garden

The problem with this is, I really want to push things forward and get things done.  I’m done with waiting.  I’ve done my time and 120 days is my limit.  Then I remembered my seedlings, sown back in the beginning of April.  In their short lives they have moved several times and been through a couple of good storms, and still looked good.  They were certainly strong little plants, but the time had come to move them out of the seed raising mix and into bigger pots and a good quality potting mix.

Even in bad weather a storm whipped ocean can still look beautiful.

But it was yucky outside and while the sun was shining, out of nowhere an intense rain burst would come up from the beach and then disappear as quickly as it came yet left everything freezing cold and soaking wet.  Then I remembered – it isn’t so much that we have a building site in our home, we are living in a building site.  The builder had set up his saw bench in living room.  The electrician was working on the fuse box in a sea of wire clippings.   So, if they could turn the house in to work space, then so could I and set myself up in the kitchen.

It was a very productive morning, now I just need to keep these guys alive and well for another few weeks!

As I scooped the soil into the pots I began to daydream a little.  All of these little seedlings will end their lives in the big garden.  It is so close I can almost feel it.  But at the same time there is a lot to be done to get there.  The first step is to lose time in a wild afternoon in a kitchen with a light layer of sawdust dusting the surfaces and digging into the rich soil as I repot tiny plants loaded with an incredible future.   Life is good.

Come again soon – there is some heaving lifting in my immediate future.

Sarah the Gardener  : o)

 

* Exciting news:  a lovely range of amazing Gardena Hand Tools will be available in NZ from 25 June 2018.