Gardening in the rain

It was warm yesterday and then in the late afternoon it began to drizzle on and off. So i was gardening in the rain. One of the most beautiful sights is gentle rain on the gardens. The plants grow as you watch them here. Literally. The season is short and almost tropical.

By evening it was raining. So ignoring the dishes, we sat out on the verandah to listen.

My flower beds were designed to imitate the big farm gardens in New Zealand. So the house is surrounded in deep beds of perennials. There is too much garden for one little woman farmer but I cannot help myself, I love to dig, so I am very forgiving about weeds. I call my gardening theory Cleaning the Moat.

I start in one garden and then I work in a clockwise direction around the house, like the hands of an enormous slow clock, weeding and watering.  I move in the same direction all summer. No garden is free of all weeds all the time. Ah well. No plant is always perfectly pruned  and trained all the time. Ah well.  No amount of wildness is too much. Well. Of course.  Holes are always being dug and plants are being divided and moved from one garden to the other. And no garden is finished, flower gardens are fluid, always evolving. This is why gardening is so addictive. Gardeners see what they are going to create as often as they see what they have already created.  We live in a colourful dream world. Such a nice place to be.

The same rule applies to the mowing! There is no time when all the mowing is all done at the same time. The flower gardens, orchard and vegetable gardens are scattered over a big acre. So the job is divided into sections and I will mow and finish one section a day.  I spend about an hour a day on one of the nine huge flower beds (they all have names) and adjacent  lawns and collect three big buckets of weeds for the chickens and one for the pigs. Then I move to the vegetable gardens to do the same. For me the flowers are as important as the vegetables.

There are many many jobs on these eight acres. I think it is important not to try and get it all done every day. Forgiving myself the weeds is critical to my personality. Perfection is only a vision it is not a reality to a person with an imagination. And everyone has an imagination. We are always thinking of the next plan and the next plant to flower, and what would happen if we took cuttings from that shrub and plant them along the back over there.  Just leaning on the fence watching the animals graze is as important as pulling that bloody creeping charlie out of the Bird Garden.

Good morning. I know some of you cannot have a little garden, let alone a big one and those of you who can are eternally grateful. And there have been times in my life when I was just as happy with a window box of geraniums and a few pots of basil and thyme in the kitchen. One of the pieces of advice my grandmother gave me as a young mother was to put my hands into the soil every day.

Today I am digging up some day lilies in the way of the construction and bringing them around to Donna’s garden where they can spread out and fill a gap. The soil will be damp and the day will not be hot, perfect for gardening today.

Have a lovely day.

Your muddy friend, celi