Agapanthus – 1; The Curious Kiwi – 0

Guess what? This will be my 200th post, wow! 😀 I didn’t think when I started my little blog that I’d enjoy writing so much but I love it!

Thanks for following along xx

On Saturday we had a weather bomb* so I spent the day pottering in my room. I was in a quiet mood so I worked on the rugby jersey and managed to trace three dress patterns, one of which will be the “Birthday Dress” for 2012. On Sunday it was beautiful, in Wellington anyway, so I declared Gardening and I were BFFs 4EVA and decided it was time for Edible Garden: Stage One Extension.

Three more bags of compost was acquired from Bunnings and I dragged the wheelie bin around to the back and set to work.

First up, here is the next area to be cleared:

Oh my gosh, don’t look at the grass! This is before it got mowed, last weekend Nerdy Husband declared it needed to “grow out” a bit before the next mowing.

Recently there has been a healthy discussion in the sewing blogosphere around how much people dress up for, or alter, their garment photos in comparison to “real life” – honestly, if I knew how to make a lawn looked mowed in Photoshop I would have done it!

To give you a location based on the first bed, it is a bit further along the north fence-line and just as overgrown.

A rouge (and poorly Photoshopped) lawn mowers appears – it’s not very effective!

It is also a bit lower down and a bit more boggy, mostly due to the types of plants currently growing there, but nothing a bit of sand and compost won’t fix.

I was keen to clear at least half of it to start with, beginning with one offending mini-Agapanthus.

I don’t like Agapanthus.

I’m sorry if you do (actually, I’m not) but they annoy me and I don’t really know why. Kiwis (and the Aussies too) are so obsessed with planting them everywhere. The council stick them in our roundabouts, people line their driveways with them but to me they are a glorified weed and they are not to reside in my garden.

I know my dislike is irrational and I completely understand people disagreeing with me. Nerdy Husband feels the same way about hydrangeas for no good reason either. I don’t mind them actually, what’s to hate? They pretty much grow a complete bouquet on a stem, easy as. We have one in the front garden, I recognised it the other day when it started greening up after it’s winter sleep.

I”ll wait until it flowers to see how long until Nerdy Hubby notices it, a little marital experiment if you will, hehe 😉

Luckily, we do agree on the Agapanthus issue.

Does anyone else feel that way about Agapanthus? Just me? Or perhaps there is another plant you love to hate for no reason? It’s OK if you like Agapanthus, feel free to defend them in the comments.

There were a couple of green leafy things cowering in front of the Agapanthus, but I quickly dispatched them to the wheelie bin and soon there was nothing standing between me and the Agapanthus but soggy dirt.

It’s possible that I may have mentioned something out aloud to that blight in my garden…

…and it may have heard me.

It broke my fork 😦

That’s just plain cheating!

I will admit that when I went and bought all my new garden toys a couple of weekends ago, that I did buy the cheapest fork in the shop. I wasn’t sure if Gardening and I were going to be friends so cheap and cheerful was the motto of the day.

This fork may have been a bit too cheerful.

I have two options: buy another one (more expensive/better quality), or perhaps convince Mechanical-Brother-in-Law to weld mine up. I think I may go with the latter to begin with. Mechanical-Brother-in-Law owes us a favour and he has a couple of those welding things, one of them will do it I am sure.

He’ll probably ask me what sort of metal it is…”cheap” is a metal isn’t it?

So that was my day of digging done for and I took my wrath out on the ivy instead.

I don’t hate the ivy but it does go all along that fence and around the corner. The stuff around the corner is safe, it camouflages the fence and I like that when I look out my lounge windows I see green with the hills in the background above. It makes my backyard look like it goes on forever. The ivy over the vege garden however will prevent me from growing and supporting taller veges like beans and peas etc. It will also be a mission to maintain and make a mess when I trim it.

I didn’t get as much cleared as I wanted, my bin filled up surprisingly quickly but that was fine because by then I was tired and sick of bugs jumping out at me. I did manage to salvage the chicken wire from underneath for future use, very recyclingable of me.

So I left my garden “extension” like this, not very cleared but with high hopes of hitting it again on the upcoming long weekend:

In other gardening adventure news we have had one casualty in the current garden bed, a thyme seedling has mysteriously shrivelled up and died, but the strawberries are doing amazingly well, including the one I rescued & divided. One of those even has new flowers (and that means strawberries will follow!) and I saw some bees humming around them too.  My gardening book says that strawberries are self pollinating but good pollination is essential for quality fruit so yay for bees!

I’ve been using my herbs carefully while they get established. Selective trimming of pieces for my cooking while encouraging bushy growth. Last night I made Spaghetti Meatballs flavoured solely from my baby herb garden and I swear it was the most delicious thing I have ever cooked!

Oh and look! Carrot & spinach seedlings! And since I took this photo the spinach has gone mental, they all have their first “real” set of leaves, you know, the ones that look like the actual finished plant:

I have a 100% strike rate on the Pak Choi (which apparently should be harvest-able in about 2 weeks, I find that hard to believe), a 50% strike rate on my beans which are growing very fast and I will need that garden bed ready for them soon.

If you look really close you can see one lonely leek seedling in the left hand most row, 4 cells back! Ohh!

I thought there was still nothing from either the celery or the leeks but I after looking at this photo I noticed a tiny lonely leek seedling, can you see it?

I read in the same gardening book that they can take between 21 days and a whole month to sprout! I also read in my book that I can actually plant a few of the other seeds I bought. I mis-read the packet: I read “plant indoors in winter…” aww but it’s spring, and I put it down…actually it goes on to say, “or early spring outdoors…” oops, I thought I had a longer attention span that that! So I have another mini plastic greenhouse now planted with cheery tomato, chili & capsicum, yay!

* Quick random rant: is weather “bomb” not the most over-used non-scientific meteorological term ever? I’m not trying to down play it, Auckland did get hammered by said “bomb” but weather peeps, if you want to be taken seriously can we have some science please? Science will always trump sensationalism!