Real Gardens #1 - Rae O'Connor

In Rae O'Connor's Timaru garden spring is blooming. The walkway along the north side of the house, which leads to the back yard, is flanked by red and white camellias and vibrant purple primulas. A lemon tree is tucked into the sheltered nook created by the glass conservatory and a mandarin tree nestles in behind it. A wooden cartwheel supports clematis and climbing roses, which also twine along the railing of the ramp leading to the conservatory.

If you follow the walkway down you will reach this sheltered seating area. Sheltered by tall trees, it provides shade and privacy. The trees are underplanted with daffodils and white primulas, making a sweet woodland area. In the background you can see the heritage apple tree 'Peasgood Nonsuch'. (The apples make lovely cider!)

This area has been personalised with hanging garden art. Rae made the heart ornament from chicken wire bent around a wire frame, and filled with white river stones.

Close up of the daffodils in the early morning sunlight. The pots are filled with cyclamen and other tiny flowering treasures.

Look at this magnificent glasshouse! Built by the previous owner of the property, it has a wooden frame and several windows which open for ventilation. Rae grows tomatoes, peppers, early potatoes and 'Kentucky' climbing beans.

In front are three raised vegetable beds, built from concrete blocks. The blocks are slowly but surely being filled with strawberry plants, propagated by runners, which provide an ornamental and productive edging.

Alongside the glasshouse are more strawberry beds. The fruit are perfect to eat freshly picked and warm from the sun. Rae makes strawberry jam with the excess.

The beds are bare at the moment, but soon they will be filled with an assortment of vegetables including potatoes, lettuce, carrots, peas, sweet corn, pumpkins and beans. In the background you can see a grapevine trained along the fence, which produces an abundance of black grapes.

The space behind the glasshouse is useful for hiding compost bins and items which are not currently in use in the garden. Compost bins are made from concrete blocks, and a plastic drum with holes drilled in it to let air through.

Also along the back fence is the wire support for thornless blackberry canes. This way they get full sun and are easily accessible to pick. Along the side wall of the shed are red and blackcurrant bushes. In the bottom left corner of the photo is a gooseberry bush.

The clothesline has been made decorative as well as functional by planting a small flower garden around its base. The old metal peg holder has also been given new life as a planter.

I'm on the lookout for one of these for my own garden!

And so ends the first Real Gardens tour. I hope you've picked up a few ideas. See you back here next month for another tour!

(Click on the photos to view them larger)

Beautiful Nature

Nature dealt us a doozy of a blow last week. She is now redeeming herself with warm and lovely spring days, gentle overnight rain, lush growth (particularly of the lawn and weed variety), and a general air of promise and hope.

I went to Timaru last weekend. The trip, to visit with family and friends, was already planned, but the timing ended up being perfect for a much needed break from the city of shakes. Travelling south, the road was flanked with camellias, forsythias and glorious magnolias. Front yard gardens overflowed with the brightness and exuberance of spring - daffodils, flowering cherries, aubretia, primroses and blossoming hedges of all descriptions. I took quick snapshots from the windows of the car, both for inspiration's sake and to try and take something fleeting and hold onto it forever. Spring passes too quickly.

I also took some photos for a new feature that will soon debut on this blog. It will be a monthly feature called Real Gardens, and will profile real people's gardens: beautiful gardens, of course, but real - gardens with washing lines, compost bins, cats and car parks. My aim is to show how real people deal with all of these real needs and assimilate them into a beautiful liveable outdoor space. I'll be gleaning inspiration and ideas for my own garden, and I hope you'll be inspired too. Check back next week for the first installment!

(The photo at the top is my heliotrope which I put in the glasshouse to overwinter. It's thriving in the warmth, and filling the glasshouse with it's vanilla fragrance.)

Aftermath

Today was a glorious day. The weather was balmy and warm, and everything was happy and sunshiney and just peachy-perfect... oh, as long as you could ignore the cracks in the roads and the rubble and the tarpaulined holes where chimneys had been.

For most of the past two days I've been staying at home, keeping safe and trying not to use too much water. On Sunday morning I went to the supermarket, which was busy but well stocked (not running out of milk and bread like the rumours said). I stayed at home for as long as I could but eventually I had to get out and just see for myself what was going on. Not being suicidal I haven't gone near the CBD, but here are some pictures from round and about...

Burst water pipes.

Formerly a dairy.

Condemned shops. I used to like shopping at Madame Butterfly's vintage emporium...

This is the fish n chip shop where we got our tea on Friday night.

Formerly a hairdressers.

I used to work in this building - not anymore. I still have a job, but we are relocating to temporary premises until a new location is found. (If I had been at work here when the quake hit, the outcome could have been so different...)

The Gayhurst Road bridge crossing the Avon river. You can see the tarmac has lifted up in chunks. I'm standing on Avonside Drive to take this photo - most of it is open again now, but further down the street is blocked off where a lot of cracking happened.

This church on Edgeware Road really took a hammering. See how the gates are all twisted at the front. A stained glass window has fallen out of that round hole.

This is the building behind the church. Such a shame to think of those beautiful stained glass windows being demolished.

I'm glad this is not my car.

I forget which street this is, but there are a lot of these potholes around. In a lot of places the ground actually liquefied which caused sinkholes, and in other places there are big piles of dirt and sand which has just bubbled up from somewhere.

Amidst all this catastrophe, mostly what I am thinking is lucky, lucky, lucky. Lucky no one died. Lucky that the city had plans for dealing with an event like this and that they seem to be running smoothly. Lucky that power is on for most of us. Lucky that most people will be able to claim insurance on the damage. Above all, lucky that me and mine and my little patch are safe and whole.

I am sure that in the weeks to come there will be plenty of things to be annoyed about, but for now I am counting my blessings.

Earthquake

This morning at 4.35am we were hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. The epicentre was about 30 km west of Christchurch and man, did we know about it. I woke to a rumbling that quickly got loud as the room started to shake. Lui and I bolted out of bed and made for the doorway as everything lurched. I could hear doors and cupboards banging, drawers slamming in and out, and the weird, almost supernatural rumbling all around. My instinct was to get outside where nothing could fall and trap me but I couldn't make it further than the doorway - it was too hard to run with the rocking and rolling and violent lurching. At last it subsided and I grabbed my coat and ran outside, shivering and shaking and listening to alarms, sirens, and barking dogs.

Lui hid somewhere. I went back inside and gathered food, phoned my family, ran outside each time there was an aftershock, and waited for Jon to come home from work. Eventually dawn broke and we checked out the house - amazingly there is no damage! We are incredibly lucky, especially given the damage to other parts of town. The power came back on at about 8.30am for us which was great - much kudos to the power companies, and in fact everyone who has worked so hard today to restore infrastructure - thank you all! We still have to conserve water, and boil before drinking and all that, but at least we have heat and light and internet.

Lui is incredibly spooked - he spent the day hiding under our bed, but he has at last come out and is slinking round, staring at everything with big eyes and flinching at every noise. It's going to take a few days for him to be back to normal I guess... the same can be said for everyone really. Thanks to everyone who has commented and emailed to see if I'm all right, I very much appreciate it! Here is an article with everything you ever wanted to know about The Big One of 2010: http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/4094979/Huge-earthquake-rocks-Christchurch

Here's hoping for a good night's sleep and a boringly uneventful day tomorrow...

3rd of Spring

Well, time is flying. It's the 3rd of spring already, although the weather today was anything but springlike. These pictures from last weekend are my proof that we are all starting to spread our wings, stretch in the sunshine and enjoy the lenghthening days.

See the little star flowers, all in a row... Eventually I want to spread this planting all along the driveway. And I will have some cerise pink hyacinths in there next year!

Here are some more earlicheer daffs in the lovely green gazunder (ooh I love that word). They smell so beautiful - I have the front door open and the scent blows in and perfumes all through the house.

More bulbs... I'd forgotten these little crocus were even there, until they peeped their little faces out. They are such fleeting sweeties - little blooms gone within a week.

And the patch of sunshine that is jonquils. Glowing with spring cheer even on a cloudy day.

Happy spring! How does your garden grow?

Ghosts in the garden

Blossom time is here at last! The leader of the pack is my dwarf almond, Garden Prince. He has these lovely pink flowers and, since we are not nearly out of the frosty woods yet, I have to be super vigilant with the frost cloth.

I stuck some stakes in his pot, and then it's just a matter of wrapping a couple of lengths of cloth around and securing it to the stakes with wooden clothes pegs. Leave a bit of overhang at the top, and clip together to make a roof.

Here is the ghostly spectacle. I'm also watching out for my peach Rose Chiffon. She hasn't burst her blossoms quite yet, but she's not far behind.

Now, don't forget to remove these covers when it's windy, or they will catch the wind and sail your pots right over to the ground, where they will deposit quite a few of their unopened buds. Yeah, ask me how I know this.

Saturday morning dawned sunny and even... warm? I didn't stop to ponder it, but quickly grabbed my paintbrush and got stuck into that job that for some reason I'd been looking forward to all week... painting my potting corner.

Above you can see my collection of unearthed glassware, sitting on a shelf I "built". Building the shelf consisted of cutting an old fence paling to size, and nailing it on top of the support beam that was already there. This fence was recently put up by our back neighbour, and we have the "wrong" side of it. Since it's in this little corner I figured it would be of most use if it had shelves to hold my pots and et ceteras. So I nailed boards over all the support beams, I figure a coat of paint will mostly unify it and once it's holding pots and things you won't really notice that it's a bit wonky. Right?

Anyway, here it is after it's first coat. (May I just say, painting trellis is a joy and a delight.) Another coat to go, then I can start arranging the compost bins! Can't wait!

Dull days

I'm so sick of these dull winter days. Seemingly every day is cold and grey outside, with a chill wind blowing and specks of rain clinging to your hair and dampening your clothes and spirits. I force myself to go outside and mope around for a while but really I'm just killing time, waiting for spring when I can launch into action. I'm tired of all my indoor hobbies - tired of crochet, tired of movies, tired of baking, tired of the internet, tired of the couch and my blankie, tired of brainstorming ideas for a warm day, tired of magazines. Tired of everything except books - I spent most of today reading (The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder) - which did in fact make me feel better. At least I'm not snowed in by a scary gigantic blizzard.

When will spring come?

It must be getting closer because the birds are very active. We heard a scuffling and a squabbling and saw these two blackbirds having a go right outside the window. It was very exciting there for a couple of minutes.

In between moping, I have got a wee bit of work done in the garden. Not painting the trellis, but I'm still busting to do that - just need it to be dry, dry, dry. I got my apple and feijoa trees planted (I got a Monty's Surprise to go along with the Baujade apple) and discovered a hidden cache of glass medicine bottles when I dug one of the holes. No kidding, I must have pulled out 30-40 pill bottles of varying sizes and the same amount broken. Fun. Seriously, who decides it is a good idea to landfill a backyard with glass? Fortunately it's not everywhere, but I did uncover a couple of similar patches of rubbish (including glass, bricks, coal and rotted shoes) when I was digging up ground for the potager. Not cool.

I've also sown a few seeds, just peas and pak choi for now. It wasn't even a debate as to whether I should sow some tomatoes or not - it's just too cold and cloudy. I did transplant out some broccoli and spring onions from the glasshouse, they were sown about April/May. The garlic is looking pretty good too, so at least one little corner of the potager is productive. The rest of it will be too, once I get some nice weather to finish laying the paths...

Rainy Sunday

This weekend I had hoped to be doing some painting. I've been busy in a corner of my garden, fencing off a little spot to make my potting area. I put up some trellis and laid down some weedmat, and just wanted to paint the walls and fence first before I shift in the potting table and compost bins and everything I want to tuck away in that corner. Heavy rain has spoiled all my plans however... as cosy as it is to sit here on the couch by the fire and listen to it gently pattering against the window, I would still rather be outside working thank you very much.

Anyway, on a note of cheer... I've got a clematis flower! I took these cuttings from my mum's clematis plants in late autumn and put them in water, hoping some roots would form, but not really expecting it due to the lateness of the season. The leaves stayed green and some tendrilly shoots appeared, and soon I noticed what looked like flower buds. No, not really? Not on cuttings in a glass of water in the middle of winter? But yes, it is exactly that. One long root has developed on each cutting with buds, so I guess I'll pinch the rest of the buds off so that the roots will develop.

I took cuttings of two different varieties - one has pale pink early flowers and one has magenta pink late flowers. It seems that the pale pink ones are the ones flowering and rooting, maybe that has something to do with them being an early variety. I hope the magenta ones take as well, as that was the colour I really wanted!

We had lunch with my brother and his family today. It was his birthday so I made a pav. Not having any fresh fruit to hand (traditionally you decorate a pavlova with strawberries and kiwifruit) I used violas and mint leaves. Technically edible but we didn't - although the espresso chocolate was divine!

Well it's back to the fire for me and dreaming of sunny days to come.

Winter edibles

Whoops, I'm a couple of days late with this post. I spent the weekend cutting back the shrubbery along the front fence, digging out some bushes I didn't want and then chopping up the prunings and cramming them into our miniscule green recycling bin (I'll show you that some time... oh how you will laugh).

So I thought I'd show you how the edibles are doing at the end of July. Although the pumpkins above aren't exactly edible any more...

Would you believe I've still got blueberries? This is Blueberry Muffin, a self fertile variety.

Heaps of rhubarb is still poking through. Obviously this is a variety that doesn't die back in winter, yay!

Cauliflower Violet Sicilian. This photo makes it look a lot bigger than it actually is... in reality the head is only slightly bigger than a golf ball!

Leeks are leeking, but not very fast. I obviously sowed the seeds much too late. But once they start growing in spring they'll be great! I am still picking a few and having them as baby leeks.

But yay for pak choi... it continues to noticeably grow even on the cold days! I've put some crushed eggshells around mine to foil the slugs - it actually does work, and those little nibbles on the outer leaves have not been repeated.

Bright lights silver beet - another winter staple.

It's lovely and warm in the glasshouse and we often sit in here for afternoon tea and a snooze. Peas are doing fairly well in containers (a bit of black spot and mildew has just set in), and some rocket is slowly but surely getting bigger.

Last but not least - this is my new mandarin Clementine. When the weather warms up I'll plant her in a sheltered corner and cross my fingers that she manages some more fruit next year!

Oh - I got an apple tree - Baujade. I think I've even decided where to put it! Hopefully this weekend (or next) I'll get that and the feijoa finally put in place! Still debating about another apple variety to go with it.

Small signs

I went for a wander in the garden today and was amazed at the little signs of spring that are stirring. Granted, they are not moving particularly fast, but something is happening, and I have photographic evidence to prove it...

The first daffodil! This is Hoop Petticoats. I've had the bulbs planted in a bowl for a couple of years and never had anything to show but the grassy foliage. So it's good to see that the plant actually knows what to do with itself.

Sweet little violas. Where would I be in winter without them. I love the painted faces on this self seeded variety, they remind me of vintage crockery.

Delicate blooms on a tiny winter's cyclamen.

Hellebore - rose of winter. Very difficult to photograph as they hide their faces under leaves and face the walls!
But gorgeous when the sunlight hits them just so.

Even my strawberries are flowering! I thought about moving them into the glasshouse, but figured that they are probably more sheltered where they are, being in a north facing position under the eaves. I kind of doubt any berries will come from this yet, but you never know...

To be honest, I'm a bit mad at these pink hyacinths. They are lovely, but they came up too early to be part of my carefully planned pastel colour scheme alongside the driveway (along with pale yellow earlycheer daffodils and pale blue star flowers (not sure of the proper name of those!) Also, they are pale powder-pink and not the deep cerise that I imagined would give a dramatic shot of drama to the display. *Huge annoyed sigh*

The blue star flower opening in another part of the garden.

Grape hyacinths in a perfectly mossed bowl.

My favourite wintersweet still has lovely scented blossoms.

Check back tomorrow to see how my edibles are faring...