A Short Walk and Back Again

At present a sore knee means I cannot walk very far. I go to the physio every week and have excercises and stretches to get it back into good working order. Short walks are okay. Even two short walks a day are allowed. The other day this is as close as I could get to the inlet. Hello over there how are the ducks and the gulls doing?

And back to the front gate again.

At least I can go for a wander up the back of our section where there is not much happening until the apples on the apple tree (out of frame) ripen.

Come on, I’ll show you round.

Look at that rumpty vege. plot where a couple of random pumpkins have escaped from dug-in household compost (bokashi method – check it out here! Maybe you too can grow a magical pumpkin patch).

The berry patch you can see to the right of the vege. garden’s wooden border are still coming into their own. They need a few seasons yet to produce. Hoping that by the time our son, partner and their three kids arrive from Germany to live here, they’ll be able to pluck a few raspberries and blueberries for Grandma to do Mother Goose and bake a pie a la Little Tommy Tucker, Sing a Song of Sixpence.

And – voila – to the left greenhouse / glasshouse and rampant grapevine with only three bunches of grapes most probably due to our pretty hit and miss grapevine tending. Too busy respectively golfing & writing novels & poetry books. But it’s nice to sit under the vine and glass roof on rainy days.

Naughty, naughty agapanthus are listed in New Zealand as a pest and an invasive species. They have even been put on to the weed register. I rather like the tousle-headed ruffians. Anyway, there’s no getting rid of them and their spreading-like-wildfire habit, so may as well admit defeat and admire the white ones for their restraint and the periwinkle blue ones for their persistence and sense of entitlement.

Blame for the introduction of agapanthus to our country has been lain at the feet of soldiers returning from the Boer War. They did so like the way they covered the land in South Africa and thought – wouldn’t they look good growing back in little old NZ? Thus agapanthus joined broom, gorse, rabbits, opossums, wallabies, thar, russell lupins (and a whole lot more) in the ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ club.

Our lilies appear in January – February to add a touch of the regal to our somewhat higgeldy-piggeldy bank. I remarked to one of my sisters that it was all ‘a bit of a jungle’ to which she heartily agreed – something I’ve long forgiven but never forgotten.

Returning from the wander up the back leads us down to the path by the back door, where on rainy days I indulge in futile attempts to remain dry by trying not to brush against dripping ferns and daisies with their sodden little faces. It’s a fight I will never win.

Just before we go down the steps and back to the gate, let’s take a look at the last of the lavender. The bees will be sad when it’s all gone. So will I be bees. So will I.