We have had a week of relative warmth, redolent of spring, and we’ve even had sunshine which has been superb. I can hear the groans from the Northern Hemisphere as I write, but truly, it’s been an awful winter – too wet, too cold and too long! And the weather boffins are telling us that thanks to La Ninã and the Indian Ocean Dipole, it will be wet on the east coast of Australia until at least December.
I swear I’m done with it.
Anyway, my six:
The first day of winter!
This year is absolutely flying and still we haven’t had meaningful rain. The domestic water catchment is right down and the village’s streets and public areas are dusty and sad.
We’ve been away for 10 days and our big garden and the coastal surrounds look terrible. Worse is that the garden and lawns are covered in a fallen leaf mulch. The mulch would be good if I could get the soil deeply wet first of all. But it’s not to be. We do what we can though – hand water and blood and bone fertiliser.
This is my favourite part of the year in terms of garden work.
Autumn is energetic, with lots of cutting back, raking leaves, planting bulbs, feeding, watching for growth, and a really subtle feeling of faith and hope – the knowledge that the seasons keep spinning into perpetuity.
This is probably a ‘dangerously close to being rejected post’ because it’s a late submit. I daresay all the northerners are safely tucked in bed, sleeping the night away.
As part of the regular gardening blog hop put up by The Propagator, my Six for Saturday are growing in our little matchbox garden in the city. I mentioned once before in another post, that this garden is only three and half years old and was built from scratch. (See Matchbox Gardens)
I’ve been privileged to walk through some very beautiful northern hemisphere gardens through this last northern summer via some wonderful garden blogs. It’s the kind of thing that sustains one through our own southern winter.
But we’re now well into spring. Daylight saving begins next week, and my little garden (only 3 and 3/4’s years old and which we built and grew from scratch) is starting to come into its own.
So for those who love tree and leaf, this is my garden today:
I garden for the love of it. It’s a form of organic meditation. Worries become smaller within the scope of the outdoors and there is the tremendous reassurance that life is solid and strong and that good things come again and again. And in between 84,000 words here and 90,000 words there, it’s a regular part of life…
