Let the planting begin ... almost!

The terracing of the tyres is complete. Three Cheers for ME!! I'm now in the process of leveling the pathways, finishing the back-filling and adding compost. I'm also trying to figure out how I am going to handle a narrow strip of garden that remains along the back fence at the lowest point of the garden. It is too narrow for tyres so I'll have to be creative and come up with another option. I'm ruminating on that one at present and the solution will come to me in time I am sure. I am planning to plant Sweet Peas in this strip so I have a little time up my sleeve yet.

I am very pleased with how the vege garden is looking and have popped a few seeds and seedlings into the tyres that are filled and ready. The vagaries of Wellington's spring weather have made themselves felt this last week or so with some of the stormiest weather in over 50 years. Of course, it's not just Wellington that has been hit, the South Island is in the grips of terrible rain/sleet/hail/snow storms which are playing havoc with the spring lambing amongst other things. I really feel for all of those involved. It's pretty rough following right on the heels of the Earthquake.

With the knowledge that spring is an unpredictable and random event here with summer often no better, I decided I'd sort out some cold frames to start my seeds off in. It's also easier to keep the baby plants safe from the ravages of slugs, snails and my all time favourite - The Mystery Axe Murderer!

When I was growing food in the first incarnation of my vege garden I used to get very frustrated and was completely mystified by the fact that one day I'd have a healthy row of seedlings smiling up at me and the next morning when I went to say hello all I'd find was a row of little stumps, with the tops laying neatly alongside. It was as if some sadistic mini lumberjack had been through during the night and felled my burgeoning crops with their tiny axe. I never did work out who; or what, the culprit was and I'm not prepared to watch it happen all over again. Ergo, the cold frames. This way I can keep my babies safe through their infancy until they are ready to toddle on their own in their new homes down in the vege garden. I guess the dwarf sugar snap and snow pea seeds I have already planted are just going to have to take their chances though!

After investigating various possibilities; including making them myself, I came across a local company which manufactures a couple of products which pretty much met my criteria. The first is a cold frame:

Suntuf Coldframe

and the second is  slightly smaller model:

Sun Tunnel

They are due to be delivered today - yippee... I can't wait to get sowing.

Next up will be sorting out the hoop / cloche system for the vege beds so that I can attempt to circumvent the inclement conditions in order to convince the veges that it is warmer than they think it is!

For a bit of light relief during the construction of the vege garden I have cleared quite a bit of the bed directly above the vege garden. This is going to be a flower bed ... a lot of my gardening friends think I've had some sort of breakdown because to date my garden has been an almost exotic flower free zone; the only flowering plants in residence have been native species. In the past I've dabbled briefly with flowers, but as most of the plants I tried simply got torn to shreds in the wind I gave up. I did manage to grow a few roses in the old vege garden but they were never really happy and I ended up asking my mum to adopt them. They are all doing very well up in Auckland now and I get regular 'report cards' on their progress.

When I arrived home; after pondering and planning for 3 years about what I'd do in the garden if I was ever home for good, I could once again allow the urge to grow roses take root. This time however, I was going to be realistic and decided to put Rugosa roses in. These tough little customers not only handle the wind, but are more than happy growing in the teeth of salt laden gales right on the beach and will even tolerate poor soils. So far I've only planted three down the back. The remainder (5) are planted up in the top garden where I'm playing the 'wait and see if they will perform' game.

Myosotidium hortensia - Chatham Island Forget-Me-Knot

So, the colour scheme for this bed I'm working on is blue/yellow/white/purple/mauve - you get the picture! Already in the bed are my Chatham Island Forget-Me-Nots; which are just starting to come into flower now. They will be out of this world in a few weeks time! I've transplanted a crop of self sown seedling out amongst the roses and as more flower seedlings come on line from my cold frames I'll slowly fill the bed in. The three roses I've got in are:

Agnes

Schneezwerg and

Fimbriata which has a little pink in it but I can forgive it for that for the time being!

I am going to add a couple more roses as I slowly move the current occupants out.The roses are: 

Stella Polaris and maybe

Rugelda but she may be too tall for this location ... we'll see.

 Ok, where's my spade. Time to dig!

I'm Quite Tyred....or How to Build a Vege Garden in Slow Motion

The site before I started work - Feigoas and Lemon on the right

Now that I'm home I'm spending a lot of time; well as much as I can manage, in the garden. One of my highest priorities is to get my vege garden going again. When Geri became very ill - yikes! 5-6 years ago ... I let my vege garden lapse and before I left for Australia I planted a heap of trees in it just to fill up the space.
On arriving home, I once again felt the urge to grow food and had a good long think about how best to acheive this given the local climate and the physical challenges of the site. I also didn't want to be investing a lot of money in building the vege beds. The solution I came up with was to use recycled car tyres. These have a couple of  advantages. First off they are free and by using them I am preventing a few from ending up in the local landfill.The other plus is that being black they absorb and hold heat. This; hopefully, will mean I can extend my growing season, especially if I use cloches to turn the tyre beds into mini green houses.

The first job that faced me was to remove the trees I'd planted and to reassess the few fruit trees that had remained in the garden. Let me explain that one. Over the years I've tried many different food and fruit plants in the garden. Some have done very well but most have struggled with the challenging climate and location. The few that I had left were two feigoas - which I had shifted a few years ago with the warning that if they didn't pull their socks up and start producing they'd be on their bike. They must have headed the warning because they have produced good crops for the last 2 winters. Mmmmm I love Feigoas! 

My Meyer lemon has been successful ever since I planted it so it had a secure and guaranteed spot in the garden. I had left the Quince in when I left and although it did produce a few fruits the spring gales played havoc with its ability to set fruit so it was out! Also on shakey ground was the lime tree, which is really still in its infancy. It has had a few relocations and valiantly attempts to fruit but it is struggling. After Mademoiselle Lime and I sat down and had a heart to heart I decided to give her one last chance and moved her for the last time. We'll see how she goes over the next few years before deciding if the hatchet will fall... tick tock, tick tock ...  

Nearing the end of the list is the Avocado tree. Now, it is a bit of an anomoly to have a thriving Avocado in this climate, but the tree is tucked away in pretty much the only sheltered corner of the garden and is really thriving. Last year whilst I was home on leave for the summer I picked 52 Avocados - what  a feast! You can see the Avocado tucked into the corner behind the framework in this photo. Oh, there are also two olive trees, both of which are thriving. They do fruit but need some serious pruning - in fact one of them is just about on my hit list I think... We haven't collected the fruit so far - that's on the round to it pile. 

There were about a dozen trees to relocate, all NZ natives and some of them reasonably large. I am very fortunate to have a friend with a farm and over the years she has very willingly received the stream of homeless trees; both fruit and ornamentals, from my garden. So I gave her a call and after much digging and lugging I had a mostly clear site to start work on. This same friend traded me two trailer loads of used tyres for the latest batch of trees = good trade!

In short order, the back yard was full of tyres and I faced the thrilling aka daunting, prospect of preparing them in such a way as to make them usable as planters. I had decided to remove one side wall and to drill four holes in the base of each trye so that I could insert and secure hoop supports for the cloches.  After much discussion and deliberation I borrowed my son's sabre saw and drill and set to work.  Very quickly I discovered that removing the side wall from tyres is a nasty, nasty job! The saw and the drill ran out of battery after 6 tyres which was just as well because that's about how long my charge lasted too. 

It was frustratingly slow work and I became a tad disheartened. Eventually I admitted defeat and employed a friend of my sons to have a go at them. Pat lent a hand and between them they managed to come up with a better technique and finished the whole miserable lot of tyres in about an hour - mutter, mutter, mutter! Still, at least the job was done and I could now begin to build the garden beds. Originally I had planned to simply place the tyres on the ground, fill them and get planting. However as I pondered, planned and visualised how the space was going to work I realised that I wasn't going to be happy with how that plan would look. So muttering under my breath and asking myself why I on earth I did this sort of thing to myself I trudged up to the house and collected my spade.

Although my progress has been slow; regulated by the weather, Geri's masto, my Fibro and the visitation of various exciting virus' amongst other things, I am making progress none the less.  This photo shows the first two rows in place. Since it was taken I've managed to do another row and have 2/3 backfilled those first two rows. I've had 2m3 of compost delivered and barrowed down the back - Pat's friend strikes again! He is proving very useful and is a good investment hehe. So, I'm over half way there and am dying to get going on the final three rows.

Patience, patience ....

On the Needles ... or Another Angora Adventure

On our way back home to NZ from India we stopped off in Melbourne for a few days. I took this opportunity to pick up some more Angora yarn due to the success of the Angora beret I had knitted for Geri in the days before we left India - yes, she can actually wear it and have it touching her skin without it setting off her mast cells. I had in mind a scarf to go with the beret using a pattern from this book:

Vintage Knitwear for Modern Knitters 

This picture of the scarf isn't that good, but gives you a rough idea of what it looks like:

Orkney Angora 100% Angora 4 pl

Angora Leaf Scarf

Morris Hanspun 100% Angora

Hunting for yarn that Geri can tolerate is quite a mission. The pattern calls for the use of Orkney Angora 4 ply so I had tracked some down on the internet before we left Australia and added it to the stash to take to India.  However when it arrived Geri declared that it wasn't going to be suitable. GARG, back to the drawing board I went.



I had seen some very soft hand woven Angora at Morris and Sons so I picked up a hank and brought it home for the Geri acid test, which it passed with flying colours.  Back I went and bought a few more hanks to add to the stash for India.

Fast forward a few months and there we were in Melbourne. As the yarn had shown such promise I decided it would be prudent to add to the stash whilst I had the opportunity.

Last week I started work on the scarf but after working on it for a couple of evenings I could no longer ignore the niggle in my head which was telling me that I didn't like how it was looking. I consulted with Geri who due to having the 'flu really couldn't have cared less at that stage. I decided to make an executive decision and unraveled the whole thing before commencing the search for a pattern that would be a better fit for the yarn.
I came across this one:

Lacy V Scarf by Pegg Thomas

and it looked like it would fit the bill perfectly so I decided to give it a go.

It is knitting up very quickly and I should think I'll have it finished within the week. I love fast projects!

This is a long thin scarf and is suiting the Morris Angora much better. I'll probably just keep knitting until I've finished the yarn completely. Although ... I might do a knitted trim for the ends before finishing the actual scarf as I rather liked the look of the knitted trim on the TMS shawl... hmmmm, I foresee more scheming on the horizon.

A Shawl Well Traveled

How many countries do you think this garment has traveled to? Well, it was concieved in Australia, spent its teenage years in India, reached maturity in New Zealand and will soon emigrate to America to be rehomed at a fund raising auction for the Mastocytosis Society during its 2010 conference in October.

The shawl's pattern is a variation on a theme from a pattern on Knitty:

Lace Ribbon Scarf

I doubled the width so the scarf is around 62 cm wide and 2m long after blocking. It is knitted on 4mm needles and took 5.5 balls of yarn. I altered the gauge a little from the original 21st/ 34 rows to 24 st/ 32 rows.

The yarn I choose is deliciously soft and lovely to work with:

Eki Riva Supreme 100% Baby Alpaca # 2299 Lavender

I choose to use this particular yarn because alpaca is often tolerated better than wool as it is softer so is less likely to cause irritation. This was an important factor in my decision because many folk who suffer from Mastocytosis have issues with skin sensitivities and itching.

The edging was knitted separately and sewn on prior to blocking. The pattern is called Willow Leaf and is from one of my books:

150 Knitted Trims

As with all lace, the edging looked horribly lumpy prior to blocking and there was plenty of guestimation going on whilst I knitted it and tried to figure out long it should be, but it shaped up nicely once it had had a taste of the 'wires'!  Blocking really is akin to putting your precious work on the rack for a torture session.

I hope that whomever takes the shawl home with them at the conclusion of the conference enjoys wearing it as much as I enjoyed making it.