Gardening

Here in Hawkes Bay gardening can only be done on the rare cloudy days when it is a bit cooler. After a couple of very, very hot sticky days the weather cooled down. The clouds appeared and I was able to get out and do some well needed gardening. I cleared out the iris border at one side of the house and added a couple of new dark blue irises to go with the white ones.

I also cleared the mint border at the other side of the house. Though as I added a couple of geraniums, maybe mint border is not the right name anymore.

I also cleared the little border where Peter parks his car (the garage is too full of junk). I managed to find an extra metre of space under all the overgrown oxalis.

Next the murtlye border behind the veggie patches. I used a cocoa mulch to try to keep down the weeds and give the murtyle a bit of soil conditioning. The cocoa mulch comes in a square block, a bit like a giant weetabix.

The block goes in the wheelbarrow and gets soaked in water for about 30mins.

It then turns into a barrowful of orange porridge, which can be spread on the garden. Really handy no carting large bags of mulch from the garden centre. Yes, I know it looks a very scary orange colour, but this does change to earth colour after a couple of weeks. And after a couple of great days in the garden my muscles are a little on the stiff side.