Category Gardening
Another day off!
Well, not entirely off—I had to take one call and a few emails in the morning—but for the most part I was able to unplug and enjoy the day. Started out with some pottering among the roses . . . . . . then off to the garden center to see if I couldn’t finish […]
Roses!
Now that I’m a gardener of roses I get to do glamorous things like accidentally break several branches while planting and then make the best of it by putting the blossoms in a pretty vase on my dining room table and feeling joy every time I look at them.
A day off!
My first day off in seven weeks! I slept until nearly 9am, ate a bowl of muesli in the sun on the roof terrace, and picked Justin up for another trip to the garden center. We left two hours later with so many roses, honeysuckle, and clematis that I literally had to return a few […]
Stolen moments in the garden
I ought to have spent the day at my desk working through my mile-long list of thing to do. But knowing that I had a cartload of new plants waiting upstairs was more than morale could bear. So I ditched the computer for a couple of hours and got one section of planters done on […]
Nursery run
I’ve been sad not to be able to do my spring gardening due to the covid shutdown restrictions and nearly 24/7 work demands. But yesterday the stars aligned long enough for Justin to snag two shopping time slots at Molbak’s during a work break that was just barely long enough for me to be able […]
Those leaves!
Let’s just sit with this for a minute: That colour! The newness of those leaves! It’s just so full of life. The leafing-out of my Japanese maple is one of my favourite moments of spring.
Turns out I need birds in my life
How many weeks has it been since the covid shutdowns began? Feels like forever. A new mode of living that, despite the overarching gloom of illness and economic ruin, has many small charms. For example, birds. Last week, on a whim during my masked grocery run, I bought a bird feeder and some seed. I […]
Kuirao Park
One of the best rules for traveling with friends is that you don’t always have to do everything together. Another good rule for traveling with kids, is that sometimes, after several days of unstructured vacation, they just need to have dinner and go to bed early. By the time we got to Saturday night, it […]
Hobbits!
New Zealand was the Middle Earth of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, and Hobbiton is one of the Things To See when you’re here. On top of that, it was also my rendez-vous point to meet up with Heather and Taryn, two friends of mine from high school, and their spouses and, in […]
Hamilton Gardens
Legend has it that everything south and inland of Auckland is just not that cool. A lot of ranch land and unremarkable small towns. Most of that proved true on the drive from Auckland to Hamilton, but there’s a gem of a garden on the outskirts of Hamilton that was a complete delight. Built on […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 